of the Mosby men wore Confederate uniforms that had been tailored for
them in Baltimore and even in Washington and run through the Union
lines.
By mid-June, Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania had begun and the
countryside along Bull Run Mountain and the Blue Ridge exploded into a
series of cavalry actions as the Confederate Army moved north along
the Union right. Mosby kept his little force out of the main fighting,
hacking away at the Union troops from behind and confusing their
combat intelligence with reports of Rebel cavalry appearing where none
ought to be. In the midst of this work, he took time out to dash
across into Fairfax County with sixty men, shooting up a wagon train,
burning wagons, and carrying off prisoners and mules, the latter being
turned over to haul Lee's invasion transport. After the two armies had
passed over the Potomac, he gathered his force and launched an
invasion of Pennsylvania on his own, getting as far as Mercersburg and
bringing home a drove of over 200 beef cattle.
He got back to Mosby's Confederacy in time to learn of Lee's defeat at
Gettysburg. Realizing that Lee's retreat would be followed by a
pursuing Union army, he began making preparations to withstand the
coming deluge. For one thing, he decided to do something he had not
done before--concentrate his force in a single camp on the top of Bull
Run Mountain. In the days while Lee's army was trudging southward,
Mosby gathered every horse and mule and cow he could find and drove
them into the mountains, putting boys and slaves to work herding them.
He commandeered wagons, and hauled grain and hay to his temporary
camp. His men erected huts, and built corrals for horses and a
stockade for prisoners. They even moved a blacksmith shop to the
hidden camp. Then Mosby sat down and waited.
A few days later, Meade's army began coming through. The Forty-Third
Partisan Ranger Battalion went to work immediately. For two weeks,
they galloped in and out among the Union columns, returning to their
hidden camp only long enough to change horses and leave the prisoners
they had taken. They cut into wagon trains, scattering cavalry
escorts, burning wagons, destroying supplies, blowing up ammunition,
disabling cannon, running off mules. They ambushed marching infantry,
flitting away before their victims had recovered from the initial
surprise. Sometimes, fleeing from the scene of one attack, they would
burst through a column on another road, leaving confusion behind to
delay the pursuit.
Finally, the invaders passed on, the camp on the mountain top was
abandoned, the Mosby men went back to their old billets, and the
Forty-Third Battalion could take it easy again. That is to say, they
only made a raid every couple of days and seldom fought a pitched
battle more than once a week.
The summer passed; the Virginia hills turned from green to red and
from red to brown. Mosby was severely wounded in the side and thigh
during a fight at Gooding's Tavern on August 23, when two of his men
were killed, but the raiders brought off eighty-five horses and twelve
prisoners and left six enemy dead behind. The old days of bloodless
sneak raids on isolated picket posts were past, now that they had
enough men for two companies and Mosby rarely took the field with
fewer than a hundred riders behind him.
Back in the saddle again after recovering from his wounds, Mosby
devoted more attention to attacking the Orange and Alexandria and the
Manassas Gap railroads and to harassing attacks for the rest of the
winter.
In January, 1864, Major Cole, of the Union Maryland cavalry, began
going out of his way to collide with the Forty-Third Virginia, the
more so since he had secured the services of a deserter from Mosby, a
man named Binns who had been expelled from the Rangers for some piece
of rascality and was thirsting for revenge. Cole hoped to capitalize
on Binns' defection as Mosby had upon the desertion of Sergeant Ames,
and he made several raids into Mosby's Confederacy, taking a number of
prisoners before the Mosby men learned the facts of the situation and
everybody found a new lodging place.
On the morning of February 20, Mosby was having breakfast at a
farmhouse near Piedmont Depot, on the Manassas Gap Railroad, along
with John Munson and John Edmonds, the 'teen-age terrors, and a
gunsmith named Jake Lavender, who was the battalion ordnance sergeant
and engaged to young Edmonds' sister. Edmonds had with him a couple of
Sharps carbines he had repaired for other members of the battalion and
was carrying to return to the owners. Suddenly John Edmonds' younger
brother, Jimmy, burst into the room with the news that several hundred
Union cavalrymen were approaching. Lavender grabbed the two carbines,
for which he had a quantity of ammunition, and they all ran outside.
Sending the younger Edmonds boy to bring re-enforcements, Mosby,
accompanied by John Edmonds, Munson, and Jake Lavender, started to
follow the enemy. He and Munson each took one of Lavender's carbines
and opened fire on them, Munson killing a horse and Mosby a man. That
started things off properly. Cole's Marylanders turned and gave chase,
and Mosby led them toward the rendezvous with Jimmy Edmonds and the
re-enforcements. Everybody arrived together, Mosby's party, the
pursuers, and the re-enforcements, and a running fight ensued, with
Cole's men running ahead. This mounted chase, in the best horse-opera
manner, came thundering down a road past a schoolhouse just as the
pupils were being let out for recess. One of these, a 14-year-old boy
named Cabell Maddox, jumped onto the pony on which he had ridden to
school and joined in the pursuit, armed only with a McGuffy's Third
Reader. Overtaking a fleeing Yank, he aimed the book at him and
demanded his surrender; before the flustered soldier realized that his
captor was unarmed, the boy had snatched the Colt from his belt and
was covering him in earnest. This marked the suspension, for the
duration of hostilities, of young Maddox's formal education. From that
hour on he was a Mosby man, and he served with distinction to the end
of the war.
* * * * *
The chase broke off, finally, when the pursuers halted to get their
prisoners and captured horses together. Then they discovered that one
of their number, a man named Cobb, had been killed. Putting the dead
man across his saddle, they carried the body back to Piedmont, and the
next day assembled there for the funeral. The services had not yet
started, and Mosby was finishing writing a report to Stuart on the
previous day's action, when a scout came pelting in to report Union
cavalry in the vicinity of Middleburg.
Leaving the funeral in the hands of the preacher and the civilian
mourners, Mosby and the 150 men who had assembled mounted and started
off. Sam Chapman, the ex-artillery captain, who had worked up from the
ranks to a lieutenancy with Mosby, was left in charge of the main
force, while Mosby and a small party galloped ahead to reconnoiter.
The enemy, they discovered, were not Cole's men but a California
battalion. They learned that this force had turned in the direction of
Leesburg, and that they were accompanied by the deserter, Binns.
Mosby made up his mind to ambush the Californians on their way back to
their camp at Vienna. He had plans, involving a length of rope, for
his former trooper, Binns. The next morning, having crossed Bull Run
Mountain the night before, he took up a position near Dranesville,
with scouts out to the west. When the enemy were finally reported
approaching, he was ready for them. Twenty of his 150, with carbines
and rifles, were dismounted and placed in the center, under
Lieutenant Mountjoy. The rest of the force was divided into two equal
sections, under Chapman and Frank Williams, and kept mounted on the
flanks. Mosby himself took his place with Williams on the right. While
they waited, they could hear the faint boom of cannon from Washington,
firing salutes in honor of Washington's Birthday.
A couple of men, posted in advance, acted as decoys, and the Union
cavalry, returning empty-handed from their raid, started after them in
hopes of bringing home at least something to show for their efforts.
Before they knew it, they were within range of Mountjoy's concealed
riflemen. While they were still in disorder from the surprise volley,
the two mounted sections swept in on them in a blaze of revolver fire,
and they broke and fled. There was a nasty jam in a section of fenced
road, with mounted Mosby men in the woods on either side and
Mountjoy's rifles behind them. Before they could get clear of this,
they lost fifteen killed, fifteen more wounded, and over seventy
prisoners, and the victorious Mosby men brought home over a hundred
captured horses and large quantities of arms and ammunition. To their
deep regret, however, Binns was not to be found either among the
casualties or the prisoners. As soon as he had seen how the fight was
going, the deserter had spurred off northward, never to appear in
Virginia again. Mosby's own loss had been one man killed and four
wounded.
* * * * *
For the rest of the spring, operations were routine--attacks on wagon
trains and train wrecking and bridge burning on the railroads. With
the cut-and-try shifting of command of the Union Army of the Potomac
over and Grant in command, there was activity all over northern
Virginia. About this time, Mosby got hold of a second twelve-pound
howitzer, and, later, a twelve-pound Napoleon and added the Shenandoah
Valley to his field of operations.
From then on, Mosby was fighting a war on two fronts, dividing his
attention between the valley and the country to the east of Bull Run
Mountain, his men using their spare horses freely to keep the Union
rear on both sides in an uproar. The enemy, knowing the section from
whence Mosby was operating, resorted to frequent counter-raiding.
Often, returning from a raid, the Mosby men would find their home
territory invaded and would have to intercept or fight off the
invaders. At this time, Mosby was giving top priority to attacks on
Union transport whether on the roads or the railroads. Wagon trains
were in constant movement, both moving up the Shenandoah Valley and
bound for the Army of the Potomac, in front of Petersburg. To the east
was the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, to the south, across the end
of Mosby's Confederacy, was the Manassas Gap, and at the upper end of
the valley was the B. & O. The section of the Manassas Gap Railroad
along the southern boundary of Mosby's Confederacy came in for special
attention, and the Union Army finally gave it up for a bad job and
abandoned it. This writer's grandfather, Captain H. B. Piper, of the
Eleventh Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, did a stint of duty guarding
it, and until he died he spoke with respect of the abilities of John
S. Mosby and his raiders. Locomotives were knocked out with one or
another of Mosby's twelve-pounders. Track was torn up and bridges were
burned. Land-mines were planted. Trains were derailed and looted,
usually with sharp fighting.
By mid-July, Mosby had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and had a
total strength of around 300 men, divided into five companies. His
younger brother, William Mosby, had joined him and was acting as his
adjutant. He now had four guns, all twelve-pounders--two howitzers,
the Napoleon and a new rifle, presented to him by Jubal Early. He had
a compact, well-disciplined and powerful army-in-miniature. After the
Union defeat at Kernstown, Early moved back to the lower end of the
Shenandoah Valley, and McCausland went off on his raid in to
Pennsylvania, burning Chambersburg in retaliation for Hunter's
burnings at Lexington and Buchanan in Virginia. Following his
customary practice, Mosby made a crossing at another point and raided
into Maryland as far as Adamstown, skirmishing and picking up a few
prisoners and horses.
Early's invasion of Maryland, followed as it was by McCausland's sack
of Chambersburg, was simply too much for the Union command. The
Shenandoah situation had to be cleaned up immediately, and, after some
top-echelon dickering, Grant picked Phil Sheridan to do the cleaning.
On August 7, Sheridan assumed command of the heterogeneous Union
forces in the Shenandoah and began welding them into an army. On the
10th, he started south after Early, and Mosby, who generally had a
good idea of what was going on at Union headquarters, took a small
party into the valley, intending to kidnap the new commander as he had
Stoughton. Due mainly to the vigilance of a camp sentry, the plan
failed, but Mosby picked up the news that a large wagon train was
being sent up the valley, and he decided to have a try at this.
On the evening of the 12th, he was back in the valley with 330 men and
his two howitzers. Spending the night at a plantation on the right
bank of the Shenandoah River, he was on the move before daybreak,
crossing the river and pushing toward Berryville, with scouts probing
ahead in the heavy fog. One of the howitzers broke a wheel and was
pushed into the brush and left behind. As both pieces were of the same
caliber, the caisson was taken along. A lieutenant and fifteen men,
scouting ahead, discovered a small empty wagon train, going down the
valley in the direction of Harper's Ferry, and they were about to
attack it when they heard, in the distance, the rumbling of many
heavily loaded wagons. This was the real thing. They forgot about the
empty wagons and hastened back to Mosby and the main force to report.
Swinging to the left to avoid premature contact with the train, Mosby
hurried his column in the direction of Berryville. On the way, he
found a disabled wagon, part of the north-bound empty train, with the
teamster and several infantrymen sleeping in it. These were promptly
secured, and questioning elicited the information that the south-bound
train consisted of 150 wagons, escorted by 250 cavalry and a brigade
of infantry. Getting into position on a low hill overlooking the road
a little to the east of Berryville, the howitzer was unlimbered and
the force was divided on either side of it, Captain Adolphus Richards
taking the left wing and Sam Chapman the right. Mosby himself remained
with the gun. Action was to be commenced with the gun, and the third
shot was to be the signal for both Richards and Chapman to charge.
* * * * *
At just the right moment, the fog lifted. The gun was quickly laid on
the wagon train and fired, the first shot beheading a mule. The second
shell hit the best sort of target imaginable--a mobile farrier's
forge. There was a deadly shower of horseshoes, hand-tools and
assorted ironmongery, inflicting casualties and causing a local panic.
The third shell landed among some cavalry who were galloping up,
scattering them, and, on the signal, Richards and Chapman charged
simultaneously.
Some infantry at the head of the train met Richards with a volley,
costing him one man killed and several wounded and driving his charge
off at an angle into the middle of the train. The howitzer, in turn,
broke up the infantry. Chapman, who had hit the rear of the train, was
having easier going: his men methodically dragged the teamsters from
their wagons, unhitched mules, overturned, looted and burned wagons.
The bulk of the escort, including the infantry, were at the front of
the train, with Richards' men between them and Chapman. Richards,
while he had his hands full with these, was not neglecting the wagons,
either, though he was making less of a ceremony of it. A teamster was
shot and dragged from his wagon-seat, a lighted bundle of inflammables
tossed into the wagon, and pistols were fired around the mules' heads
to start them running. The faster they ran, the more the flames behind
them were fanned, and as the wagon went careening down the road, other
wagons were ignited by it.
By 8 a. m., the whole thing was over. The escort had been scattered,
the wagons were destroyed, and the victors moved off, in possession of
500-odd mules, thirty-six horses, about 200 head of beef cattle, 208
prisoners, four Negro slaves who had been forcibly emancipated to
drive Army wagons, and large quantities of supplies. In one of the
wagons, a number of violins, probably equipment for some prototype of
the U.S.O., were found; the more musically inclined guerrillas
appropriated these and enlivened the homeward march with music.
* * * * *
Of course, there was jubilation all over Mosby's Confederacy on their
return. The mules were herded into the mountains, held for about a
week, and then started off for Early's army. The beef herd was divided
among the people, and there were barbecues and feasts. A shadow was
cast over the spirits of the raiders, however, when the prisoners
informed them, with considerable glee, that the train had been
carrying upwards of a million dollars, the pay for Sheridan's army.
Even allowing for exaggeration, the fact that they had overlooked this
treasure was a bitter pill for the Mosbyites. According to local
tradition, however, the fortune was not lost completely; there were
stories of a Berryville family who had been quite poor before the war
but who blossomed into unexplained affluence afterward.
Less than a week later, on August 19, Mosby was in the valley again
with 250 men, dividing his force into several parties after crossing
the river at Castleman's Ford. Richards, with "B" Company, set off
toward Charlestown. Mosby himself took "A" toward Harper's Ferry on an
uneventful trip during which the only enemies he encountered were a
couple of stragglers caught pillaging a springhouse. It was Chapman,
with "C" and "D," who saw the action on this occasion.
Going to the vicinity of Berryville, he came to a burning farmhouse,
and learned that it had been fired only a few minutes before by some
of Custer's cavalry. Leaving a couple of men to help the family
control the fire and salvage their possessions, he pressed on rapidly.
Here was the thing every Mosby man had been hoping for--a chance to
catch house burners at work. They passed a second blazing house and
barn, dropping off a couple more men to help fight fire, and caught up
with the incendiaries, a company of Custer's men, just as they were
setting fire to a third house. Some of these, knowing the quality of
mercy they might expect from Mosby men, made off immediately at a
gallop. About ninety of them, however, tried to form ranks and put up
a fight. The fight speedily became a massacre. Charging with shouts of
"No quarters!", Chapman's men drove them into a maze of stone fences
and killed about a third of them before the rest were able to
extricate themselves.
This didn't stop the house burnings, by any means. The devastation of
the Shenandoah Valley had been decided upon as a matter of strategy,
and Sheridan was going through with it. The men who were ordered to do
the actual work did not have their morale improved any by the
knowledge that Mosby's Rangers were refusing quarter to incendiary
details, however, and, coming as it did on the heels of the wagon
train affair of the 13th, Sheridan was convinced that something
drastic would have to be done about Mosby. Accordingly, he set up a
special company, under a Captain William Blazer, each man armed with a
pair of revolvers and a Spencer repeater, to devote their entire
efforts to eliminating Mosby and his organized raiders.
On September 3, this company caught up with Joe Nelson and about 100
men in the valley and gave them a sound drubbing, the first that the
Mosby men had experienced for some time. It was a humiliating defeat
for them, and, on the other side, it was hailed as the beginning of
the end of the Mosby nuisance. A few days later, while raiding to the
east of Bull Run Mountain, Mosby was wounded again, and was taken to
Lynchburg. He was joined by his wife, who remained with him at
Lynchburg and at Mosby's Confederacy until the end of the war.
During his absence, the outfit seems to have been run by a sort of
presidium of the senior officers. On September 22, Sam Chapman took
120 men into the valley to try to capture a cavalry post supposed to
be located near Front Royal, but, arriving there, he learned that his
information had been incorrect and that no such post existed. Camping
in the woods, he sent some men out as scouts, and the next morning
they reported a small wagon train escorted by about 150 cavalry,
moving toward Front Royal. Dividing his force and putting half of it
under Walter Frankland, he planned to attack the train from the rear
while Frankland hit it from in front. After getting into position, he
kept his men concealed, waiting for the wagons to pass, and as it did,
he realized that his scouts had seen only a small part of it. The
escort looked to him like about three regiments. Ordering his men to
slip away as quietly as possible, he hurried to reach Frankland.
"Turn around, Walter!" he yelled. "Get your men out of here! You're
attacking a whole brigade!"
"What of it?" Frankland replied. "Why, Sam, we have the bastards on
the run already!"
Chapman, the erstwhile clergyman, turned loose a blast of theological
language in purely secular connotation. Frankland, amazed at this
blasphemous clamor from his usually pious comrade, realized that it
must have been inspired by something more than a little serious, and
began ordering his men to fall back. Before they had all gotten away,
two of the three Union regiments accompanying the wagons came
galloping up and swamped them. Most of the men got away but six of
them, Anderson, Carter, Overby, Love, Rhodes and Jones, were captured.
Late that night some of the stragglers, making their way back to
Mosby's Confederacy on foot, reported the fate of these six men. They
had been taken into Front Royal, and there, at the personal order of
General George A. Custer, and under circumstances of extreme
brutality, they had all been hanged. Rhodes' mother, who lived in
Front Royal, had been forced to witness the hanging of her son.
To put it conservatively, there was considerable excitement in Mosby's
Confederacy when the news of this atrocity was received. The senior
officers managed to restore a measure of calmness, however, and it was
decided to wait until Mosby returned before taking any action on the
matter.
In addition to the hangings at Front Royal, Custer was acquiring a bad
reputation because of his general brutality to the people of the
Shenandoah Valley. After the battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting
Bull would have probably won any popularity contest in northern
Virginia without serious competition.
On September 29, Mosby was back with his command; his wound had not
been as serious as it might have been for the bullet had expended most
of its force against the butt of one of the revolvers in his belt.
Operations against the railroads had been allowed to slacken during
Mosby's absence; now they were stepped up again. Track was repeatedly
torn up along the Manassas Gap line, and there were attacks on camps
and strong points, and continual harassing of wood-cutting parties
obtaining fuel for the locomotives. The artillery was taken out, and
trains were shelled. All this, of course, occasioned a fresh wave of
Union raids into the home territory of the raiders, during one of
which Yank Ames, who had risen to a lieutenancy in the Forty-Third,
was killed.
The most desperate efforts were being made, at this time, to keep the
Manassas Gap Railroad open, and General C. C. Augur, who had charge of
the railroad line at the time, was arresting citizens indiscriminately
and forcing them to ride on the trains as hostages. Mosby obtained
authorization from Lee's headquarters to use reprisal measures on
officers and train crews of trains on which citizens were being forced
to ride, and also authority to execute prisoners from Custer's command
in equal number to the men hanged at Front Royal and elsewhere.