Mosby's Rangers

Jeffry D. Wert

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780671747459
• eBook ISBN: 9781439128848
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

No single battalion was more feared during the Civil War than the 43rd Battalion of Virginia Cavalry. As one contemporary said, "They had…all the glamour of Robin Hood…all the courage and bravery of the ancient crusaders." Better known as Mosby's Rangers, they were an elite guerrilla unit that operated with stunning success in northern Virginia and Maryland from 1863 to the last days of the war.In this vivid account of the famous command of John Singleton Mosby, Jeffry D. Wert explores the personality of this iron-willed commander and brilliant tactician and gives us colorful profiles of the officers who served under him. Drawing on contemporary documents, including letters and diaries, this is the most complete and vivid account to date of the fighting unit that was so hated by General Ulysses S. Grant that he ordered any captured Ranger to be summarily executed without trial.

Chapter 1

THE MAN AND THE MISSION

“I was so depressed at parting with my wife and children that I scarcely spoke a word,” wrote John Mosby of his entry into Confederate service in May 1861. He was a reluctant soldier. Few who saw him or knew him could have anticipated his future military success and renown. But the mettle of the man had been already fused. John Mosby spent a lifetime leaning into the winds. The gale of civil war found him prepared.¹

John Singleton Mosby was born at Edgemont, the farm of his maternal grandfather, James McLaurine, in Powhatan County, Virginia, on December 6, 1833. His parents were Alfred D. and Virginia McLaurine Mosby. When John was five or six years old, the family moved to a farm outside of Charlottesville. There Alfred Mosby prospered. He owned slaves and saw to the education of his two sons and seven daughters, one of whom died in infancy.²

John’s education began in a country schoolhouse in Nelson County before the family moved from Edgemont. Following the resettlement in Albemarle County, he continued his studies at a small schoolhouse near the family farm. At age ten, John transferred to a school in Charlottesville. An avid learner, he rode a horse or walked the four miles, rarely missing a day’s schooling. Unlike boys of his age, he disliked the athletic activities of recess; “I always had a literary taste.”³

On October 3, 1850, John enrolled as a student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. During his first year he excelled in Latin, Greek and English while scoring poorly in mathematics. Chronic illnesses, however, plagued him throughout the term. In addition, in the spring of 1851 Mosby broke a gunstock over the head of Constable George Slaughter during a melee in the town and was fined ten dollars.⁴

Mosby, a thoughtful young man with a penetrating mind, continued to show excellence in the languages and literature during his second and third years at the university. Mathematics still baffled him, but he added chemistry and moral philosophy to his course work. More frequently, during 1852-1853, he gravitated into the social life offered by the community. It was in this latter milieu that Mosby revealed those traits which made him the future leader of men at war.⁵

Sometime during 1852 or early 1853 Mosby apparently met George Turpin, the son of a Charlottesville tavernkeeper, and burly town bully. In March 1853, Turpin disparaged Mosby in some remarks to mutual acquaintances. When the college student learned of Turpin’s words, he sent the townsman a note, asking him to explain the matter. Such a message from a frail-looking nineteen-year-old enraged Turpin, who went to Mosby’s boardinghouse to seek a confrontation. As Turpin ascended the stairway to an upper floor, Mosby stood at the top, leveled a pistol and squeezed the trigger. Turpin collapsed in the hallway, the bullet having entered his mouth, lodging in the neck.⁶

Charlottesville authorities arrested Mosby and confined him in the local jail. While few townsfolk liked Turpin, the assailant had nearly killed an unarmed man. Mosby was arraigned before Judge Richard H. Field on May 16, charged with “malicious shooting” and “unlawful shooting.”⁷

The trial lasted five days, with one day off for the Sabbath. William J. Robertson, an able lawyer, prosecuted for the state. Two local attorneys represented the defendant; Turpin’s personality and record abetted the defense’s case. He had earlier nearly killed one man with a rock and sliced another with a pocket knife. He also publicly threatened Mosby before the incident. The key area of dispute in the testimony centered upon which of the two men advanced first against the other. If Turpin moved toward Mosby, the latter’s action could be construed as self-defense.⁸

The jury began deliberations on Tuesday, May 24. Late that afternoon the members returned to the courtroom, informing Judge Field that they had failed to reach a decision. He returned them to the jury room for a reconsideration. Finally, the next day the jury found Mosby not guilty of “malicious shooting,” but guilty of “unlawful shooting.” The panel sentenced him to one year in the local jail and the payment of a 500-dollar fine. On the thirtieth Judge Field formally sentenced the youth.⁹

Mosby served nearly seven months of his one-year sentence. From the time of his conviction, family and friends used political influence to obtain a pardon. Governor Joseph Johnson, after reviewing the evidence, pardoned him on December 21, 1853, fifteen days after his twentieth birthday. Mosby walked out of the Charlottesville jail two days later. The state legislature also rescinded the fine. The incident, including the trial and conviction, so affected Mosby that he never wrote about it in his later memoirs.¹⁰

During his incarceration, Mosby began the study of law, having borrowed a copy of Blackstone’s Commentaries from his prosecutor, William Robertson. Upon his release, he continued the training in Robertson’s law offices. He was admitted to the bar several months later and opened his practice in Howardsville in Albemarle County. There he met Pauline Clarke, daughter of Beverly J. Clarke, a former United States congressman and diplomat from Franklin, Kentucky. The couple was married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 30, 1857.¹¹

The newlyweds relocated to Bristol, Virginia, during the next year. Mosby was the first lawyer to open a practice in the community. He did well as an attorney, and Pauline gave birth to a daughter, May Virginia, and a son, Beverly. As the nation began its dissolution into civil war, Mosby opposed the secession of the Lower South states following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860. He reluctantly joined a militia company, the Washington Mounted Rifles, during the winter of 1861. When Virginia seceded in April, after the firing upon Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, the Washington Mounted Rifles marched eastward to join the burgeoning Confederate forces in the Old Dominion.¹²

The cavalry unit was organized as Company D, 1st Virginia Cavalry, with William E. “Grumble” Jones as captain. Jones, who had formed the company, was a cantankerous, eccentric former West Pointer and regular army officer. Colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry was James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart. Under Stuart, the regiment saw its initial combat in the conflict’s first major engagement at the Battle of Bull Run or Manassas on July 21, 1861.¹³

Mosby, a private, subsequently wrote in his memoirs of his first battle. He recalled the foreboding he felt the night before, but he added that “nothing afterwards occurred in my military career that gives me more satisfaction to remember.” Captain Jones previously had selected Mosby and five others to receive six Colt pistols given to the company. When Stuart ordered Jones to conduct a reconnaissance across Bull Run Creek on the morning of the twenty-first, the captain assigned the task to the six men. The group splashed across the creek, entered a woodlot but found no Yankees. While the battle raged during the remainder of the day, Mosby’s squadron remained as bystanders. The next day he wrote to Pauline: “I was in the fight.”¹⁴

While Jones saw promise in Mosby, others who knew him at this time thought otherwise. “There was nothing about him then to indicate what he was to be,” argued William Blackford, a member of the regiment and a future aide of Stuart. “He was rather a slouchy rider, and did not seem to take any interest in military duties. He had been but seldom at our drills before starting, and we all thought he was rather an indifferent soldier.”¹⁵

Mosby cared little for the routine of military life and the boredom. “I preferred being on the outposts,” he admitted. From the summer of 1861 until the spring of 1862 he served constantly along the picket line. Scouting and vedette duty suited his restless nature.¹⁶

But “Grumble” Jones, who succeeded Stuart as colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry, had increasing regard for the lawyer’s talents. When in January 1862 Mosby applied for a six-day furlough, Jones approved it, endorsing the request by noting that the private had been “in the most active dangerous duty rendering brilliant service.” On February 14, the colonel installed Mosby as the regiment’s adjutant. He was appointed to the rank of first lieutenant on April 2.¹⁷

“The duties are very light,” Mosby informed Pauline of the adjutant’s post. Nevertheless, he disliked the paperwork and the regulations required of the position. “I remember the few weeks I served as an adjutant,” he wrote in his memoirs, “with less satisfaction than any other portion of my life as a soldier.” When Fitzhugh Lee, an officer Mosby detested personally, replaced Jones as colonel of the 1st Virginia, Mosby resigned as adjutant and also resigned his commission as lieutenant on April 23.¹⁸

While Mosby had served as regimental adjutant, he had conducted some scouting operations for Jeb Stuart, now cavalry commander of the Confederate Army of the Potomac. When Mosby resigned, Stuart attached the Virginian to his staff. Although the new aide had no commission, Stuart referred to him as a lieutenant. The appointment began the most important association of Mosby’s military career. Stuart “made me all that I was in the war, but for his friendship I would never have been heard of,” Mosby stated in a postwar letter. The flamboyant cavalry commander, Mosby added in another letter, was “the best friend I ever had.”¹⁹

Jeb Stuart was twenty-nine years old—ten months older than Mosby—in the spring of 1862. A brigadier general because of his performance at First Bull Run, he had already demonstrated those qualities which would make him one of the finest cavalry commanders of the war. An able organizer, a superb intelligence and reconnaissance officer, Stuart came to have no rival as a horse officer in Virginia. He possessed ambition, courage, daring and a relish for the pageantry of warfare. Although deeply religious, he enjoyed life, and his headquarters was noted for its liveliness and camaraderie. What Stuart saw in Mosby were the shared traits of intelligence, boldness and resourcefulness.

The first significant service Mosby rendered for Stuart came in June 1862. Major General George B. McClellan’s Union Army of the Potomac had advanced to within six miles of Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. Opposing McClellan’s bluecoated forces was the Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee. The Confederate commander ordered Stuart to gather solid information on McClellan’s dispositions. Stuart, in turn, directed Mosby to conduct a scout within Union lines.

Mosby, with four men, entered Federal lines on what he told Pauline was “the grandest scout of the War.” He discovered that McClellan’s right flank north of the Chickahominy River was unprotected and reported to Stuart that the cavalry could ride around the entire Union army. Stuart listened and directed Mosby to prepare a written statement and sign it. Stuart then carried the document to army headquarters, where he and Lee discussed the merits before Lee granted approval. Two days later, on June 12, Stuart departed with approximately 1,200 troopers and rode around McClellan’s army in a four-day raid which insured the dashing cavalryman’s reputation. Mosby rode in the forefront throughout the raid, prowling along roads, scouting for Federal units.²⁰

A month later, after McClellan’s army had been driven eastward down the Virginia Peninsula, Stuart sent Mosby, with a note of introduction, to Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, stationed at Gordonsville. Mosby, Stuart informed Jackson in the message, “is bold, daring, intelligent and discreet. The information he may obtain and transmit to you may be relied upon, and I have no doubt that he will soon give additional proofs of his value.”²¹

Mosby traveled by horseback to Beaver Dam Station, where he planned to finish the trip by railroad. As he waited on the platform for the cars on July 20, a Yankee cavalry patrol swept into the station, capturing him and several other Confederates. He was sent to Washington and placed in the Old Capitol Prison. His captors had found Stuart’s note, the contents of which revealed clearly the value of the prisoner to the Confederate general. Federal authorities, however, exchanged Mosby within ten days for Lieutenant C. A. Bayard of the 5th Wisconsin. It was a decision the officials would regret.²²

Upon his release, Mosby returned to duty with Stuart. He participated in the summer and autumn campaigns of Second Bull Run or Manassas in August, Antietam in September, Stuart’s raid into Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in October and Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December. Mosby frequently scouted alone or with a few comrades. When George McClellan relinquished command of the Army of the Potomac to Major General Ambrose Burnside and bid farewell to fellow officers at Rectortown, Virginia, in November, the Confederate scout witnessed the scene from behind nearby bushes. At year’s end, Stuart raided behind Burnside’s army in the region between Fredericksburg and Washington.²³

Soon after this last raid, the Southern horsemen retreated into Loudoun County for a few days’ rest. Stuart and his staff found lodging on December 30 at “Oakham Farm,” homestead of the Hamilton Rogers family, west of Aldie on the Little River Turnpike. The next morning Mosby met with Stuart in the general’s bedroom. For some time Mosby had been mulling the idea of conducting guerrilla forays in Loudoun County during the winter months. “I did not want to rust away my life in camp,” as he explained it later. Mosby requested a detail of men and permission to remain behind when the cavalry returned to winter quarters west of Fredericksburg.²⁴

Stuart consented to the request. The general, according to another staff officer, had come “to repose unlimited confidence” in the lieutenant’s resourcefulness and “relied implicitly upon him.” Stuart must have regretted losing Mosby’s services, if only temporarily, but Mosby expected to rejoin the cavalry when spring campaigning began. “At the tim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: The Man and the Mission
• Chapter 2: A Wily Foe
• Chapter 3: From Miskel’s to Grapewood
• Chapter 4: Mosby’s Rangers
• Chapter 5: Wagon Hunting
• Chapter 6: Autumn 1863
• Chapter 7: Life in Mosby’s Confederacy
• Chapter 8: Blood on the Snow
• Chapter 9: The Cost of War
• Chapter 10: Springtime of Change
• Chapter 11: Into the Valley
• Chapter 12: Bloody September
• Chapter 13: War on Railroads
• Chapter 14: Reprisal
• Chapter 15: Days of Flames, Days of Darkness
• Chapter 16: Toward Salem
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright