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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from "True: The Man's Magazine," December
1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Rebel Raider
by H. Beam Piper
* * * * *
It was almost midnight, on January 2, 1863, and the impromptu party at
the Ratcliffe home was breaking up. The guest of honor, General J. E.
B. Stuart, felt that he was overstaying his welcome--not at the
Ratcliffe home, where everybody was soundly Confederate, but in
Fairfax County, then occupied by the Union Army.
About a week before, he had come raiding up from Culpepper with a
strong force of cavalry, to spend a merry Christmas in northern
Virginia and give the enemy a busy if somewhat less than happy New
Year's. He had shot up outposts, run off horses from remount stations,
plundered supply depots, burned stores of forage; now, before
returning to the main Confederate Army, he had paused to visit his
friend Laura Ratcliffe. And, of course, there had been a party. There
was always a party when Jeb Stuart was in any one place long enough to
organize one.
They were all crowding into the hallway--the officers of Stuart's
staff, receiving their hats and cloaks from the servants and buckling
on their weapons; the young ladies, their gay dresses showing only the
first traces of wartime shabbiness; the matrons who chaperoned them;
Stuart himself, the center of attention, with his hostess on his arm.
"It's a shame you can't stay longer, General," Laura Ratcliffe was
saying. "It's hard on us, living in conquered territory, under enemy
rule."
"Well, I won't desert you entirely, Miss Ratcliffe," Stuart told her.
"I'm returning to Culpepper in the morning, as you know, but I mean to
leave Captain Mosby behind with a few men, to look after the loyal
Confederate people here until we can return in force and in victory."
Hearing his name, one of the men in gray turned, his hands raised to
hook the fastening at the throat of his cloak. Just four days short of
his thirtieth birthday, he looked even more youthful; he was
considerably below average height, and so slender as to give the
impression of frailness. His hair and the beard he was wearing at the
time were very light brown. He wore an officer's uniform without
insignia of rank, and instead of a saber he carried a pair of
1860-model Colt .44's on his belt, with the butts to the front so that
either revolver could be drawn with either hand, backhand or
crossbody.
There was more than a touch of the dandy about him. The cloak he was
fastening was lined with scarlet silk and the gray cock-brimmed hat
the slave was holding for him was plumed with a squirrel tail. At
first glance he seemed no more than one of the many young gentlemen of
the planter class serving in the Confederate cavalry. But then one
looked into his eyes and got the illusion of being covered by a pair
of blued pistol muzzles. He had an aura of combined ruthlessness, self
confidence, good humor and impudent audacity.
For an instant he stood looking inquiringly at the general. Then he
realized what Stuart had said, and the blue eyes sparkled. This was
the thing he had almost given up hoping for--an independent command
and a chance to operate in the enemy's rear.
* * * * *
In 1855, John Singleton Mosby, newly graduated from the University of
Virginia, had opened a law office at Bristol, Washington County,
Virginia, and a year later he had married.
The son of a well-to-do farmer and slave-owner, his boyhood had been
devoted to outdoor sports, especially hunting, and he was accounted an
expert horseman and a dead shot, even in a society in which skill with
guns and horses was taken for granted. Otherwise, the outbreak of the
war had found him without military qualifications and completely
uninterested in military matters. Moreover, he had been a rabid
anti-secessionist.
It must be remembered, however, that, like most Southerners, he
regarded secession as an entirely local issue, to be settled by the
people of each state for themselves. He took no exception to the
position that a state had the constitutional right to sever its
connection with the Union if its people so desired. His objection to
secession was based upon what he considered to be political logic. He
realized that, once begun, secession was a process which could only
end in reducing America to a cluster of impotent petty sovereignties,
torn by hostilities, incapable of any concerted action, a fair prey to
any outside aggressor.
However, he was also a believer in the paramount sovereignty of the
states. He was first of all a Virginian. So, when Virginia voted in
favor of secession, Mosby, while he deplored the choice, felt that he
had no alternative but to accept it. He promptly enlisted in a locally
organized cavalry company, the Washington Mounted Rifles, under a
former U. S. officer and West Point graduate, William E. Jones.
His letters to his wife told of his early military experiences--his
pleasure at receiving one of the fine new Sharps carbines which
Captain Jones had wangled for his company, and, later, a Colt .44
revolver: his first taste of fire in the Shenandoah Valley, where the
company, now incorporated into Colonel Stuart's First Virginia
Cavalry, were covering Johnston's march to re-enforce Beauregard: his
rather passive participation in the big battle at Manassas. He was
keenly disappointed at being held in reserve throughout the fighting.
Long afterward, it was to be his expressed opinion that the
Confederacy had lost the war by failing to follow the initial victory
and exploit the rout of McDowell's army.
The remainder of 1861 saw him doing picket duty in Fairfax County.
When Stuart was promoted to brigadier general, and Captain Jones took
his place as colonel of the First Virginia, Mosby became the latter's
adjutant. There should have been a commission along with this post,
but this seems to have been snarled in red tape at Richmond and never
came through. It was about this time that Mosby first came to Stuart's
personal attention. Mosby spent a night at headquarters after
escorting a couple of young ladies who had been living outside the
Confederate lines and were anxious to reach relatives living farther
south.
Stuart had been quite favorably impressed with Mosby, and when, some
time later, the latter lost his place as adjutant of the First by
reason of Jones' promotion to brigadier general and Fitzhugh Lee's
taking over the regiment, Mosby became one of Stuart's headquarters
scouts.
Scouting for Jeb Stuart was not the easiest work in the world, nor the
safest, but Mosby appears to have enjoyed it, and certainly made good
at it. It was he who scouted the route for Stuart's celebrated "Ride
Around MacClellan" in June, 1862, an exploit which brought his name to
the favorable attention of General Lee. By this time, still without
commission, he was accepted at Stuart's headquarters as a sort of
courtesy officer, and generally addressed as "Captain" Mosby. Stuart
made several efforts to get him commissioned, but War Department red
tape seems to have blocked all of them. By this time, too, Mosby had
become convinced of the utter worthlessness of the saber as a
cavalryman's weapon, and for his own armament adopted a pair of Colts.
The revolver of the Civil War was, of course, a percussion-cap weapon.
Even with the powder and bullet contained in a combustible paper
cartridge, loading such an arm was a slow process: each bullet had to
be forced in the front of the chamber on top of its propellant charge
by means of a hinged rammer under the barrel, and a tiny copper cap
had to be placed on each nipple. It was nothing to attempt on a
prancing horse. The Union cavalryman was armed with a single-shot
carbine--the seven-shot Spencer repeater was not to make its
battlefield appearance until late in 1863--and one revolver, giving
him a total of seven shots without reloading. With a pair of
six-shooters, Mosby had a five-shot advantage over any opponent he was
likely to encounter. As he saw it, tactical strength lay in the number
of shots which could be delivered without reloading, rather than in
the number of men firing them. Once he reached a position of
independent command, he was to adhere consistently to this principle.
On July 14, 1862, General John Pope, who had taken over a newly
created Union Army made up of the commands of McDowell, Banks and
Fremont, issued a bombastic and tactless order to his new command,
making invidious comparisons between the armies in the west and those
in the east. He said, "I hear constantly of 'taking strong positions
and holding them,' of 'lines of retreat,' and of 'bases of supplies.'
Let us discard all such ideas. Let us study the probable lines of
retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of
themselves."
That intrigued Mosby. If General Pope wasn't going to take care of his
own rear, somebody ought to do it for him, and who better than John
Mosby? He went promptly to Stuart, pointing out Pope's disinterest in
his own lines of supply and communication, and asked that he be given
about twenty men and detailed to get into Pope's rear and see what
sort of disturbance he could create.
Stuart doubted the propriety of sending men into what was then
Stonewall Jackson's territory, but he gave Mosby a letter to Jackson,
recommending the bearer highly and outlining what he proposed doing,
with the request that he be given some men to try it. With this
letter, Mosby set out for Jackson's headquarters.
He never reached his destination. On the way, he was taken prisoner by
a raiding force of New York cavalry, and arrived, instead, at Old
Capitol jail in Washington. Stuart requested his exchange at once, and
Mosby spent only about ten days in Old Capitol, and then was sent down
the Potomac on an exchange boat, along with a number of other
prisoners of war, for Hampton Roads.
The boat-load of prisoners, about to be exchanged and returned to
their own army, were allowed to pass through a busy port of military
embarkation and debarkation, with every opportunity to observe
everything that was going on, and, to make a bad matter worse, the
steamboat captain was himself a Confederate sympathizer. So when
Mosby, from the exchange boat, observed a number of transports lying
at anchor, he had no trouble at all in learning that they carried
Burnside's men, newly brought north from the Carolinas. With the help
of the steamboat captain, Mosby was able to learn that the transports
were bound for Acquia Creek, on the Potomac; that meant that the
re-enforcements were for Pope.
* * * * *
As soon as he was exchanged, Mosby made all haste for Lee's
headquarters to report what he had discovered. Lee, remembering Mosby
as the man who had scouted ahead of Stuart's Ride Around MacClellan,
knew that he had a hot bit of information from a credible source. A
dispatch rider was started off at once for Jackson, and Jackson struck
Pope at Cedar Mountain before he could be re-enforced. Mosby returned
to Stuart's headquarters, losing no time in promoting a pair of .44's
to replace the ones lost when captured, and found his stock with
Stuart at an all-time high as a result of his recent feat of espionage
while in the hands of the enemy.
So he was with Stuart when Stuart stopped at Laura Ratcliffe's home,
and was on hand when Stuart wanted to make one of his characteristic
gestures of gallantry. And so he finally got his independent
command--all of six men--and orders to operate in the enemy's rear.
Whatever Stuart might have had in mind in leaving him behind "to look
after the loyal Confederate people," John Mosby had no intention of
posting himself in Laura Ratcliffe's front yard as a guard of honor.
He had a theory of guerrilla warfare which he wanted to test. In part,
it derived from his experiences in the Shenandoah Valley and in
Fairfax County, but in larger part, it was based upon his own
understanding of the fundamental nature of war.
The majority of guerrilla leaders have always been severely tactical
in their thinking. That is to say, they have been concerned almost
exclusively with immediate results. A troop column is ambushed, a
picket post attacked, or a supply dump destroyed for the sake of the
immediate loss of personnel or materiel so inflicted upon the enemy.
Mosby, however, had a well-conceived strategic theory. He knew, in
view of the magnitude of the war, that the tactical effects of his
operations would simply be lost in the over-all picture. But, if he
could create enough uproar in the Union rear, he believed that he
could force the withdrawal from the front of a regiment or even a
brigade to guard against his attacks and, in some future battle, the
absence of that regiment or brigade might tip the scale of battle or,
at least, make some future Confederate victory more complete or some
defeat less crushing.
As soon as Stuart's column started southward, Mosby took his six men
across Bull Run Mountain to Middleburg, where he ordered them to
scatter out, billet themselves at outlying farms, and meet him at the
Middleburg hotel on the night of January 10. Meanwhile he returned
alone to Fairfax County, spending the next week making contacts with
the people and gathering information.
On the night of Saturday, January 10, he took his men through the gap
at Aldie and into Fairfax County. His first stop was at a farmhouse
near Herndon Station, where he had friends, and there he met a
woodsman, trapper and market hunter named John Underwood, who, with
his two brothers, had been carrying on a private resistance movement
against the Union occupation ever since the Confederate Army had moved
out of the region. Overjoyed at the presence of regular Confederate
troops, even as few as a half-dozen, Underwood offered to guide Mosby
to a nearby Union picket post.
Capturing this post was no particularly spectacular feat of arms.
Mosby's party dismounted about 200 yards away from it and crept up on
it, to find seven members of the Fifth New York squatting around a
fire, smoking, drinking coffee and trying to keep warm. Their first
intimation of the presence of any enemy nearer than the Rappahannock
River came when Mosby and his men sprang to their feet, leveled
revolvers and demanded their surrender. One cavalryman made a grab for
his carbine and Mosby shot him; the others put up their hands. The
wounded man was given first aid, wrapped in a blanket and placed
beside the fire to wait until the post would be relieved. The others
were mounted on their own horses and taken to Middleburg, where they
were paroled i.e., released after they gave their word not to take up
arms again against the Confederacy. This not entirely satisfactory
handling of prisoners was the only means left open to Mosby with his
small force, behind enemy lines.
The next night, Mosby stayed out of Fairfax County to allow the
excitement to die down a little, but the night after, he and his men,
accompanied by Underwood, raided a post where the Little River
Turnpike crossed Cub Run. Then, after picking up a two-man road patrol
en route, they raided another post near Fryingpan Church. This time
they brought back fourteen prisoners and horses.
In all, he and his sextet had captured nineteen prisoners and twenty
horses. But Mosby still wasn't satisfied. What he wanted was a few
more men and orders to operate behind the Union army on a permanent
basis. So, after paroling the catch of the night before, he told John
Underwood to get busy gathering information and establishing contacts,
and he took his six men back to Culpepper, reporting his activities to
Stuart and claiming that under his existing orders he had not felt
justified in staying away from the army longer. At the same time, he
asked for a larger detail and orders to continue operating in northern
Virginia.
In doing so, he knew he was taking a chance that Stuart would keep him
at Culpepper, but as both armies had gone into winter quarters after
Fredericksburg with only a minimum of outpost activity, he reasoned
that Stuart would be willing to send him back. As it happened, Stuart
was so delighted with the success of Mosby's brief activity that he
gave him fifteen men, all from the First Virginia Cavalry, and orders
to operate until recalled. On January 18, Mosby was back at
Middleburg, ready to go to work in earnest.
As before, he scattered his men over the countryside, quartering them
on the people. This time, before scattering them, he told them to meet
him at Zion Church, just beyond the gap at Aldie, on the night of the
28th. During the intervening ten days, he was not only busy gathering
information but also in an intensive recruiting campaign among the
people of upper Fauquier and lower Loudoun Counties.
* * * * *
In this last, his best selling-point was a recent act of the
Confederate States Congress called the Scott Partisan Ranger Law. This
piece of legislation was, in effect, an extension of the principles of
prize law and privateering to land warfare. It authorized the
formation of independent cavalry companies, to be considered part of
the armed forces of the Confederacy, their members to serve without
pay and mount themselves, in return for which they were to be entitled
to keep any spoil of war captured from the enemy. The terms "enemy"
and "spoil of war" were defined so liberally as to cover almost
anything not the property of the government or citizens of the
Confederacy. There were provisions, also, entitling partisan companies
to draw on the Confederate government for arms and ammunition and
permitting them to turn in and receive payment for any spoil which
they did not wish to keep for themselves.
The law had met with considerable opposition from the Confederate
military authorities, who claimed that it would attract men and horses
away from the regular service and into ineffective freebooting. There
is no doubt that a number of independent companies organized under the
Scott Law accomplished nothing of military value. Some degenerated
into mere bandit gangs, full of deserters from both sides, and
terrible only to the unfortunate Confederate citizens living within
their range of operations. On the other hand, as Mosby was to
demonstrate, a properly employed partisan company could be of
considerable use.
It was the provision about booty, however, which appealed to Mosby. As
he intended operating in the Union rear, where the richest plunder
could be found, he hoped that the prospect would attract numerous
recruits. The countryside contained many men capable of bearing arms
who had remained at home to look after their farms but who would be
more than willing to ride with him now and then in hope of securing a
new horse for farm work, or some needed harness, or food and blankets
for their families. The regular Mosby Men called them the
"Conglomerates," and Mosby himself once said that they resembled the
Democrat party, being "held together only by the cohesive power of
public plunder."
Mosby's first operation with his new force was in the pattern of the
other two--the stealthy dismounted approach and sudden surprise of an
isolated picket post. He brought back eleven prisoners and twelve
horses and sets of small arms, and, as on the night of the 10th, left
one wounded enemy behind. As on the previous occasions, the prisoners
were taken as far as Middleburg before being released on parole.
For this reason, Mosby was sure that Colonel Sir Percy Wyndham,
commander of the brigade which included the Fifth New York, Eighteenth
Pennsylvania and the First Vermont, would assume that this village was
the raiders' headquarters. Colonel Wyndham, a European-trained
soldier, would scarcely conceive of any military force, however small,
without a regular headquarters and a fixed camp. Therefore, Wyndham
would come looking for him at Middleburg. So, with a companion named
Fountain Beattie, Mosby put up for what remained of the night at the
home of a Mr. Lorman Chancellor, on the road from Aldie a few miles
east of Middleburg. The rest of the company were ordered to stay
outside Middleburg.
Mosby's estimate of his opponent was uncannily accurate. The next
morning, about daybreak, he and Beattie were wakened by one of the
Chancellor servants and warned that a large body of Union cavalry was
approaching up the road from Aldie. Peering through the window
shutters, they watched about 200 men of the Fifth New York ride by,
with Colonel Wyndham himself in the lead. As soon as they were out of
sight up the road, Mosby and Beattie, who had hastily dressed, dashed
downstairs for their horses.
"I'm going to keep an eye on these people," Mosby told Beattie.
"Gather up as many men as you can, and meet me in about half an hour
on the hill above Middleburg. But hurry! I'd rather have five men now
than a hundred by noon."
When Beattie with six men rejoined Mosby, he found the latter sitting
on a stump, munching an apple and watching the enemy through his field
glasses. Wyndham, who had been searching Middleburg for "Mosby's
headquarters," was just forming his men for a push on to Upperville,
where he had been assured by the canny Middleburgers that Mosby had
his camp.
Mosby and his men cantered down the hillside to the road as Wyndham's
force moved out of the village and then broke into a mad gallop to
overtake them.
* * * * *
It was always hard to be sure whether jackets were dirty gray or faded
blue. As the Union soldier had a not unfounded belief that the
Virginia woods were swarming with bushwhackers (Confederate
guerillas), the haste of a few men left behind to rejoin the column
was quite understandable. The rearguard pulled up and waited for them.
Then, at about twenty yards' range, one of the New Yorkers, a
sergeant, realized what was happening and shouted a warning:
"They're Rebs!"
Instantly one of Mosby's men, Ned Hurst, shot him dead. Other
revolvers, ready drawn, banged, and several Union cavalrymen were
wounded. Mosby and his followers hastily snatched the bridles of three
others, disarmed them and turned, galloping away with them.
By this time, the main column, which had not halted with the
rearguard, was four or five hundred yards away. There was a brief
uproar, a shouting of contradictory orders, and then the whole column
turned and came back at a gallop. Mosby, four of his men, and the
three prisoners, got away, but Beattie and two others were captured
when their horses fell on a sheet of ice treacherously hidden under
the snow. There was no possibility of rescuing them. After the capture
of Beattie and his companions, the pursuit stopped. Halting at a
distance, Mosby saw Wyndham form his force into a compact body and
move off toward Aldie at a brisk trot. He sent off the prisoners under
guard of two of his men and followed Wyndham's retreat almost to Aldie
without opportunity to inflict any more damage.
During his stop at Middleburg, Wyndham had heaped coals on a growing
opposition to Mosby, fostered by pro-Unionists in the neighborhood.
Wyndham informed the townspeople that he would burn the town and
imprison the citizens if Mosby continued the attacks on his outposts.
A group of citizens, taking the threat to heart, petitioned Stuart to
recall Mosby, but the general sent a stinging rebuke, telling the
Middleburgers that Mosby and his men were risking their lives which
were worth considerably more than a few houses and barns.
Mosby was also worried about the antipathy to the Scott Law and the
partisan ranger system which was growing among some of the general
officers of the Confederacy. To counteract such opposition, he needed
to achieve some spectacular feat of arms which would capture the
popular imagination, make a public hero of himself, and place him
above criticism.
* * * * *
And all the while, his force was growing. The booty from his raids
excited the cupidity of the more venturesome farmers, and they were
exchanging the hoe for the revolver and joining him. A number of the
convalescents and furloughed soldiers were arranging transfers to his
command. Others, with no permanent military attachment, were drifting
to Middleburg, Upperville, or Rectortown, inquiring where they might
find Mosby, and making their way to join him.
There was a young Irishman, Dick Moran. There was a Fauquier County
blacksmith, Billy Hibbs, who reported armed with a huge broadsword
which had been the last product of his forge. There were Walter
Frankland, Joe Nelson, Frank Williams and George Whitescarver, among
the first to join on a permanent basis. And, one day, there was the
strangest recruit of all.
A meeting was held on the 25th of February at the Blackwell farm, near
Upperville, and Mosby and most of his men were in the kitchen of the
farmhouse, going over a map of the section they intended raiding, when
a couple of men who had been on guard outside entered, pushing a Union
cavalry sergeant ahead of them.
"This Yankee says he wants to see you, Captain," one of the men
announced. "He came on foot; says his horse broke a leg and had to be
shot."
"Well, I'm Mosby," the guerrilla leader said. "What do you want?"
The man in blue came to attention and saluted.
"I've come here to join your company, sir," he said calmly.
There was an excited outburst from the men in the kitchen, but Mosby
took the announcement in stride.
"And what's your name and unit, sergeant?"
"James F. Ames: late Fifth New York Cavalry, sir."
After further conversation, Mosby decided that the big Yankee was
sincere in his avowed decision to join the forces of the Confederacy.
He had some doubts about his alleged motives: the man was animated
with a most vindictive hatred of the Union government, all his former
officers and most of his former comrades. No one ever learned what
injury, real or fancied, had driven Sergeant Ames to desertion and
treason, but in a few minutes Mosby was sure that the man was through
with the Union Army.
Everybody else was equally sure that he was a spy, probably sent over
by Wyndham to assassinate Mosby. Eventually Mosby proposed a test of
Ames' sincerity. The deserter should guide the company to a Union
picket post, and should accompany the raiders unarmed: Mosby would
ride behind him, ready to shoot him at the first sign of treachery.
The others agreed to judge the new recruit by his conduct on the raid.
A fairly strong post, at a schoolhouse at Thompson's Corners, was
selected as the objective, and they set out, sixteen men beside Ames
and Mosby, through a storm of rain and sleet. Stopping at a nearby
farm, Mosby learned that the post had been heavily re-enforced since
he had last raided it. There were now about a hundred men at the
schoolhouse.
Pleased at this evidence that his campaign to force the enemy to
increase his guard was bearing fruit, Mosby decided to abandon his
customary tactics of dismounting at a distance and approaching on
foot. On a night like this, the enemy would not be expecting him, so
the raiders advanced boldly along the road, Mosby telling Ames to make
whatever answer he thought would be believed in case they were
challenged. However, a couple of trigger-happy vedettes let off their
carbines at them, yelled, "The Rebs are coming!" and galloped for the
schoolhouse.
There was nothing to do but gallop after them, and Mosby and his band
came pelting in on the heels of the vedettes. Hitherto, his raids had
been more or less bloodless, but this time he had a fight on his
hands, and if the men in the schoolhouse had stayed inside and
defended themselves with carbine fire, they would have driven off the
attack. Instead, however, they rushed outside, each man trying to
mount his horse. A lieutenant and seven men were killed, about twice
that number wounded, and five prisoners were taken. The rest,
believing themselves attacked by about twice their own strength,
scattered into the woods and got away.
Ames, who had ridden unarmed, flung himself upon a Union cavalryman at
the first collision and disarmed him, then threw himself into the
fight with the captured saber. His conduct during the brief battle at
the schoolhouse was such as to remove from everybody's mind the
suspicion that his conversion to the Confederate cause was anything
but genuine. Thereafter, he was accepted as a Mosby man.
He was accepted by Mosby himself as a veritable godsend, since he was
acquainted with the location of every Union force in Fairfax County,
and knew of a corridor by which it would be possible to penetrate
Wyndham's entire system of cavalry posts as far as Fairfax Courthouse
itself. Here, then, was the making of the spectacular coup which Mosby
needed to answer his critics and enemies, both at Middleburg and at
army headquarters. He decided to attempt nothing less than a raid upon
Fairfax Courthouse, with the capture of Wyndham as its purpose.
This last would entail something of a sacrifice, for he had come to
esteem Sir Percy highly as an opponent whose mind was an open book and
whose every move could be predicted in advance. With Wyndham
eliminated, he would have to go to the trouble of learning the mental
processes of his successor.
However, Wyndham would be the ideal captive to grace a Mosby triumph,
and a successful raid on Fairfax Courthouse, garrisoned as it was by
between five and ten thousand Union troops, would not only secure
Mosby's position in his own army but would start just the sort of a
panic which would result in demands that the Union rear be re-enforced
at the expense of the front.
So, on Sunday, March 8, Mosby led thirty-nine men through the gap at
Aldie, the largest force that had followed him to date. It was the
sort of a foul night that he liked for raiding, with a drizzling rain
falling upon melting snow. It was pitch dark before they found the
road between Centreville and Fairfax, along which a telegraph line had
been strung to connect the main cavalry camp with General Stoughton's
headquarters. Mosby sent one of his men, Harry Hatcher, up a pole to
cut the wire. They cut another telegraph line at Fairfax Station and
left the road, moving through the woods toward Fairfax Courthouse. At
this time, only Mosby and Yank Ames knew the purpose of the
expedition.
It was therefore with surprise and some consternation that the others
realized where they were as they rode into the courthouse square and
halted. A buzz of excited whispers rose from the men.
"That's right," Mosby assured them calmly. "We're in Fairfax
Courthouse, right in the middle of ten thousand Yankees, but don't let
that worry you. All but about a dozen of them are asleep. Now, if you
all keep your heads and do what you're told, we'll be as safe as
though we were in Jeff Davis' front parlor."
He then began giving instructions, detailing parties to round up
horses and capture any soldiers they found awake and moving about. He
went, himself, with several men, to the home of a citizen named
Murray, where he had been told that Wyndham had quartered himself, but
here he received the disappointing news that the Englishman had gone
to Washington that afternoon.
A few minutes later, however, Joe Nelson came up with a prisoner, an
infantryman who had just been relieved from sentry duty at General
Stoughton's headquarters, who said that there had been a party there
earlier in the evening and that Stoughton and several other officers
were still there. Mosby, still disappointed at his failure to secure
Wyndham, decided to accept Stoughton in his place. Taking several men,
he went at once to the house where the prisoner said Stoughton had his
headquarters.
* * * * *
Arriving there, he hammered loudly on the door with a revolver butt.
An upstairs window opened, and a head, in a nightcap, was thrust out.
"What the devil's all the noise about?" its owner demanded. "Don't you
know this is General Stoughton's headquarters?"
"I'd hoped it was; I almost killed a horse getting here," Mosby
retorted. "Come down and open up; dispatches from Washington."
In a few moments, a light appeared inside on the first floor, and the
door opened. A man in a nightshirt, holding a candle, stood in the
doorway.
"I'm Lieutenant Prentiss, on General Stoughton's staff. The general's
asleep. If you'll give me the dispatches ..."
Mosby caught the man by the throat with his left hand and shoved a
Colt into his face with his right. Dan Thomas, beside him, lifted the
candle out of the other man's hand.
"And I'm Captain Mosby, General Stuart's staff. We've just taken
Fairfax Courthouse. Inside, now, and take me to the general at once."
The general was in bed, lying on his face in a tangle of bedclothes.
Mosby pulled the sheets off of him, lifted the tail of his nightshirt
and slapped him across the bare rump.
The effect was electric. Stoughton sat up in bed, gobbling in fury. In
the dim candlelight, he mistook the gray of Mosby's tunic for blue,
and began a string of bloodthirsty threats of court-martial and firing
squad, interspersed with oaths.
"Easy, now, General," the perpetrator of the outrage soothed. "You've
heard of John Mosby, haven't you?"
"Yes; have you captured him?" In the face of such tidings, Stoughton
would gladly forget the assault on his person.
Mosby shook his head, smiling seraphically. "No, General. He's
captured you. I'm Mosby."
"Oh my God!" Stoughton sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes,
overcome.
Knowing the precarious nature of his present advantage, Mosby then
undertook to deprive Stoughton of any hope of rescue or will to
resist.
"Stuart's cavalry is occupying Fairfax Courthouse," he invented, "and
Stonewall Jackson's at Chantilly with his whole force. We're all
moving to occupy Alexandria by morning. You'll have to hurry and
dress, General."
"Is Fitzhugh Lee here?" Stoughton asked. "He's a friend of mine; we
were classmates at West Point."
"Why, no; he's with Jackson at Chantilly. Do you want me to take you
to him? I can do so easily if you hurry."
It does not appear that Stoughton doubted as much as one syllable of
this remarkable set of prevarications. The Union Army had learned by
bitter experience that Stonewall Jackson was capable of materializing
almost anywhere. So he climbed out of bed, putting on his clothes.
* * * * *
On the way back to the courthouse square, Prentiss got away from them
in the darkness, but Mosby kept a tight hold on Stoughton's bridle. By
this time, the suspicion that all was not well in the county seat had
begun to filter about. Men were beginning to turn out under arms all
over town, and there was a confusion of challenges and replies and
some occasional firing as hastily wakened soldiers mistook one another
for the enemy. Mosby got his prisoners and horses together and started
out of town as quickly as he could.
The withdrawal was made over much the same route as the approach,
without serious incident. Thanks to the precaution of cutting the
telegraph wires, the camp at Centreville knew nothing of what had
happened at Fairfax Courthouse until long after the raiders were
safely away. They lost all but thirty of the prisoners--in the woods
outside Fairfax Courthouse, they escaped in droves--but they brought
Stoughton and the two captains out safely.
The results were everything Mosby had hoped. He became a Confederate
hero over night, and there was no longer any danger of his being
recalled. There were several half-hearted attempts to kick him
upstairs--an offer of a commission in the now defunct Virginia
Provisional Army, which he rejected scornfully, and a similar offer in
the regular Confederate States Army, which he politely declined
because it would deprive his men of their right to booty under the
Scott Law. Finally he was given a majority in the Confederate States
Army, with authorization to organize a partisan battalion under the
Scott Law. This he accepted, becoming Major Mosby of the Forty-Third
Virginia Partisan Ranger Battalion.
The effect upon the enemy was no less satisfactory. When full
particulars of the Fairfax raid reached Washington, Wyndham vanished
from the picture, being assigned to other duties where less depended
upon him. There was a whole epidemic of courts-martial and inquiries,
some of which were still smouldering when the war ended. And
Stoughton, the principal victim, found scant sympathy. President
Lincoln, when told that the rebels had raided Fairfax to the tune of
one general, two captains, thirty men and fifty-eight horses, remarked
that he could make all the generals he wanted, but that he was sorry
to lose the horses, as he couldn't make horses. As yet, there was no
visible re-enforcement of the cavalry in Fairfax County from the
front, but the line of picket posts was noticeably shortened.
About two weeks later, with forty men, Mosby raided a post at Herndon
Station, bringing off a major, a captain, two lieutenants and
twenty-one men, with a horse apiece. A week later, with fifty-odd men,
he cut up about three times his strength of Union cavalry at
Chantilly. Having surprised a small party, he had driven them into a
much larger force, and the hunted had turned to hunt the hunters.
Fighting a delaying action with a few men while the bulk of his force
fell back on an old roadblock of felled trees dating from the second
Manassas campaign, he held off the enemy until he was sure his
ambuscade was set, then, by feigning headlong flight, led them into a
trap and chased the survivors for five or six miles. Wyndham and
Stoughton had found Mosby an annoying nuisance; their successors were
finding him a serious menace.
This attitude was not confined to the local level, but extended all
the way to the top echelons. The word passed down, "Get Mosby!" and it
was understood that the officer responsible for his elimination would
find his military career made for him. One of the Union officers who
saw visions of rapid advancement over the wreckage of Mosby's Rangers
was a captain of the First Vermont, Josiah Flint by name. He was soon
to have a chance at it.
On March 31, Mosby's Rangers met at Middleburg and moved across the
mountain to Chantilly, expecting to take a strong outpost which had
been located there. On arriving, they found the campsite deserted. The
post had been pulled back closer to Fairfax after the fight of four
days before. Mosby decided to move up to the Potomac and attack a
Union force on the other side of Dranesville--Captain Josiah Flint's
Vermonters.
They passed the night at John Miskel's farm, near Chantilly. The
following morning, April 1, at about daybreak, Mosby was wakened by
one of his men who had been sleeping in the barn. This man, having
gone outside, had observed a small party of Union troops on the
Maryland side of the river who were making semaphore signals to
somebody on the Virginia side. Mosby ordered everybody to turn out as
quickly as possible and went out to watch the signalmen with his field
glasses. While he was watching, Dick Moran, a Mosby man who had
billeted with friends down the road, arrived at a breakneck gallop
from across the fields, shouting: "Mount your horses! The Yankees are
coming!"
It appeared that he had been wakened, shortly before, by the noise of
a column of cavalry on the road in front of the house where he had
been sleeping, and had seen a strong force of Union cavalry on the
march in the direction of Broad Run and the Miskel farm. Waiting until
they had passed, he had gotten his horse and circled at a gallop
through the woods, reaching the farm just ahead of them. It later
developed that a woman of the neighborhood, whose head had been turned
by the attentions of Union officers, had betrayed Mosby to Flint.
The Miskel farmhouse stood on the crest of a low hill, facing the
river. Behind it stood the big barn, with a large barnyard enclosed by
a high pole fence. As this was a horse farm, all the fences were eight
feet high and quite strongly built. A lane ran down the slope of the
hill between two such fences, and at the southern end of the slope
another fence separated the meadows from a belt of woods, beyond which
was the road from Dranesville, along which Flint's column was
advancing.
* * * * *
It was a nasty spot for Mosby. He had between fifty and sixty men,
newly roused from sleep, their horses unsaddled, and he was penned in
by strong fences which would have to be breached if he were to escape.
His only hope lay in a prompt counterattack. The men who had come out
of the house and barn were frantically saddling horses, without much
attention to whose saddle went on whose mount. Harry Hatcher, who had
gotten his horse saddled, gave it to Mosby and appropriated somebody
else's mount.
As Flint, at the head of his cavalry, emerged from the woods, Mosby
had about twenty of his men mounted and was ready to receive him. The
Union cavalry paused, somebody pulled out the gate bars at the foot of
the lane, and the whole force started up toward the farm. Having
opened the barnyard end of the lane, Mosby waited until Flint had come
about halfway, then gave him a blast of revolver fire and followed
this with a headlong charge down the lane. Flint was killed at the
first salvo, as were several of the men behind him. By the time
Mosby's charge rammed into the head of the Union attack, the narrow
lane was blocked with riderless horses, preventing each force from
coming to grips with the other. Here Mosby's insistence upon at least
two revolvers for each man paid off, as did the target practice upon
which he was always willing to expend precious ammunition. The Union
column, constricted by the fences on either side of the lane and
shaken by the death of their leader and by the savage attack of men
whom they had believed hopelessly trapped, turned and tried to
retreat, but when they reached the foot of the lane it was discovered
that some fool, probably meaning to deny Mosby an avenue of escape,
had replaced the gatebars. By this time, the rest of Mosby's force had
mounted their horses, breaches had been torn in the fence at either
side of the lane, and there were Confederates in both meadows, firing
into the trapped men. Until the gate at the lower end gave way under
the weight of horses crowded against it, there was a bloody slaughter.
Within a few minutes Flint and nine of his men were killed, some
fifteen more were given disabling wounds, eighty-two prisoners were
taken, and over a hundred horses and large quantities of arms and
ammunition were captured. The remains of Flint's force was chased as
far as Dranesville. Mosby was still getting the prisoners sorted out,
rounding up loose horses, gathering weapons and ammunition from
casualties, and giving the wounded first aid, when a Union lieutenant
rode up under a flag of truce, followed by several enlisted men and
two civilians of the Sanitary Commission, the Civil War equivalent of
the Red Cross, to pick up the wounded and bury the dead. This officer
offered to care for Mosby's wounded with his own, an offer which was
declined with thanks. Mosby said he would carry his casualties with
him, and the Union officer could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw
only three wounded men on horse litters and one dead man tied to his
saddle.
The sutlers at Dranesville had heard the firing and were about to move
away when Mosby's column appeared. Seeing the preponderance of blue
uniforms, they mistook the victors for prisoners and, anticipating a
lively and profitable business, unpacked their loads and set up their
counters. The business was lively, but anything but profitable. The
Mosby men looted them unmercifully, taking their money, their horses,
and everything else they had.
* * * * *
All through the spring of 1863, Mosby kept jabbing at Union lines of
communication in northern Virginia. In June, his majority came
through, and with it authority to organize a battalion under the Scott
Law. From that time on, he was on his own, and there was no longer any
danger of his being recalled to the regular Army. He was responsible
only to Jeb Stuart until the general's death at Yellow Tavern a year
later; thereafter, he took orders from no source below General Lee and
the Secretary of War.
Even before this regularization of status, Mosby's force was beginning
to look like a regular outfit. From the fifteen men he had brought up
from Culpepper in mid-January, its effective and dependable strength
had grown to about sixty riders, augmented from raid to raid by the
"Conglomerate" fringe, who were now accepted as guerrillas-pro-tem
without too much enthusiasm. A new type of recruit had begun to
appear, the man who came to enlist on a permanent basis. Some were
Maryland secessionists, like James Williamson, who, after the war,
wrote an authoritative and well-documented history of the
organization, Mosby's Rangers. Some were boys like John Edmonds and
John Munson, who had come of something approaching military age since
the outbreak of the war. Some were men who had wangled transfers from
other Confederate units. Not infrequently these men had given up
commissions in the regular army to enlist as privates with Mosby. For
example, there was the former clergyman, Sam Chapman, who had been a
captain of artillery, or the Prussian uhlan lieutenant, Baron Robert
von Massow, who gave up a captaincy on Stuart's staff, or the
Englishman, Captain Hoskins, who was shortly to lose his life because
of his preference for the saber over the revolver, or Captain Bill
Kennon, late of Wheat's Louisiana Tigers, who had also served with
Walker in Nicaragua. As a general thing, the new Mosby recruit was a
man of high intelligence, reckless bravery and ultra-rugged
individualism.
For his home territory, Mosby now chose a rough quadrangle between the
Blue Ridge and Bull Run Mountain, bounded at its four corners by
Snicker's Gap and Manassas Gap along the former and Thoroughfare Gap
and Aldie Gap along the latter. Here, when not in action, the Mosby
men billeted themselves, keeping widely dispersed, and an elaborate
system, involving most of the inhabitants, free or slave, was set up
to transmit messages, orders and warnings. In time this district came
to be known as "Mosby's Confederacy," and, in the absence of any
effective Confederate States civil authority, Mosby became the
lawgiver and chief magistrate as well as military commander. John
Munson, who also wrote a book of reminiscences after the war, said
that Mosby's Confederacy was an absolute monarchy, and that none was
ever better governed in history.
Adhering to his belief in the paramount importance of firepower, Mosby
saw to it that none of his men carried fewer than two revolvers, and
the great majority carried four, one pair on the belt and another on
the saddle. Some extremists even carried a third pair down their
boot-tops, giving them thirty-six shots without reloading. Nor did he
underestimate the power of mobility. Each man had his string of
horses, kept where they could be picked up at need. Unlike the regular
cavalryman with his one mount, a Mosby man had only to drop an
exhausted animal at one of these private remount stations and change
his saddle to a fresh one. As a result of these two practices, Union
combat reports throughout the war consistently credited Mosby with
from three to five times his actual strength.
In time, the entire economy of Mosby's Confederacy came to be geared
to Mosby's operations, just as the inhabitants of seventeenth century
Tortugas or Port Royal depended for their livelihood on the loot of
the buccaneers. The Mosby man who lived with some farmer's family paid
for his lodging with gifts of foodstuffs and blankets looted from the
enemy. There was always a brisk trade in captured U. S. Army horses
and mules. And there was a steady flow of United States currency into
the section, so that in time Confederate money was driven out of
circulation in a sort of reversal of Gresham's law. Every prisoner
taken reasonably close to Army pay day could be counted on for a few
dollars, and in each company there would be some lucky or skillful
gambler who would have a fairly sizeable roll of greenbacks. And, of
course, there was the sutler, the real prize catch; any Mosby man
would pass up a general in order to capture a sutler.