John S. Mosby

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John Singleton Mosby
John Singleton Mosby

John Singleton Mosby (December 6, 1833 – May 30, 1916) also known as the "Gray Ghost," was a Confederate partisan Ranger (a partisan is similar to a 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.

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[edit] Early life

Mosby was born in Powhatan 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. Because of his small stature and frail health, throughout Mosby's school career he was the victim of bullies. But instead of becoming withdrawn and lacking in self confidence, the boy responded by fighting back although—as he admitted in his memoirs—he never won any fight in which he was engaged. The only fight he did not lose in these schoolboy melees was with a man who remained his friend in later life and that was because an adult stepped in and separated the combatants.

In 1849, Mosby entered the University of Virginia, taking up a Classical Studies curriculum and joining the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union. He was far above average in Latin, Greek, and literature (all of which he enjoyed), but mathematics continued to be a problem for him. In his third year, a quarrel erupted between the frail, physically small Mosby and a notorious bully, George R. Turpin, a tavern keeper's son who was robust and physically impressive. Turpin was supposedly a medical student at the university, but he and his comrades engaged more often in causing injuries than healing them: in one case, Turpin took a knife to a small student, and in another he almost killed a much smaller boy with a rock. When Mosby heard of an insulting remark about him that Turpin made to a friend of the smaller man, Mosby sent Turpin a letter asking for an explanation—one of the rituals in the code of honor to which all Southern gentlemen of the time adhered. Turpin became enraged and declared that on their next meeting he would "eat him (Mosby) up raw!" Mosby decided that he had no choice but to absorb one of Turpin's notorious beatings, since he could not prevail in a fight with the much larger man and to run away would be dishonorable.

On March 29 the two met, but before Mosby left for the boarding house at which the meeting was to take place, he decided to take a small 'pepperbox' pistol with him in the hope of dissuading Turpin from an attack. Unfortunately, when the two met and Mosby said, "I hear you have been making assertions ...," Turpin put his head down and charged. At that, Mosby pulled out the pistol and shot his adversary in the neck, after which the distraught 19-year-old went home to await his fate. Mosby was arrested and arraigned on two charges: unlawful shooting (a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $500 fine) and malicious shooting (a felony with a maximum sentence of 10 years in the penitentiary). After a trial that almost resulted in a hung jury, Mosby was convicted of the lesser offense, but received the maximum sentence—a year in the Charlottesville jail and a fine of five hundred dollars. Mosby later discovered that he had been expelled from the university before he was even brought to trial. There is nothing to suggest that Turpin, for all of his former violence, was likewise expelled for his notorious past.

While serving time, Mosby won the friendship of his prosecutor, attorney William J. Robertson. When he told Robertson of his desire to study law, Robertson offered his law library to the young man, and Mosby occupied himself with the study of law for the remaining time of his incarceration. Immediately after the sentence had been handed down, a petition was begun by nine of the twelve jurors asking that the young man be pardoned. It seemed that two of the jurors were against the boy; one hated students of the university and found Mosby's trial an opportunity to make a statement to that effect. The other juror hated Mosby's father, Alfred. In addition to this petition and others from the university, Mosby's parents submitted sworn statements by several physicians indicating the frail state of the youth's health and that the twelve-month sentence might well constitute a death sentence, since Mosby was beginning to sicken as the weather grew cold and he suffered in the small, unhealthy jail. On December 23, 1853, Mosby was pardoned by the governor, and in early 1854, his fine was rescinded. After studying for months in 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 Clarke, a Catholic visiting from out of town. The couple moved to Bristol, Virginia, (close to Clarke's hometown in Kentucky), and were married in a Nashville, hotel on December 30, 1857.

[edit] Civil War

Mosby during the American Civil War
Mosby during the American 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 an 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 Virginia Cavalry, 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. Having previously been promoted to Captain (March 15, 1863) and Major (March 26, 1863) in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, he was soon promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on January 21, 1864 and eventually to Colonel, December 7, 1864.

Some of Mosby's men
Some of Mosby's men

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!" He also captured about 30 to 50 sentries without ever firing a shot.

The disruption of supply lines and the constant disappearance of couriers frustrated Union commanders to such a degree that Grant told Sheridan, "When any of Mosby's men are caught, hang them without trial." On September 22, 1864, Union forces that Mosby believed (not necessarily correctly) to be commanded by, and acting with the knowledge of, Union Brig. Gen. George A. Custer executed six of Mosby's men in Front Royal, Virginia; a seventh was executed on a subsequent occasion. William Thomas Overby was one of the men selected for execution on the hill in Front Royal. His captors offered to spare him if he would reveal Mosby's location, but he refused. According to reports at the time, his last words were, "Mosby will hang 10 of you for every one of us." After his death, a Union soldier pinned a piece of paper on his shirt that read: "Such is the fate of all of Mosby's gang."

After informing General Robert E. Lee and Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon of his intention to respond in kind, Mosby ordered seven Union prisoners, chosen by lot, to be executed in retaliation on November 6, 1864, at Rectortown, Virginia. The soldiers charged with carrying out the orders hanged three men; they shot two more in the head and left them for dead (remarkably, both survived); the other two condemned men managed to escape.[2] On November 11, 1864, Mosby wrote to Sheridan, as the commander of Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley, requesting that both sides resume treating prisoners with humanity, and pointing out that he and his men had captured (and returned) far more of Sheridan's men than they had lost.[3] The Union side complied and, with both camps treating prisoners as "prisoners of war" for the duration, there were no more executions.

Several weeks after Robert E. Lee's surrender, Mosby simply disbanded his rangers, refusing to surrender formally.

[edit] Postbellum

Mosby and his former lieutenant John S. Russell
Mosby and his former lieutenant John S. Russell

After the war, Mosby became an active Republican, saying it was the best way to help the South. Mosby went on to become a campaign manager in Virginia for President Grant. In his autobiography, Grant stated, "Since the close of the war, I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I supposed. He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful." Mosby's friendship with Grant and his work with people whom many Southerners still perceived to be the enemy 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.

Many years after the war, Mosby explained how, as someone who disapproved of slavery, he could have fought on the Confederate side. While he believed the South had seceded to protect slavery, he said, in a 1907 letter, that he had felt it was his patriotic duty to Virginia. "I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery—a soldier fights for his country—right or wrong—he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in ... The South was my country."[4]

[edit] Monuments and memorials

  • 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.
  • There are at least 35 monuments and markers in Northern Virginia dedicated to actions and events about Mosby's Rangers.
  • John Mosby Highway, a section of US Route 50 between Dulles Airport and Winchester, Virginia, is named for Colonel John Singleton Mosby.
  • 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.
  • The 1967 Disney television movie Willie and the Yank: The Mosby Raiders [5] starred Kurt Russell as a young Confederate, serving under Mosby. Actor Jack Ging portrayed John Mosby.[6]
  • The CBS Television series Gray Ghost aired during the 1957-58 television season, and starred Tod Andrews as Mosby.[6]
  • Loudoun County High School uses the name "Raiders" for its athletic teams. This is a reference to Mosby's Raiders.
  • During his time in San Francisco, Mosby told his war stories to a young boy, George S. Patton, Jr., the future general.

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Longacre, p. 107.
  2. ^ Boyle contains details of sources on these events.
  3. ^ Boyle includes the text of Mosby's letter to Sheridan.
  4. ^ Letter, Assistant Attorney General John S. Mosby to Captain Sam Chapman (June 4, 1907).
  5. ^ IMDB.
  6. ^ a b Mosby's Rangers on DVD.

[edit] External links

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