Custer's brigade, it being his intention to limit his retaliation to
men from units actually involved in the hangings. On November 6, he
paraded about twenty-five such prisoners and forced them to draw lots,
selecting, in this manner, seven of them--one for each of the men
hanged at Front Royal and another for a man named Willis who had been
hanged at Gaines' Cross Roads several weeks later. It was decided that
they should be taken into the Shenandoah Valley and hanged beside the
Valley Pike, where their bodies could serve as an object lesson. On
the way, one of them escaped. Four were hanged, and then, running out
of rope, they prepared to shoot the other two. One of these got away
during a delay caused by defective percussion caps on his
executioner's revolver.
A sign was placed over the bodies, setting forth the reason for their
execution, and Mosby also sent one of his men under a flag of truce to
Sheridan's headquarters, with a statement of what had been done and
why, re-enforced with the intimation that he had more prisoners,
including a number of officers, in case his messenger failed to return
safely. Sheridan replied by disclaiming knowledge of the Front Royal
hangings, agreeing that Mosby was justified in taking reprisals, and
assuring the Confederate leader that hereafter his men would be given
proper treatment as prisoners of war. There was no repetition of the
hangings.
By this time the Shenandoah Valley campaign as such was over. The last
Confederate effort to clear Sheridan out of the Valley had failed at
Cedar Creek on October 19, and the victor was going methodically about
his task of destroying the strategic and economic usefulness of the
valley. How well he succeeded in this was best expressed in Sheridan's
own claim that a crow flying over the region would have to carry his
own rations. The best Mosby could do was to launch small raiding
parties to harass the work of destruction.
By the beginning of December, the northern or Loudoun County end of
Mosby's Confederacy was feeling the enemy scourge as keenly as the
valley, and the winter nights were lighted with the flames of burning
houses and barns. For about a week, while this was going on, Mosby
abandoned any attempt at organized action. His men, singly and in
small parties, darted in and out among the invaders, sniping and
bushwhacking, attacking when they could and fleeing when they had to,
and taking no prisoners. When it was over, the northern end of Mosby's
Confederacy was in ashes and most of the people had "refugeed out,"
but Mosby's Rangers, as a fighting force, was still intact. On
December 17, for instance, while Mosby was in Richmond conferring with
General Lee, they went into the valley again in force, waylaying a
column of cavalry on the march, killing and wounding about thirty and
bringing off 168 prisoners and horses.
When Mosby came back from Lee's headquarters, a full colonel now, his
brother William was made a lieutenant-colonel, and Richards became a
major. The southern, or Fauquier County, end of Mosby's Confederacy
was still more or less intact, though crowded with refugees. There was
even time, in spite of everything, for the wedding of the
Forty-Third's armorer, Jake Lavender, with John and Jimmy Edmonds'
sister.
While the wedding party was in progress, a report was brought in to
the effect that Union cavalry were in the neighborhood of Salem, a few
miles away. Mosby took one of his men, Tom Love, a relative of one of
the Front Royal victims, and went to investigate, finding that the
enemy had moved in the direction of Rectortown, where they were
making camp for the night. Sending a resident of the neighborhood to
alert Chapman and Richards for an attack at daybreak, Mosby and Love
set out to collect others of his command.
By this time, it was dark, with a freezing rain covering everything
with ice. Mosby and Love decided to stop at the farm of Ludwell Lake
for something to eat before going on; Love wanted to stay outside on
guard, but Mosby told him to get off his horse and come inside. As
they would have been in any house in the neighborhood, Mosby and his
companion were welcomed as honored guests and sat down with the family
to a hearty meal of spareribs.
* * * * *
While they were eating, the house was surrounded by Union cavalry.
Mosby rushed to the back door, to find the backyard full of soldiers.
He started for the front door, but as he did, it burst open and a
number of Yankees, officers and men, entered the house. At the same
time, the soldiers behind, having seen the back door open and shut,
began firing at the rear windows, and one bullet hit Mosby in the
abdomen. In the confusion, with the women of the Lake family
screaming, the soldiers cursing, and bullets coming through the
windows, the kitchen table was overturned and the lights extinguished.
Mosby in the dark, managed to crawl into a first-floor bedroom, where
he got off his tell-tale belt and coat, stuffing them under the bed.
Then he lay down on the floor.
After a while, the shooting outside stopped, the officers returned,
and the candles were relighted. The Union officers found Mosby on the
floor, bleeding badly, and asked the family who he was. They said, of
course, that they did not know, and neither did Tom Love--he was only
a Confederate officer on his way to rejoin his command, who had
stopped for a night's lodging. There was a surgeon with the Union
detachment. After they got most of Mosby's clothes off and put him on
the bed, he examined the wounded Confederate and pronounced his wound
mortal. When asked his name and unit, Mosby, still conscious, hastily
improvised a false identity, at the same time congratulating himself
on having left all his documents behind when starting on this scouting
trip. Having been assured, by medical authority, that he was as good
as dead, the Union officers were no longer interested in him and soon
went away.
* * * * *
Fortunately, on his visit to Lee's headquarters, Mosby had met an old
schoolmate, a Dr. Montiero, who was now a surgeon with the Confederate
Army, and, persuading him to get a transfer, had brought him back with
him. Montiero's new C.O. was his first patient in his new outfit.
Early the next morning, he extracted the bullet. The next night Mosby
was taken to Lynchburg.
Despite the Union doctor's pronouncement of his impending death, Mosby
was back in action again near the end of February, 1865. His return
was celebrated with another series of raids on both sides of the
mountains. It was, of course, obvious to everybody that the sands of
the Confederacy were running out, but the true extent of the debacle
was somewhat obscured to Mosby's followers by their own immediate
successes. Peace rumors began drifting about, the favorite item of
wish-thinking being that the Union government was going to recognize
the Confederacy and negotiate a peace in return for Confederate help
in throwing the French out of Mexico. Of course, Mosby himself never
believed any such nonsense, but he continued his attacks as though
victory were just around the corner. On April 5, two days after the
Union army entered Richmond, a party of fifty Mosby men caught their
old enemies, the Loudoun Rangers, in camp near Halltown and beat them
badly. On April 9, the day of Lee's surrender, "D" Company and the
newly organized "H" Company fired the last shots for the Forty-Third
Virginia in a skirmish in Fairfax County. Two days later, Mosby
received a message from General Hancock, calling for his surrender.
He sent a group of his officers--William Mosby, Sam Chapman, Walter
Frankland and Dr. Montiero--with a flag of truce, and, after several
other meetings with Hancock, the command was disbanded and most of the
men went in to take the parole.
When his armistice with Hancock expired, Mosby found himself with only
about forty irreconcilables left out of his whole command. As General
Joe Johnston had not yet surrendered, he did not feel justified in
getting out of the fight, himself. With his bloodied but unbowed
handful, he set out on the most ambitious project of his entire
military career--nothing less than a plan to penetrate into Richmond
and abduct General Grant. If this scheme succeeded, it was his
intention to dodge around the Union Army, carry his distinguished
prisoner to Johnston, and present him with a real bargaining point for
negotiating terms.
They reached the outskirts of Richmond and made a concealed camp
across the river, waiting for darkness. In the meanwhile, two of the
party, both natives of the city, Munson and Cole Jordan, went in to
scout. Several hours passed, and neither returned. Mosby feared that
they had been picked up by Union patrols. He was about to send an
older man, Lieutenant Ben Palmer, when a canal-boat passed, and,
hailing it, they learned of Johnston's surrender.
That was the end of the scheme to kidnap Grant. As long as a
Confederate force was still under arms, it would have been a
legitimate act of war. Now, it would be mere brigandage, and Mosby had
no intention of turning brigand.
So Mosby returned to Fauquier County to take the parole. For him, the
fighting was over, but he was soon to discover that the war was not.
At that time, Edwin M. Stanton was making frantic efforts to
inculpate as many prominent Confederates as possible in the Booth
conspiracy, and Mosby's name was suggested as a worthy addition to
Stanton's long and fantastic list of alleged conspirators. A witness
was produced to testify that Mosby had been in Washington on the night
of the assassination, April 14. At that time, Stanton was able to
produce a witness to almost anything he wanted to establish.
Fortunately, Mosby had an alibi; at the time in question, he had been
at Hancock's headquarters, discussing armistice terms; even Stanton
couldn't get around that.
However, he was subjected to considerable petty persecution, and once
he was flung into jail without charge and held incommunicado. His wife
went to Washington to plead his case before President Johnson, who
treated her with a great deal less than courtesy, and then before
General Grant, who promptly gave her a written order for her husband's
release.
Then, in 1868, he did something which would have been social and
political suicide for any Southerner with a less imposing war record.
He supported Ulysses S. Grant for President. It was about as
unexpected as any act in an extremely unconventional career, and, as
usual, he had a well-reasoned purpose. Grant, he argued, was a
professional soldier, not a politician. His enmity toward the South
had been confined to the battlefield and had ended with the war. He
had proven his magnanimity to the defeated enemy, and as President, he
could be trusted to show fairness and clemency to the South.
While Virginia had not voted in the election of 1868, there is no
question that Mosby's declaration of support helped Grant, and Grant
was grateful, inviting Mosby to the White House after his inauguration
and later appointing him to the United States consulate at Hong Kong.
After the expiration of his consular service, Mosby resumed his law
practice, eventually taking up residence in Washington. He found time
to write several books--war reminiscences and memoirs, and a volume in
vindication of his former commander, Jeb Stuart, on the Confederate
cavalry in the Gettysburg campaign. He died in Washington, at the age
of eighty-three, in 1916.
The really important part of John Mosby's career, of course, was the
two years and three months, from January, 1863, to April, 1865, in
which he held independent command. With his tiny force--it never
exceeded 500 men--he had compelled the Union army to employ at least
one and often as high as three brigades to guard against his
depredations, and these men, held in the rear, were as much out of the
war proper as though they had been penned up in Andersonville or Libby
Prison.
In addition to this, every northward movement of the Confederate Army
after January, 1863, was accompanied by a diversionary operation of
Mosby's command, sometimes tactically insignificant but always
contributing, during the critical time of the operation, to the
uncertainty of Union intelligence. Likewise, every movement to the
south of the Army of the Potomac was harassed from behind.
* * * * *
It may also be noted that Sheridan, quite capable of dealing with the
menace of Stuart, proved helpless against the Mosby nuisance,
although, until they were wiped out, Blazer's Scouts were the most
efficient anti-Mosby outfit ever employed. In spite of everything that
was done against them, however, Mosby's Rangers stayed in business
longer than Lee's army, and when they finally surrendered, it was not
because they, themselves, had been defeated, but because the war had
been literally jerked out from under them.
Mosby made the cavalry a formidable amalgamation of fire power and
mobility and his influence on military history was felt directly, and
survived him by many years. In his last days, while living in
Washington, the old Confederate guerrilla had a youthful friend, a
young cavalry lieutenant fresh from West Point, to whom he enjoyed
telling the stories of his raids and battles and to whom he preached
his gospel of fire and mobility. This young disciple of Mosby's old
age was to make that gospel his own, and to practice it, later, with
great success. The name of this young officer was George S. Patton,
Jr.--H. Beam Piper
* * * * *
Jeb Stuart left John Singleton Mosby behind Northern lines
"to look after loyal Confederate people." But before the war
was over, Mosby did a lot more than that....
A True Book-Length Feature
* * * * *