John S. Mosby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Singleton Mosby (December 6, 1833 – May 30, 1916), also known as the "Gray Ghost," was a Confederate partisan ranger (guerrilla fighter) in the American Civil War. He was noted for his lightning quick raids and his ability to successfully elude his Union Army pursuers and disappear (like a ghost) with his men, blending in with local farmers and townspeople.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
Mosby was born in Cumberland County, Virginia, to Virginny McLaurine and Alfred Daniel Mosby, a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College. Mosby began his education at a school called Murrell's Shop until his family moved to Albemarle County, Virginia (approximately four miles from Charlottesville) around 1840. Here, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, John attended school in Fry's Woods before transferring to a Charlottesville school at the age of ten.
In 1849, Mosby entered the University of Virginia. Always hot tempered, he shot George R. Turpin, a medical student at the university, on March 29 of that year. Mosby was fined five hundred dollars for the incident (which was later rescinded) and sentenced to twelve months in prison. While serving time, Mosby occupied himself with the study of law. On December 23, 1853, he was pardoned by the governor. After studying for months in William J. Robertson's law office, Mosby was admitted to the bar and established his own practice in nearby Howardsville, Albemarle County, virginia. Around this time, Mosby, a Methodist, met Pauline Clark, a Catholic visiting from out of town. The couple moved to Bristol, Virginia, (close to Clark's hometown in Kentucky), and were married in a Nashville hotel on December 30, 1857.
[edit] Civil War
Mosby spoke out against secession, but joined the Confederate army as a private at the outbreak of the war and initially served in William "Grumble" Jones's Washington Mounted Rifles. (Jones became a major and was instructed to form a more collective "Virginia Volunteers", which he created with two mounted companies and eight companies of infantry and riflemen including the Washington Mounted Rifles.) Mosby was upset with the Virginia Volunteers' lack of congeniality and he wrote to the governor requesting to be transferred. However, his request was not granted. The Virginia Volunteers participated in the First Battle of Bull Run.
After impressing J.E.B. Stuart with his scouting ability, Mosby was promoted to first lieutenant and assigned to Stuart's cavalry scouts, helping the general develop attack strategies. He was responsible for Stuart's "Ride around McClellan" during the Peninsula Campaign. Captured by Union cavalry, Mosby was imprisoned in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., for ten days before being exchanged. Even as a prisoner, Mosby spied on his enemy. During a brief stopover at Fort Monroe, he detected in unusual buildup of shipping in Hampton Roads and further inquiries convinced him that they were carrying thousands of troops under Ambrose Burnside from North Carolina on their way to reinforce John Pope in the Northern Virginia Campaign. When he was released, Mosby walked to army headquarters outside Richmond and personally related his findings to Robert E. Lee.[1]
In January 1863, Stuart, with Lee's concurrence, authorized Mosby to form and take command of the 43rd Battalion, Partisan Rangers, which later expanded into Mosby's Command, a regimental sized unit of partisan rangers operating in Northern Virginia. The Confederate government certified special rules to govern the conduct of partisan rangers, and these included sharing in the disposition of spoils of war.
Initially, Mosby's group consisted of Fount Beatie, Charles Buchanan, Christopher Gaul, William L. Hunter, Edward S. Hurst, Jasper and William Jones, William Keys, Benjamin Morgan, George Seibert, George M. Slater, Daniel L. Thomas, William Thomas Turner, Charles Wheatley, and John Wild. He and his men carried out the Greenback Raid and attacked Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's wagon train at Berryville.
Mosby is famous for carrying out a daring raid far inside Union lines at the Fairfax County courthouse in March 1863, where his men captured three high ranking Union officers, including Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton, whom Mosby allegedly found in bed, rousing him with a slap to his rear. Upon being so rudely awakened, the general shouted, "Do you know who I am?" Mosby quickly replied, "Do you know Mosby, general?" "Yes! Have you got the rascal?" "No but he has got you!"
The disruption of supply lines and the constant disappearance of couriers frustrated Union commanders to such a degree that Sheridan ordered the summary execution of all captured partisan rangers. Union forces which Mosby believed (not necessarily correctly) to belong to a unit under Union Brig. Gen. George A. Custer did execute several of Mosby's men in 1864 in Front Royal, Virginia. Mosby ordered a comparable number of Union prisoners, chosen by lot, to be executed in retaliation. The junior officer charged with the task managed to hang three men, and to shoot (but not kill) two others; three escaped. Mosby wrote to Union commander Sheridan that, so long as no further executions of his men took place, he would resume treating his own prisoners as prisoners of war. There were no more executions of prisoners.
Several weeks after Robert E. Lee's surrender, Mosby simply disbanded his rangers, refusing to surrender formally.
[edit] Postbellum
After the war, Mosby became an active Republican, saying it was the best way to help the South. He also became personally close to Ulysses S. Grant, and became a campaign manager in Virginia for President Grant. These activities made Mosby a highly controversial figure in Virginia: he received death threats, his boyhood home was burnt down, and at least one attempt was made to assassinate him. The danger Mosby was in at home contributed to his appointment as U.S. consul to Hong Kong (1878–1885). He subsequently served as a lawyer in San Francisco with the Southern Pacific Railroad, an employee with the Department of the Interior, first enforcing federal fencing laws in Omaha, then evicting trespassers on government-owned land in Alabama, and assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice (1904–10). He died in Washington and is buried in Warrenton Cemetery.
[edit] In memoriam
During his time in San Francisco, he told his war stories to a young boy, George S. Patton, Jr., the future general.
The area in Virginia, primarily around Centreville, in which Mosby conducted most of his behind-the-lines activities was called "Mosby's Confederacy", even in the Northern press. Such was the fame of this unit that after the war, reunions of "Mosby's Rangers" always drew many times the number of men who actually served in that unit.
Some sources give Mosby credit for coining the term "the Solid South." He used it in an 1876 letter to the New York Herald, supporting the candidacy of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes for president.
Herman Melville's poem "The Scout Toward Aldie" is about the terror a Union brigade feels upon facing Mosby and his men.
Virgil Carrington Jones published Ranger Mosby (1944) and Grey Ghosts and Rebel Raiders (1956). He also wrote the late-1950s television program, Ranger Mosby.
Mosby Woods Elementary School, an elementary school in Fairfax County Public Schools, is named after Mosby.
Lee McGiffin wrote a book in 1993 titled, "Iron Scouts of the Confederacy," which chronicles the true adventures of two teenage boys who enlisted with John Mosby's outfit of cavalry riders.
[edit] References
- Jones, Virgil Carrington, Ranger Mosby, Howell Press, 1944, ISBN 0-939009-01-3.
- Longacre, Edward G., Lee's Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of Northern Virginia, Stackpole Books, 2002, ISBN 0-8117-0898-5.
- Ramage, James A., Gray Ghost: The Life of Colonel John Singleton Mosby, University Press of Kentucky, 1999, ISBN 0-8131-2135-3.
- Winik, Jay, April, 1865, HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, ISBN 0-06-093088-8.
- The Home of The American Civil War: John Mosby
- John Singleton Mosby "A Long And Stormy Career"
- McGiffin, Lee, Iron Scouts of the Confederecy, Christian Liberty Press, 1993, ISBN 1930092199.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Longacre, p. 107.
