By the summer of 1864, the battalion consisted of six companies, including an artillery company. Before autumn chilled into winter, Mosby organized two more companies. He counted between 300 and 400 officers and men in the command. Although he seldom used more than 100 to 150 Rangers on a raid, the reach of the partisans extended to the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and west beyond the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. It was toward this latter region that Mosby increasingly shifted his operations as a decisive struggle for control of the “breadbasket of the Confederacy” unfolded that summer and fall.

A July raid into Maryland by a Confederate army under Lt. Gen. Jubal Early ignited the confrontation. After testing the defenses of the Federal capital, Early returned to Virginia, where he defeated a Union command in the Second Battle of Kernstown. He also sent cavalry units to burn Chambersburg, Pa., in retaliation for burnings and other depredations committed earlier that year by Federal forces in the Valley. General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant reacted, with prodding from President Abraham Lincoln, by amassing an army at Harpers Ferry, and appointed Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan as its commander. On August 10, Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah marched south, up the Valley, against Early’s Army of the Valley.

During Early’s withdrawal from Maryland, Mosby had met with the general, expressing a “desire to co-operate with him.” Early probably accepted the offer and then ignored it. Mosby wrote later that the Confederate commander never sent him a message or an order. Early “never requested me to do anything,” said Mosby. Despite this, Mosby decided to augment Early’s operations by striking more frequently across the Blue Ridge against Sheridan’s supply and communication lines.

Within days of Sheridan’s initial advance south, Mosby and 350 Rangers, bolstered by a pair of howitzers, crossed into the Valley at Snicker’s Gap. On August 13, outside of Berryville, the Confederates attacked a supply train of the 1st Cavalry Division, routing its infantry guards and seizing more than 500 horses and mules, more than 200 head of cattle and about 200 prisoners. The action cost Mosby five casualties.

Farther south, meanwhile, Early’s army stopped Sheridan’s movement at Fisher’s Hill. With instructions not to suffer a battlefield defeat that might adversely affect Lincoln’s reelection campaign, Sheridan began retiring north. He had been ordered by Grant to destroy the fertile region’s crops, barns and mills and confiscate its livestock. As the Northerners retreated, cavalry units roamed the countryside, liberally applying the torch. A Union horseman admitted that it “was a sad sight,” as stunned residents watched their harvests and barns become engulfed in flames. “It was a phase of warfare we had not seen before,” he wrote, “and though we admitted its necessity, we could not but sympathize with the sufferers.”

Pillars of smoke marked the passage of Sheridan’s army. On August 19, Captain William Chapman and three companies of Rangers came upon 30 members of the 5th Michigan Cavalry who had burned the barn on the Benjamin Morgan farm southeast of Berryville, and were preparing to destroy the brick house. Enraged at the destruction, the Rangers charged, with Chapman shouting: “Wipe them from the face of the earth! No quarter! No quarter! Take no prisoners!” The Michiganders not killed in the attack were seized, shoved into the farm lane and shot. The Rangers rode away, seeking other enemy detachments.

One of the Federals, Private Samuel K. Davis of Company L, had feigned death when shot in the face. He crawled away and hid nearby. Two Rangers returned before long and examined the bodies to be certain they were dead. They found one trooper still alive and shot him in the head. When a contingent of Union cavalrymen arrived at the Morgan farm, Davis appeared and recounted what had occurred. The Civil War had long since lost its innocence, and now hard men on both sides seethed with anger — and plans for revenge.

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