John Singleton Mosby, also known as the "Gray Ghost," was a Confederate partisan Ranger (guerrilla fighter) in the 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.

Table of Contents

• Civil War
• After the War
• References
• Notes

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 Mosby was fined five hundred dollars for the incident (which was later rescinded) and sentenced to twelve months in prison.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.

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, 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 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. 

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.

After the War

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.

References

• Boyle, William E., "Under the Black Flag: Execution and Retaliation in Mosby's Confederacy", Military Law Review, Vol. 144, p. 148 et seq. (Spring 1994).
• 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.
• McGiffin, Lee, Iron Scouts of the Confederacy, Christian Liberty Press, 1993, ISBN 1-930092-19-9.
• 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.

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.