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Well before dawn on a cold and rainy March 9, 1863,a shadowy group of horsemen rode into the cluster of buildings in Northern Virginia called Fairfax Court House. When sodden sentries in Union blue posted in the dark village square demanded the riders’ identities, the reply was simply “5th New York Cavalry.”The inquisitive sentries relaxed but soon found themselves disarmed and taken prisoner by the same mysterious riders.

As the horsemen dispersed to nearby corrals and stables filled with Union cavalry mounts, a smaller group rode to the home of Dr. William Gunnell. Once there, four men quickly disarmed two Union sentries, gained entrance to the home and silently entered the bedroom in which the commander of the nearby 2d Vermont Brigade, Brigadier General Edwin H. Stoughton, lay sleeping. One of the dripping figures pulled the covers from the young general and awakened him. Sitting up in bed, the befuddled Yankee demanded to know who these interlopers were.

“General,” one replied, “did you ever hear of Mosby?”

“Yes!” Stoughton exclaimed. “Have you caught him?”

“He has caught you!” came the reply. “I am Mosby. Stuart’s cavalry has possession of Fairfax Court House.”

Within a half-hour, the dispirited Yankee general, several other Union officers and 38 Union soldiers were hurriedly mounted on58 captured U.S. cavalry horses and escorted out of Fairfax Court House and into the night. John Mosby, one of the most effective partisan commanders in the Confederacy, had once again frustrated Union forces occupying the Northern Virginia region that came to be known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” (See map, p. 32.) When Abraham Lincoln learned of the daring raid, he lamented over the loss,saying, “I can make a much better general in five minutes, but the horses … the horses cost $125 apiece!”

The Confederate reaction to Mosby’s successful action was much more positive. Cavalry chief Major General James Ewell Brown “J.E.B.” Stuart issued a congratulatory order praising Mosby and his men. Two weeks after the raid, on March 23, General Robert E. Lee published an order officially promoting Mosby to the rank of captain and authorizing him to raise a cavalry company. The man who would soon come to be known as the “Gray Ghost” was on the pathway to fame.

AN UNLIKELY HERO

 John Singleton Mosby, 29 years old at the time of that March 1863 raid, did not cast a large shadow. Weighing less than 130 pounds and standing only 5 feet 8 inches tall, Mosby had learned in early childhood to rely on his wits rather than brawn. He was born and raised in rural Powhatan County, Virginia. In 1850, at age 16, he entered the University of Virginia.

Young Mosby did well in class, especially in classical studies. However, his student life was violently interrupted when he was 19. In March 1853, he became involved in a feud with a local bully in Charlottesville named George Turpin. Threatened by the larger man, Mosby drew a pistol and fired, wounding him. Turpin survived, but Mosby was arrested and confined. On May 25, he was convicted of the shooting and was sentenced to a year in jail, fined $500 and expelled from the university.

While in jail, Mosby decided to learn more about the laws that had resulted in his sentencing. Having come to admire William Robertson, who had served as the prosecutor in his case, Mosby asked if the lawyer might lend him some of the books in his law library. Robertson did more than that. He began to tutor the personable young prisoner. After receiving a pardon and early release in December, Mosby continued his studies in Robertson’s law office and a few months later was admitted to the Virginia bar.

In 1856, Mosby met Pauline Clarke, a Kentucky native. The couple was married in December 1857 and later moved to Bristol, Virginia. Mosby practiced law there and Pauline gave birth to their first child.

Following John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, tensions increased throughout Virginia. During this period, the number of militia units in the state increased significantly, as Virginians determined to improve their capacity for local defense. Like many young men during this unsettled time, Mosby came to feel that military service was a civic duty, and he enlisted in the local militia company, the Washington Mounted Rifles. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861,Mosby’s company, commanded by a West Point graduate named Captain William E. “Grumble” Jones,was called to active duty. Private Mosby bid his wife farewell and then traveled to Richmond,where the company was incorporated in the newly formed 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment. During the unit’s training there, Mosby met the man whom he would eventually come to regard as his best friend and mentor, a newly commissioned Confederate colonel named Jeb Stuart.

The regiment saw its first major combat action near Manassas, Virginia, on July21, 1861. Not long after the Battle of Manassas (First Bull Run), Stuart was promoted to brigadier general and left the cavalry regiment to command the cavalry division serving in Confederate forces defending Virginia.

Over the next nine months, the regiment’s newly promoted colonel, Grumble Jones, frequently sent Private Mosby on extended scouting missions. At the conclusion of each mission Mosby submitted accurate, concise reports. His stamina, intelligence and literary abilities impressed Jones. On February 14, 1862, the colonel appointed Mosby as the regimental adjutant,and on April 2 he promoted him to the rank of 1st lieutenant.

John Mosby, however, yearned to return to the kind of reconnaissance missions that had provided him with the greatest sense of accomplishment. He soon had the opportunity to do so, as Colonel Jones was promoted to brigadier general and replaced by Robert E. Lee’s nephew, Colonel Fitzhugh Lee. Mosby thoroughly disliked the West Point-educated “Fitz”Lee, who, for his part, found Mosby more of a distraction than an asset. The new commander readily approved Mosby’s request to be relieved of his adjutant’s duties and accepted his resignation as 1st lieutenant.

A new chapter in Mosby’s military life dawned thereafter, as the Confederate soldier reported for service as a scout on General Jeb Stuart’s staff in the cavalry division. Mosby would later say of Stuart, who was just a year older than him, “He made me all that I was in the war; but for his friendship I would never have been heard of.” He also would refer to Stuart as the best friend he ever had.

Not long after reporting for duty, Mosby was ordered to take four additional troopers on a scouting mission behind the right (northern) flank of Union Major General George B. McClellan’s 100,000-man Army of the Potomac, which was threatening the Confederate capital of Richmond. On June 9, Mosby and his men returned with the news that the Union flank was “in the air” – that is, it was not connected to any additional Union forces to the north. Just two days later, Mosby was one of 1,200 Confederate cavalrymen in Stuart’s famous “ride around McClellan.” Stuart’s daring exploits provided Lee with the information he needed to undertake a series of tactical offensives (the Seven Days Battles) that resulted in the withdrawal of McClellan’s army from the Richmond area in early July.

MOSBY’S NEW MISSION IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA

In mid-July 1862, Lee sent Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson from the Richmond defenses to “suppress” Major General John Pope’s recently formed Union army in central Virginia. Pope’s force of about 45,000 troops was responsible for protecting Washington while also threatening critical Confederate rail lines of communication between the Shenandoah Valley and Richmond. Jackson defeated a part of Pope’s army at Cedar Mountain on August 9. Three weeks later, Lee combined all his available forces near the Manassas battlefield of 1861 and won a major victory over Pope on August 30 in a fight that became known as the Battle of Second Manassas (Second Bull Run). Stuart’s cavalry played an important role in the Confederate campaign, and Mosby was able to learn more about Northern Virginia on his scouting missions.

During the fall of 1862, young Mosby continued to serve as a highly valued member of Jeb Stuart’s staff in the cavalry. Following the lopsided Confederate victory at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in mid-December, he participated in Stuart’s famous “Christmas Raid” on December 25. With 1,800 troopers, Stuart’s force crossed the Rappahannock River at Kelly’s Ford and rode into the Union rear areas in Virginia’s Prince William and Fairfax counties. The gray raiders captured weapons, animals and supplies, all the while unsettling Union commanders in the area.

On December 30, as Stuart prepared to return to Lee’s army in its winter encampment near Fredericksburg, Mosby convinced the cavalry general to authorize himto remain in Loudoun County with a hand-picked group of nine troopers to harass the Union rear areas and to develop useful intelligence on enemy troop strength, Union dispositions and enemy plans for the coming spring campaign of 1863.

Mosby’s small force of 10men soon made themselves a nuisance to the soldiers of5th New York Cavalry, then securing the main roads in western Fairfax County. As Mosby reported, “In two days [we] captured 20 cavalrymen with their horses,equipment and arms.” These two early actions set the pattern for the ever more frequent – and usually successful– raids that took place over the next two years. In almost every case, Mosby’s men equipped themselves with the spoils of their fast-paced attacks and rapid withdrawals. (See “Mosby’s Weapon of Choice” text box, p. 35.)

These successful operations in early 1863 made it clear that the Northern Virginia region was a fruitful area for hit-and-run actions. Mosby’s reports concerning the raids encouraged Stuart to provide the young officer with additional men. Over the next three months, Mosby’s men increased their activities, always depending on their knowledge of the countryside and the willing assistance of the populace, which was very supportive of the Confederacy in general and Mosby in particular. In his postwar book War Reminiscences and Stuart’s Cavalry Campaigns, Mosby wrote, “Having no fixed lines to guard or defined territory to hold, it was always my policy to elude the enemy when they came in search of me, and carry the war into their own camps.” He and his men depended on the civilian populace to house them and to alert them to the presence of Union forces.

A frustrated Union officer, in a letter to his wife, described the difficulty his troops faced in dealing with Mosby, writing, “[We] can do nothing against this furtive population, soldiers today, farmers tomorrow, acquainted with every wood path, and finding friends in every house.” He added that the only way to defeat Mosby was “to clear this country with fire and sword, no mortal can do it in any other way.”

MOSBY AND HIS RANGERS

John Mosby’s activities were carried out in consonance with the Confederate Partisan Ranger Act that had been approved by the Confederate Congress in 1862. His success resulted in a promotion to major, with a date of rank of March 26, 1863. The following June, James Seddon, the Confederate secretary of war, authorized Mosby to form Company A of what would become, within a year, 43d Battalion of Virginia Cavalry. The battalion was better known as “Mosby’s Rangers.”

Mosby was to enlist men in his unit for detached service in an area encompassed by the Virginia counties of Fauquier, Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William, where they would, quite literally, live off the land. They equipped themselves with captured mounts, weapons and material, and were authorized to retain the items they seized, to include U.S. currency. Word soon spread among adventurous Confederates that service in Mosby’s unit was exciting, rewarding and largely free of the sort of boredom and incessant drill that was a part of soldiers’ lives in regular units.

Mosby insisted that he personally approve of all recruits who wished to join the rangers. He required men who had served in other Confederate units to show proof of their discharge and rejected anyone who had deserted to enlist in his growing force. Men who were subject to the Confederacy’s draft (ages 18-45) had to have proof they had not yet been called by the draft. If, during a man’s service, Mosby became dissatisfied with his conduct, he would send the individual back to the regular army. While more mature men were not precluded from joining 43d Battalion, Mosby was inclined to enlist younger, unattached volunteers. When someone asked Mosby why he recruited so many boyish warriors, he replied, “Why they are the best soldiers I have. They haven’t sense enough to know danger when they see it, and will fight anything I tell them to.”

Mosby’s force continued to grow over the next 18 months, until it reached regimental size – almost 2,000 men would serve in it by the end of the Civil War. Mosby was promoted to lieutenant colonel in January 1864, and he would reach the rank of colonel by that December. In his postwar memoir, he explained his concept of operations for the region in this way: “My purpose was to weaken the armies invading Virginia, by harassing their rear. As a line is only as strong as its weakest point, it was necessary for it to be stronger than I was at every point, in order to resist my attacks. … It is just as legitimate to fight an enemy in the rear as in front.”

As the Civil War entered its third year, Mosby’s men were very active throughout the area known as Mosby’s Confederacy. And as the pace of warfare increased in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in 1864, Mosby increased his activities to the west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.In August, he was advised that Union Major General Phil Sheridan’s forces marching southward from Winchester were being supplied by means of a heavily laden wagon train. Taking nearly 300 rangers with him, Mosby struck the federal wagon train and its escorting infantry near the town of Berryville,Virginia, at dawn on August 13. With only a few Confederate casualties, his force captured over200 cattle, 500 horses and mules, 100 cargo wagons and nearly 200 prisoners. After stripping the column of materials that could be easily carried off, Mosby ordered the wagons burned.

Sheridan was enraged by the “Berryville Raid” and swore to destroy Mosby and his unit. He would accomplish this by targeting their base of support. Soon, Union troops were set to work burning barns, mills and other farm buildings in the valley.They were not supposed to destroy homes, but on August 19 some of Mosby’s men came upon a detail from Brigadier General George A. Custer’s Michigan cavalry brigade that had already burned two homes and were preparing to set fire to a third. The rebels killed 29 of the 30 enemy cavalrymen – one survived by playing dead. The Union response to this action by Mosby’s men was swift, and over the next two months, no quarter was asked or given.

On September 23, 1864, five of Mosby’s men and a local boy who had ridden with them on a failed raid were executed by Union troops in the town of Front Royal. Within weeks,another ranger was hanged after being captured. In response to these killings, Mosby asked for,and received, permission from General Lee to exact vengeance in like measure. Six weeks later, 27 captives from Custer’s brigade who had been held in an area separate from the other Union prisoners were ordered to draw slips of paper from a hat. Seven of the pieces of paper were marked, and the men who drew them were to be executed as retribution.With the decision made, the death sentences were ordered to be carried out. Although several Union soldiers managed to escape death, the rest of the unlucky prisoners died.

Following this brutal period, Mosby wrote to Sheridan, stating that unless Confederate captives were treated fairly, the hangings of Union prisoners would continue.The letter was delivered on November11, 1864, by John Russell, one of Mosby’s most trusted subordinates. After reading the letter, Sheridan had a private conversation with Russell. The hangings – on both sides – stopped.But the brutal war did not.

That same month, Major General Wesley Merritt’s Union cavalry division traveled east across the Blue Ridge Mountains and entered Loudoun County. There, his men laid waste to the countryside, taking horses, cattle and sheep,and burning barns, mills, bridges and crops that were ready for harvest. The civilian populace of Loudoun, to include a number of pacifist Quaker families, faced desperate times as the final winter of the war closed down on Mosby’s Confederacy.

That brutal winter very nearly was the last for Mosby, as he suffered his seventh wound of the war when he was shot near Rectortown on December 21, 1864. Only his resilient constitution enabled him to survive this serious wound, but survive he did. After regaining his health, Mosby was honored for his service in a Richmond ceremony hosted by the Confederate Congress in January 1865.

With opportunities for active operations within Mosby’s Confederacy diminished by Union forces and the destruction wrought during the winter, Mosby could do little more than conduct nuisance raids east of the Blue Ridge Mountains as Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia struggled to sustain itself in the trenches around Petersburg.Lee’s attempt to retreat toward North Carolina ended with his surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. When Mosby learned that General Joseph E. Johnston also was preparing to surrender his Confederate army to General William T. Sherman in North Carolina, he knew that his war was over.

On Friday, April 21, 1865, in Salem, Virginia, Mosby held his last ranger muster. After reviewing the ranks of his much-depleted battalion, he had his adjutant read the order he had written, which stated, in part:

Soldiers –
I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we have cherished of a free and independent country has vanished. … I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. … After [our] association of more than two eventful years, I part from you with a just pride, in the fame of your achievements, and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now, at this moment of bidding you a final adieu, accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard.
Farewell!
Jno. S. Mosby
Colonel

Then, after fighting so hard for so long, Mosby followed the advice of his revered commander, Robert E. Lee, and returned to his home and family. He was granted a parole in June 1865 and resumed his law career.

Mosby felt that the South’s best course was one of reconciliation with the United States, and he made that his personal goal. He remained as pragmatic in peace as he had been in war and joined the Republican Party. He campaigned for President Ulysses S. Grant’s re-election in 1872, and the two former soldiers formed a friendship. Grant, for his part, wrote of Mosby in his Memoirs: “There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate detachment in the rear of an opposing army, and so near the border of hostilities, as long as he did without losing his entire command.”

 

Sadly, Mosby lost his wife, Pauline, in 1876 and was left as the sole parent of six children. With a family to look after, he turned to his newfound political connections and was appointed as U.S. consul to Hong Kong in 1878. He went on to hold a number of appointed government positions, concluding with one as an assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department from 1904-10. Throughout his postwar career, Mosby continued to write essays, articles and books, some of which are still in print. The old warrior finally went to his rest at age 83 in 1916. He was buried next to Pauline in Warrenton, Virginia.

One final honor came to the Gray Ghost long after he had passed into history. In 1992, John Singleton Mosby was among the first warriors to be inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame established by the U.S. Army Ranger Association at Fort Benning, Georgia.

 

John W. Mountcastle, PhD, is a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and serves on the “Armchair General” advisory board. A 1965 Virginia Military Institute graduate and a former Army Chief of Military History, Mountcastle teaches Civil War history courses at the University of Richmond.

Originally published in the March 2015 issue of Armchair General.