THE GRAY GHOST

On 13 October 1864, Confederate partisan cavalry leader John Mosby raided Harpers Ferry. This action was a part of the 1864 Shenandoah campaign; a series of brutal clashes between Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and Confederate Partisan Ranger John Singleton Mosby. This second Shenandoah Campaign featured numerous incidents that can only be described as atrocities and war crimes, even by Civil War standards.

Colonel Mosby and his Confederate Rangers adopted an irregular form of warfare; after a skirmish, Mosby’s men returned to their own homes rather than to camp, agreeing to meet again at a future date and place. Each man acquired his own horse, arms and uniforms, but was entitled to share in whatever public or personal property was captured. Mosby was soon the only organized military force in northern Virginia, and so firmly ruled the area that it became known as ‘Mosby’s Confederacy.’




Mosby's Rangers are considered a part of the shared lineage of modern U.S. Army Rangers and U.S. Army Special Forces.




Mosby initially spoke out against secession, but joined the Confederate army nonetheless. Many years after the war, Mosby explained why, although he disapproved of slavery, he 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."

After impressing J.E.B. Stuart with his ability to gather intelligence, Mosby was promoted to First Lieutenant and assigned to Stuart's cavalry scouts. He helped 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. He found 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.

In January 1863, Stuart, with Lee's concurrence, authorized Mosby to form and take command of the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, Partisan Rangers. This was 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. These included sharing in the disposition of spoils of war. Mosby was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on January 21, 1864 and to Colonel, December 7, 1864.

Mosby's Rangers


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. The story is told that Mosby found Stoughton in bed and roused 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!" His group also captured 30 or more sentries without firing a shot.

Several weeks after General Robert E. Lee's surrender in April 1865, Mosby simply disbanded his Rangers, as he refused to surrender formally. Mosbys' Rangers however were the carriers of the surrender orders and documents to Appomattox Court House.


The Gray Ghost never surrendered his colors.


After the war, Mosby served as U.S. consul to Hong Kong (1878–1885), served as a lawyer in San Francisco, worked for the Department of the Interior, and as assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice (1904–10). He knew a young George S. Patton III and enjoyed making "Battle plans" with Patton in the sand.

Mosby died in Washington, D.C. May 30, 1916

“War loses a great deal of it’s romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first than the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country: but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it." - John Singleton Mosby, Colonel, CSA

ANOTHER FOURTH OF JULY

These images are from the aftermath of the great Battle of Gettysburg, fought 1 - 3 July, 1863.

Dead Union soldiers near the Emmittsburg Road portion of the Battlefield.

Fallen Union and Confederate soldiers lay intermingled from the Living Hell that was Devils Den.

Union and Confederate dead lay where they fell at the Little Round Top, where the extreme left of the Union line was held on the first day of the battle.

Thousands of horses shared the same fate as the soldiers of both Armies.

Aftermath of the famous charge of Pickett's CSA Division.

The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania was the High Tide of the Confederacy and the turning point of the Civil War for Union. In the space of three days in July a total of 17,684 Union soldiers were killed and wounded; 18,750 Confederate soldiers killed and wounded, in a monumental struggle that began as a forage patrol for a shoe factory. The significance of this battle was codified by the words of Abraham Lincoln, who redefined the cause and meaning of America in his great Gettysburg Address:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate . . . we can not consecrate . . . we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The reason why the outcome of Gettysburg was so important are contained within these words, carved in stone upon the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. - S.L.