The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby E-Book

John S. Mosby

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 452

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

John Singleton Mosby served as commander of the 1st Virginia Cavalry, known as Mosby's Rangers. His memoirs describe his experiences and recollections of Robert E. Lee and JEB Stuart, among others. A table of contents is included.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

       ACKNOWLEDGMENT is made to the publishers of Munsey’s Magazine, Leslie’s Weekly, and the New York Herald for permission to use material which has previously appeared in their pages.

INTRODUCTION

       THE chronicles of history record that in most wars some figure, through intrepidity, originality, and brilliancy of action, has raised himself above his fellows and achieved a picturesqueness which is commonly associated only with characters of fiction. In the American Civil War, or the War Between the States, three dashing cavalry leaders - Stuart, Forrest, and Mosby - so captured the public imagination that their exploits took on a glamour, which we associate - as did the writers of the time - with the deeds of the Waverley characters and the heroes of Chivalry. Of the three leaders Colonel John S. Mosby (1833-1916) was, perhaps, the most romantic figure. In the South his dashing exploits made him one of the great heroes of the “Lost Cause.” In the North he was painted as the blackest of redoubtable scoundrels, a fact only to be explained as due to the exasperation caused by a successful enemy against whom all measures were worthless and ineffective. So great became the fame of Mosby’s partisan exploits that soldiers of fortune came even from Europe to share his adventures.

       Colonel Mosby was a “Virginian of the Virginians”, educated at the State’s University, and seemed destined to pass his life as an obscure Virginia attorney, when war brought him his opportunity for fame. The following pages contain the story of his life as private in the cavalry, as a scout, and as a leader of partisans.

       But Mosby was the type of man who is not content with the routine performance of duties, and this was illustrated early in his career as a soldier. He was ever on the watch to aid the cause in which he was engaged. Stuart’s famous ride around McClellan and Lee’s attack on Pope, before he could be reinforced, were deeds for which Mosby fairly earned some share of credit. These enterprises, together with his prevention of Sheridan’s use of the Manassas Gap Railroad, had a distinct bearing upon the successful maintenance of the Southern Confederacy for four long years. But his great work was his distinctive warfare near Washington against the troops guarding the Potomac. Behind the Northern forces aiming at Richmond, for two years of almost incredible activity - Mosby himself said, “I rarely rested more than a day at a time” - he maintained his warfare, neutralizing at times some fifty thousand troops by compelling them to guard the rear of the enemy and his capital. The four counties of Virginia nearest Washington became known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” Here his blows were almost incessant, followed always by the dispersing of his band or bands among the farmhouses of the sympathetic inhabitants. Seldom or never was an attack made with more than two hundred and fifty men. Usually from thirty to sixty would be collected at a rendezvous, such as Rectortown, Aldie, or Upperville, and after discharging, as it were, a lightning flash, be swallowed up in impenetrable darkness, leaving behind only a threat of some future raid, to fall no one could foresee where. The execution of this bold plan was successful - long successful; its damage to the enemy enormous, and it exhibited a military genius of the highest order. By reason of his originality and intellectual boldness, as well as his intrepidity and success of execution, Mosby is clearly entitled to occupy a preëminence among the partisan leaders of history.

       And this is to be said for him, that he created and kept up to the end of the great war “Mosby’s Confederacy”, while preserving the full confidence and regard of the knightly Lee.

       Confederate General Marcus Wright, who assisted in editing the records of the war, wrote to Colonel Mosby as follows:

Dear Colonel Mosby:         It may and I know will be interesting to you that I have carefully read all of General R. E. Lee’s dispatches, correspondence, etc., during the war of 1861-1865; and while he was not in the habit of paying compliments, yet these papers of his will show that you received from him more compliments and commendations than any other officer in the Confederate army.

       But an even more effective testimonial of Mosby’s success comes from the records of his enemy. For a time the Northern belief was that “Mosby” was a myth, the “Wandering Jew” of the struggle. Later, he was termed the “Modern Rob Roy.” Such epithets as “land pirate”, “horse thief”, “murderer”, and “guerrilla” bear witness of the feeling of exasperation against the man. “Guerrilla”, however, was the favorite epithet, and Mosby did not resent its use, for he believed that his success had made the term an honorable one.

       The effectiveness of Mosby’s work is illustrated by the following comment of the Comte de Paris in his “History of the Civil War in America”:

       In Washington itself, General Heintzelman was in command, who, besides the depots . . . had under his control several thousand infantry ready to take the field, and Stahel’s division of cavalry numbering 6,000 horses, whose only task was to pursue Mosby and the few hundred partisans led by this daring chief.

       General Joseph E. Hooker, in his testimony on the conduct of the war, said:

       I may here state that while at Fairfax Court House my cavalry was reinforced by that of Major-General Stahel. The latter numbered 6,100 sabres. . . . The force opposed to them was Mosby’s guerrillas, numbering about 200, and, if the reports of the newspapers were to be believed, this whole party was killed two or three times during the winter. From the time I took command of the army of the Potomac, there was no evidence that any force of the enemy, other than the above-named, was within 100 miles of Washington City; and yet the planks on the chain bridge were taken up at night the greater part of the winter and spring. It was this cavalry force, it will be remembered, I had occasion to ask for, that my cavalry might be strengthened when it was numerically too weak to cope with the superior numbers of the enemy.

       How redoubtable Mosby was considered by the Northern authorities may be seen from the following:

War Department,

Washington, April 16, 1865.

Major-General Hancock,

Winchester, Va.

       In holding an interview with Mosby, it may be needless to caution an old soldier like you to guard against surprise or danger to yourself; but the recent murders show such astounding wickedness that too much precaution cannot be taken. If Mosby is sincere, he might do much toward detecting and apprehending the murderers of the President.

Edwin M. Stanton,

Secretary of War.

       Secretary Stanton had previously telegraphed to Hancock, “There is evidence that Mosby knew of Booth’s plan” - concerning the assassination of Lincoln - “and was here in the city with him.”

       No one knew better than Hancock that Mosby, at the time of the assassination, was in Virginia. The notion that he had anything to do with this crime was a part of the reputation he had acquired in the North and which he was doubtless quite willing to acquire in order to give worse dreams to those of the enemy who were in the neighborhood of his operations. This reputation was fostered by soldiers, who, during the war and long afterwards, entertained their firesides with tales of hairbreadth escapes from the dreadful guerrillas. But some of Mosby’s best friends in his later life were men who had been his prisoners.

       So far did the hostility and feeling against Mosby carry that as late as May 4, 1865, almost a month after Lee’s surrender, General Grant telegraphed to General Halleck, “I would advise offering a reward of $5,000 for Mosby.” This was done, but nobody captured him.

       The turning point in his career after the war was his endorsement of and voting for Grant in 1872. The Civil War was then but seven years past, and the Southern people were not prepared to follow his lead. They turned against him bitterly - against one of their chief heroes, whom they had delighted to honor - who had struggled so manfully and for so long against the storm raging against them. Young and of little experience in politics he may have thought it inconceivable that they would treat his voting for the magnanimous soldier as the unforgivable sin. His motive was rather gratitude than political, - rather a response to Grant’s behavior toward the Southern army, General Lee, and himself, than any design to change the attitude of the South toward the Federal Government. Certainly the Colonel, in spite of abuse and recrimination heaped upon him, never repented of this act.

       During his last illness Colonel Mosby did say, no doubt to hear himself contradicted, “I pitched my politics in too high a key when I voted for Grant. I ought to have accepted office under him. My family would now be comfortably supplied with money.” But this was far from being his serious opinion, as his own statements show.

       Intellectually the Colonel showed as great a constitutional impatience of restraint and as great individuality as he exhibited in his operations during the war. Perhaps his lifelong fondness for Byron’s poetry resulted from a feeling that there was a resemblance between the experiences of Byron, as represented in his poems, and his own - the “war of the many with one.” But the resemblance was a superficial one. Mosby’s impatience of restraint was a so strongly marked characteristic that he always seemed unwilling to follow a plan of his own, after having disclosed it to another. Probably the reason the “Yankees” trying to trap him could never find out where he was going to be next was because he never knew himself.

       The following from an interview with him, which appeared in the Philadelphia Post in 1867 or 1868, illustrates his tendency to think independently:

       “Whom do you consider the ablest General on the Federal side?”

       “McClellan, by all odds. I think he is the only man on the Federal side who could have organized the army as it was. Grant had, of course, more successes in the field in the latter part of the war, but Grant only came in to reap the benefits of McClellan’s previous efforts. At the same time, I do not wish to disparage General Grant, for he has many abilities, but if Grant had commanded during the first years of the war, we would have gained our independence. Grant’s policy of attacking would have been a blessing to us, for we lost more by inaction than we would have lost in battle. After the first Manassas the army took a sort of ‘dry rot’, and we lost more men by camp diseases than we would have by fighting.”

       “What is your individual opinion of Jeff Davis?”

       “I think history will record him as one of the greatest men of the time. Every lost cause, you know, must have a scapegoat, and Mr. Davis has been chosen as such; he must take all the blame without any of the credit. I do not know any man in the Confederate States that could have conducted the war with the same success that he did.”

       “Are there any bitter feelings cherished?”

       “No, not now, except those engendered since the war by the manner in which we have been treated. . . . The whole administration of affairs in Virginia is in the hands of a lot of bounty jumpers and jailbirds, and their only qualification is that they can take the iron-clad oath!” “But,” he added, “they generally take anything else they can lay their hands on.”

       General Grant and Colonel Mosby came to be far more than political friends. In fact it was through General Grant that Mosby secured his position with the Southern Pacific Railroad which he held from 1885 to 1901. The two men were well suited to each other. Grant was a silent man - a good listener. Mosby, abrupt and even rude toward those who wished to speak to him irrelevantly, dearly loved to talk to an intelligent person. The silent and slow commander of “all the armies”, guided by luminous common sense, and the nervous, impetuous raider - a raider by temperament, a raider in every way - in practice of law, taking part in politics, writing “Memoirs”, had much in common that was fundamental. They were but children in taking care of their business affairs; they were shy, and full of feeling, sentiment, and romance.

       The Colonel was an assistant attorney in the Department of Justice at Washington from 1904 to 1910 and continued to reside in the Capital until his death, May 30, 1916. He was not often inclined to talk about his own exploits in the Civil War, though going at some length into explanations of the movements of the great armies and engaging in various controversies about them, as well as about other matters of public interest, past and present. Colonel Mosby realized that the account of the military operations at the Battle of Manassas included in the present volume is markedly at variance with the usual version. His efforts to unravel the story of Stuart’s cavalry in the Gettysburg campaign extended over many years and resulted in a book 1 and numerous articles. The account which he prepared for these “Memoirs” he considered the best answer to Stuart’s critics, and spoke of it as “the final word.”

       The Colonel was little interested in anything which did not concern man in his social relations except, perhaps, logic and polemics. What could not be affirmed positively with a geometric Q. E. D. appealed to him only as it concerned war, politics, sentiment, or the like. New inventions left him cold, if not a little resentful, at their disturbing or rendering out of date the historical setting of the Civil War. But in political and social matters he was an advanced thinker, although this was rather a liberal attitude of mind - in which he took pride - than any interest in the

1. Now used as a textbook in the War College.

views themselves. His horizon in general was limited by American history and politics. He was full of the anecdotal history of Virginia and conspicuous Virginians of past generations, as well as information about family relationships - information such as is printed in books in New England, but in Virginia has been commonly left to oral tradition.

       But the events described in these “Memoirs” were his greatest interest and the days when he was a commander of partisans were the golden days of his over fourscore years. As he said at the reunion of his battalion in 1895:

       “Life cannot afford a more bitter cup than the one I drained at Salem, nor any higher reward of ambition than that I received as Commander of the Forty-third Virginia Battalion of Cavalry.”

CHARLES W. RUSSELL.

THE MEMOIRS OF COLONEL JOHN S. MOSBY

CHAPTER I . EARLY LIFE

       I WAS born December 6, 1833, at the home of my grandfather, James McLaurine, in Powhatan County, Virginia. He was a son of Robert McLaurine, an Episcopal minister, who came from Scotland before the Revolution. Great-grandfather McLaurine lived at the glebe and is buried at Peterville Church in Powhatan. After the church was disestablished, the State appropriated the glebe, and Peterville was sold to the Baptists. My grandfather McLaurine lived to be very old. He was a soldier of the Revolution, and I well remember his cough, which it was said he contracted from exposure in the war when he had smallpox. My grandfather Mosby was also a native of Powhatan. He lived at Gibraltar, but moved to Nelson County, where my father, Alfred D. Mosby, was born. When I was a child my father bought a farm near Charlottesville, in

Albemarle, on which I was raised. I recollect that one day I went with my father to our peach orchard on a high ridge, and he pointed out Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, on a mountain a few miles away, and told me some of the history of the great man who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

       At that time there were no public and few private schools in Virginia, but a widow opened a school in Fry’s Woods, adjoining my father’s farm. My sister Victoria and I went as her pupils. I was seven years old when I learned to read, although I had gone a month or so to a country school in Nelson, near a post office called Murrell’s Shop, where I had learned to spell. As I was so young my mother always sent a negro boy with me to the schoolhouse, and he came for me in the evening. But once I begged him to stay all day with me, and I shared my dinner with him. When playtime came, some of the larger boys put him up on a block for sale and he was knocked down to the highest bidder. I thought it was a bona fide sale and was greatly distressed at losing such a dutiful playmate. We went home together, but he never spent another day with me at the schoolhouse.

       The first drunken man I ever saw was my schoolmaster. He went home at playtime to get his dinner, but took an overdose of whiskey. On the way back he fell on the roadside and went to sleep. The big boys picked him up and carried him into the schoolhouse, and he heard our lessons. The school closed soon after; I don’t know why.

       It was a common thing in the old days of negro slavery for a Virginia gentleman, who had inherited a fortune, to live in luxury with plenty of the comforts of life and die insolvent; while his overseer retired to live on what he had saved. Mr. Jefferson was one example of this. I often heard that Jefferson had held in his arms Betsy Wheat, a pupil at the school where I learned to read. She was the daughter of the overseer and, being the senior of all the other scholars, was the second in command. She exercised as much authority as the schoolmistress.

       As I have said, the log schoolhouse was in Fry’s Woods, which adjoined my father’s farm. To this rude hut I walked daily for three sessions, with my eldest sister - later with two - often through a deep snow, to get the rudiments of an education. I remember that the schoolmistress, a most excellent woman, whipped her son and me for fighting. That was the only blow I ever received during the time I went to school.

       A few years ago I visited the spot in company with Bartlett Bolling, who was with me in the war. There was nothing left but a pile of rocks - the remains of the chimney. The associations of the place raised up phantoms of the past. I am the only survivor of the children who went to school there. I went to the spring along the same path where I had often walked when a barefooted schoolboy and got a drink of cool water from a gourd. There I first realized the pathos of the once popular air, “Ben Bolt”; the spring was still there and the running brook, but all of my schoolmates had gone.

       The “Peter Parley” were the standard schoolbooks of my day. In my books were two pictures that made a lasting impression on me. One was of Wolfe dying on the field in the arms of a soldier; the other was of Putnam riding down the stone steps with the British close behind him. About that time I borrowed a copy of the “Life of Marion”, which was the first book I read, except as a task at school. I remember how I shouted when I read aloud in the nursery of the way the great partisan hid in the swamp and outwitted the British. I did not then expect that the time would ever come when I would have escapes as narrow as that of Putnam and take part in adventures that have been compared with Marion’s.

       When I was ten years old I began going to school in Charlottesville; sometimes I went on horseback, and sometimes I walked. Two of my teachers, - James White, who taught Latin and Greek, and Aleck Nelson, who taught mathematics - were afterwards professors at Washington and Lee, while General Robert E. Lee was its president. When I was sixteen years old I went as a student to the University of Virginia - some evidence of the progress I had made in getting an education.

       In my youth I was very delicate and often heard that I would never live to be a grown man. But the prophets were wrong, for I have outlived nearly all the contemporaries of my youth. I was devoted to hunting, and a servant always had coffee ready for me at daylight on a Saturday morning, so that I was out shooting when nearly all were sleeping. My father was a slaveholder, and I still cherish a strong affection for the slaves who nursed me and played with me in my childhood. That was the prevailing sentiment in the South - not one peculiar to myself - but one prevailing in all the South toward an institution 1 which we now

1. Colonel Mosby never had a word to say favorable to slavery - a fact which may be attributed to the influence of Miss Abby Southwick, afterwards Mrs. Stevenson, of Manchester, Massachusetts, who was employed to teach his sisters. She was a strong and outspoken abolitionist and a friend of Garrison and Wendell Phillips. All the Mosby family were, and remained, devoted to Miss Southwick. She and young Mosby had numerous talks on the subject of slavery and other political topics. At the close of the war she immediately sent money and supplies to the family and told how anxiously she had read the papers, fearing to find the news that he had been killed.

thank Abraham Lincoln for abolishing. I had no taste for athletics and have never seen a ball game. My habits of study were never regular, but I always had a literary taste. While I fairly recited Tacitus and Thucydides as a task, I read with delight Irving’s stories of the Moors in Granada.

       [Colonel Mosby’s career at the University of Virginia, where he graduated in Greek and mathematics, was not so serene throughout as that of the ordinary student. One incident made a lasting impression upon his mind and affected his future course. He was convicted of unlawfully shooting a fellow student and was sentenced to a fine and imprisonment in the jail at Charlottesville. It was the case of defending the good name of a young lady and, while the law was doubtless violated, public sentiment was indicated by the legislature’s remitting the fine and the governor’s granting a pardon.

       The Baltimore Sun published an account of this incident, by Mr. John S. Patton, who said that Mosby had been fined ten dollars for assaulting the town sergeant. The young Mosby had been known as one not given to lawless hilarity, but as a “fighter.” “And the Colonel himself admits,” continues Patton, “that he got the worst of these boyish engagements, except once, when the fight was on between him and Charles Price, of Meachem’s, - and in that case they were separated before victory could perch. They also go so far as to say that he was a spirited lad, although far from ‘talkative’ and not far from quiet, introspective moods. . . . His antagonist this time was George Turpin, a student of medicine in the University. . . . Turpin had carved Frank Morrison to his taste with a pocket knife and added to his reputation by nearly killing Fred M. Wills with a rock. . . .

       “When Jack Mosby, spare and delicate - Turpin was large and athletic - received the latter’s threat that he would eat him ‘blood raw’ on sight, he proceeded to get ready. The cause of the impending hostilities was an incident at a party at the Spooner residence in Montebello, which Turpin construed as humiliating to him, and with the aid of some friends who dearly loved a fisticuff, he reached the conclusion that John Mosby was to blame and that it was his duty to chastise him. Mosby was due at Mathematics lecture room and thither he went and met Professor Courtnay and did his problems first of all. That over, he thrust a pepper-box pistol into his jacket and went forth to find his enemy. He had not far to go; for by this time the Turpins were keeping a boarding house in the building then, as now, known as the Cabell House, about the distance of four Baltimore blocks from the University. Thither went the future partisan leader, and, with a friend, was standing on the back porch when Turpin approached. He advanced on Mosby at once - but not far; the latter brought his pepper-box into action with instant effect. Turpin went down with a bullet in his throat, and was taken up as good as dead. . . . The trial is still referred to as the cause célèbre in our local court. Four great lawyers were engaged in it: the names of Robertson, Rives, Watson, and Leach adorn the legal annals of Virginia.”

       The prosecutor in this case was Judge William J. Robertson, of Charlottesville, who made a vigorous arraignment of the young student. On visiting the jail one day after the conviction, much to his surprise Robertson was greeted by Mosby in a friendly manner. This was followed by the loan of a copy of Blackstone’s “Commentaries” to the prisoner and a lifelong friendship between the two. Thus it was that young Mosby entered upon the study of law, which he made his profession.

       Colonel Mosby wrote on a newspaper clipping giving an account of the shooting incident: “I did not go to Turpin’s house, but he came to my boarding house, and he had sent me a message that he was coming there to ‘eat me up.’ “

       Mosby’s conviction affected him greatly, and he did not include an account of it in his story because - or at least it would seem probable - he feared that the conclusion would be drawn that he was more like the picture painted by the enemy during the war, instead of the kindly man he really was. However this may be, nothing pleased him more than the honors paid to him by the people of Charlottesville and by the University of Virginia. He spoke of these things as “one of Time’s revenges.”

       In January, 1915, a delegation from Virginia presented Colonel Mosby with a bronze medal and an embossed address which read as follows:

To Colonel John S. Mosby, Warrenton, Virginia.

       Your friends and admirers in the University of Virginia welcome this opportunity of expressing for you their affection and esteem and of congratulating you upon the vigor and alertness of body and mind with which you have rounded out your fourscore years.

       Your Alma Mater has pride in your scholarly application in the days of your prepossessing youth; in your martial genius, manifested in a career singularly original and romantic; in the forceful fluency of your record of the history made by yourself and your comrades in the army of Northern Virginia; and in the dignity, diligence, and sagacity with which you have served your united country at home and abroad.

       Endowed with the gift of friendship, which won for you the confidence of both Lee and Grant, you have proven yourself a man of war, a man of letters, and a man of affairs worthy the best traditions of your University and your State, to both of which you have been a loyal son.]

CHAPTER II . THE WAR BEGINS

       I WENT to Bristol, Virginia, in October, 1855, and opened a law office. I was a stranger and the first lawyer that located there.

       When attending court at Abingdon in the summer of 1860 I met William Blackford, who had been in class with me at the University and who was afterwards a colonel of engineers on General Stuart’s staff. Blackford asked me to join a cavalry company which he was assisting to raise and in which he expected to be a lieutenant. To oblige him I allowed my name to be put on the muster roll; but was so indifferent about the matter that I was not present when the company organized. William E. Jones was made captain. He was a graduate of West Point and had resigned from the United States army a few years before. Jones was a fine soldier, but his temper produced friction with his superiors and greatly impaired his capacity as a commander.

       There were omens of war at this time, but nobody realized the impending danger. Our first drill was on January Court Day, 1861. I borrowed a horse and rode up to Abingdon to take my first lesson. After the drill was over and the company had broken ranks, I went to hear John B. Floyd make a speech on the condition of the times. He had been Secretary of War and had lately resigned. Buchanan, in a history of his administration, said that Floyd’s resignation had nothing to do with secession, but he requested it on account of financial irregularities he had discovered in the War Department.

       But to return to the campaign of 1860. I never had any talent or taste for stump speaking or handling party machines, but with my strong convictions I was a supporter of Douglas 1 and the Union.

       Whenever a Whig became extreme on the slave question, he went over to the opposition party. No doubt the majority of the Virginia Democrats agreed with the Union sentiments of Andrew Jackson, but the party was controlled

1. Colonel Mosby was almost the only Douglas Democrat in Bristol; that is to say he was in favor of recognizing the right of a territory belonging to the United States to vote against slavery within its borders. The Breckinridge Democrats believed, especially after the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, in the right of the slaveholders to take their slaves into the territories and hold them there in slavery against the wishes of the inhabitants.

by a section known as “the chivalry”, who were disciples of Calhoun, and got most of the honors. It was for this reason that a Virginia Senator (Mason), who belonged to that school, was selected to read to the Senate the dying speech of the great apostle of secession and slavery (Calhoun). It proved to be a legacy of woe to the South.

       I met Mr. Mason at an entertainment given him on his return from London after the close of the war. He still bore himself with pride and dignity, but without that hauteur which is said to have characterized him when he declared in the Senate that he was an ambassador from Virginia. He found his home in the Shenandoah Valley desolate. It will be remembered that, with John Slidell, Mason was captured when a passenger on board an English steamer and sent a prisoner to Fort Warren (in Boston Harbor), but he was released on demand of the English government. Mason told us many interesting things about his trip to London - of a conversation with Lord Brougham at a dinner, and the mistake the London post office had made in sending his mail to the American minister, Charles Francis Adams, and Mr. Adams’s mail to Mason. Seeing him thus in the wreck of his hopes and with no future to cheer him, I was reminded of Caius Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage.

       William L. Yancey, of Alabama, did more than any other man in the South to precipitate the sectional conflict. In a commercial convention, shortly before the campaign of 1860, he had offered resolutions in favor of repealing the laws against the African slave trade. Yancey attacked Thomas Jefferson as an abolitionist, as Calhoun had done in the Senate, and called Virginia a breeding ground for slaves to sell to the Cotton States. He also charged her people with using the laws against the importation of Africans to create for themselves a monopoly in the slave market. Roger A. Pryor replied to him in a powerful speech.

       Yancey was more responsible than any other man for the disruption of the Democratic Party and, consequently, of the Union. He came to Virginia to speak in the Presidential canvass. I was attending court at Abingdon, where Yancey was advertised to speak. A few Douglas men in the county had invited Tim Rives, a famous stump orator, to meet Yancey, and I was delegated to call on the latter and prepare a joint debate. Yancey was stopping at the house of Governor Floyd - then Secretary of War.

I went to Floyd’s home, was introduced to Yancey, and stated my business. He refused the joint debate, and I shall never forget the arrogance and contempt with which he treated me. I heard his speech that day; it was a strong one for his side. As the Virginia people had not yet been educated up to the secession point, Yancey thinly veiled his disunion purposes. That night we put up Tim Rives, who made a great speech in reply to Yancey and pictured the horrors of disunion and war. Rives was elected a member of the Convention that met the next winter, and there voted against disunion.

       Early in the war, the company in which I was a private was in camp near Richmond, and one day I met Rives on the street. It was the first time I had seen him since the speech at Abingdon. I had written an account of his speech for a Richmond paper, which pleased him very much, and he was very cordial. He wanted me to go with him to the governor’s house and get Governor Letcher, who had also been a Douglas man the year before, to give me a commission. I declined and told him that as I had no military training, I preferred serving as a private under a good officer. I had no idea then that I should ever rise above the ranks.

       A few days before the presidential election, I was walking on the street in Bristol when I was attracted by a crowd that was holding a Bell and Everett meeting. Some one called on me to make a Union speech. I rose and told the meeting that I saw no reason for making a Union speech at a Bell and Everett meeting; that it was my mission to call not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. This “brought down the house.” I little thought that in a few months I should be regarded as one of the sinners.

       I was very friendly with the editor of the secession paper in my town. One day he asked me what I intended to do in the case of a collision between the Government and South Carolina. I told him I would be on the side of the Union. He said that I should find him on the other side. “Very well,” I replied, “I shall meet you at Philippi.” Some years after the war he called upon me in Washington and jokingly reminded me of what I had said to him. As he was about my age and did not go into the army, I was tempted to tell him that I did go to Philippi, but did not meet him there. 1

       1. The editor in question, Mr. J. A. Sperry, of the Bristol Courier, has told the story in a somewhat different way. In writing his reminiscences of Mosby he said:

“Mosby pursued the even tenor of his way until the memorable Presidential Campaign of 1860. So guarded had been his political utterances that but few of the villagers knew with which of the parties to class him, when he suddenly bloomed out as an elector on the Douglas ticket. This seemed to fix his status as a Union Democrat. I say seemed, for I am now inclined to think his politics was like his subsequent fighting, - independent and irregular. “We saw little of him in the stirring times immediately succeeding the election. One morning about the middle of January, 1861, I met him in the street, when he abruptly accosted me, ‘I believe you are a secessionist per se.’

“ ‘What has led you to that conclusion?’

“ ‘The editorial in your paper to-day.’

“ ‘You have not read it carefully,’ said I. ‘There is nothing in it to justify your inference. In summing up the events of the week, I find that several sovereign States have formally severed their connection with the Union. We are confronted with the accomplished fact of secession. I have expressed no opinion either of the right or the expediency of the movement. I am not a secessionist per se, if I understand the term; but a secessionist by the logic of events.’

“ ‘I am glad to hear it,’ he rejoined. ‘I have never coveted the office of Jack Ketch, but I would cheerfully fill it for one day for the pleasure of hanging a disunionist per se. Do you know what secession means? It means bloody war, followed by feuds between the border States, which a century may not see the end of.’

“ ‘I do not agree with you,’ I said. ‘I see no reason why secession should not be peaceable. But in the event of the dreadful war you predict, which side will you take?’

“ ‘I shall fight for the Union, Sir, - for the Union, of course, and you?’

“ ‘Oh, I don’t apprehend any such extremity, but if I am forced into the struggle, I shall fight for my mother section. Should we meet upon the field of battle, as Yancey said to Brownlow the other day, I would run a bayonet through you.’

“ ‘Very well, - we’ll meet at Philippi,’ retorted Mosby and stalked away.

“ ‘Several months elapsed before I saw him again, but the rapid and startling events of those months made them seem like years. I was sitting in my office writing, one day in the latter part of April, when my attention was attracted by the quick step of some one entering and the exclamation, ‘How do you like my uniform?’

“It was a moment before I could recognize the figure pirouetting before me in the bob-tail coat of a cavalry private.

“ ‘Why, Mosby!’ I exclaimed, ‘This isn’t Philippi, nor is that a Federal uniform.’

“ ‘No more of that,’ said he, with a twinkle of the eye. ‘When I talked that way, Virginia had not passed the ordinance of secession. She is out of the Union now. Virginia is my mother, God bless her! I can’t fight against my mother, can I?’ “

       In April, 1861, came the call to arms. On the day after the bombardment by South Carolina and the surrender of Fort Sumter that aroused all the slumbering passions of the country, I was again attending court at Abingdon, when the telegraph operator told me of the great news that had just gone over the wire. Mr. Lincoln had called on the States for troops to suppress the rebellion.

       In the preceding December, Floyd had ordered Major Anderson to hold Sumter against the secessionists to the last extremity. Anderson simply obeyed Floyd’s orders. When the news came, Governor Floyd was at home, and I went to his house to tell him. I remember he said it would be the bloodiest war the world had ever seen. Floyd’s was a sad fate. He had, as Secretary of War, given great offense to the North by the shipping of arms from the northern arsenals to the South, some months before secession. He was charged with having been in collusion with the enemies of the Government under which he held office, and with treachery. At Donelson he was the senior officer in command. When the other brigadiers refused to fight any longer, he brought off his own men and left the others to surrender to Grant. This was regarded as a breach of discipline, and Jefferson Davis relieved him of his command.

       When Lincoln’s proclamation was issued, the Virginia Convention was still in session and had not passed a secession ordinance, so she was not included with States against which the proclamation was first directed. With the exception of the northwestern section of the State, where there were few slaves and the Union sentiment predominated, the people of Virginia, in response to the President’s call for troops to enforce the laws, sprang to arms to resist the Government. The war cry “To arms!” resounded throughout the land and, in the delirium of the hour, we all forgot our Union principles in our sympathy with the pro-slavery cause, and rushed to the field of Mars.

       In issuing his proclamation, Lincoln referred for authority to a statute in pursuance of which George Washington sent an army into Pennsylvania to suppress the Whiskey Insurrection. But the people were persuaded that Lincoln’s real object was to abolish slavery, although at his inaugural he had said:

       There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension that by the accession of the Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security were endangered. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

       The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves. Enforcing the laws was not coercing a State unless the State resisted the execution of the laws. When such a collision came, coercion depended on which was the stronger side.

       The Virginia Convention had been in session about two months, but a majority had opposed secession up to the time of the proclamation, and even then a large minority, including many of the ablest men in Virginia, voted against it.

Among that number was Jubal Early, who was prominent in the war. Nobody cared whether it was a constitutional right they were exercising, or an act of revolution. At such times reason is silent and passion prevails.

       The ordinance of secession was adopted in April and provided that it be submitted to a popular vote on the fourth Thursday in May. According to the States’ Rights theory, Virginia was still in the Union until the ordinance was ratified; but the State immediately became an armed camp, and her troops seized the United States Armory at Harper’s Ferry and the Norfolk Navy Yard. Virginia went out of the Union by force of arms, and I went with her.

CHAPTER III . A PRIVATE IN THE CAVALRY

       IN that fateful April, 1861, our local company, with other companies of infantry and cavalry, went into camp in a half-finished building of the Martha Washington College in the suburbs of Abingdon. Captain Jones allowed me to remain in Bristol for some time to close up the business I had in hand for clients and to provide for my family. A good many owed me fees when I left home, and they still owe me. My last appearance in court was at Blountville, Tennessee, before the Chancellor.

       My first night in camp I was detailed as one of the camp guards. Sergeant Tom Edmonson - a gallant soldier who was killed in June, 1864 - gave me the countersign and instructed me as to the duties of a sentinel. For two hours, in a cold wind, I walked my round and was very glad when my relief came and I could go to rest on my pallet of straw. The experience of my first night in camp rather tended to chill my military ardor and was far more distasteful than picketing near the enemy’s lines on the Potomac, which I afterwards did in hot and cold weather, very cheerfully; in fact I enjoyed it. The danger of being shot by a rifleman in a thicket, if not attractive, at least kept a vidette awake and watching. At this time I was the frailest and most delicate man in the company, but camp duty was always irksome to me, and I preferred being on the outposts. During the whole time that I served as a private - nearly a year - I only once missed going on picket three times a week. The single exception was when I was disabled one night by my horse falling over a cow lying in the road.

       Captain Jones had strict ideas of discipline, which he enforced, but he took good care of his horses as well as his men. There was a horse inspection every morning, and the man whose horse was not well groomed got a scolding mixed with some cursing by Captain Jones. Jones was always very kind to me. He drilled his own company and also a company of cavalry from Marion, which had come to our camp to get the benefit of his instruction in cavalry tactics.

       In the Marion company was William E. Peters, Professor at Emory and Henry College, who had graduated-in the same class in Greek with me at the University. When he and I were students reading Thucydides, we did not expect ever to take part in a greater war than the Peloponnesian. Peters had left his literary work to be a lieutenant of cavalry. He was made a staff officer by General Floyd in his campaign that year in West Virginia. For some reason Peters was not with Floyd when the latter escaped from Fort Donelson in February, 1862. Peters was a strict churchman, but considered it his duty to fight a duel with a Confederate officer. He became a colonel of cavalry. Peters’s regiment was with McCausland when he was sent by General Early in August, 1864, to Chambersburg, and his regiment was selected as the one to set fire to the town. Peters refused to obey the order, for which he is entitled to a monument to his memory. Reprisals in war can only be justified as a deterrent. As the Confederates were holding the place for only a few hours, while the Northern armies were occupying a large part of the South, no doubt, aside from any question of humanity, Peters thought it was bad policy to provoke retaliation. General Early ordered a reprisal in kind on account of the houses burned in the Shenandoah Valley a few months before by General Hunter. As General Early made no mention of Peters in his book, I imagine it was because of his refusal to apply the torch to Chambersburg. On his return from this expedition, McCausland was surprised by Averill at Moorefield, and Peters was wounded and captured. He told me that he had expected to be put under arrest for disobedience as soon as he got back to Virginia.

       Hunter was a member of an old Virginia family, but he showed no favor to Virginians. At Bull Run he commanded the leading division that crossed at Sudley and was badly wounded, but there was no sympathy for him in Virginia. A relative of his told me that when Hunter met a lady who was a near relative, he offered to embrace her, but was repelled. She thought that in fighting against Virginia he was committing an unnatural act and that he had the feelings, described by Hamlet, of one who “would kill a king and marry with his brother.” On Hunter’s staff was his relative, Colonel Strother, who had won literary distinction over the pen name of “Porte Crayon.” Both men seemed to be animated by the same sentiments towards their kin. Hunter presided over the court that condemned Mrs. Surratt as an accessory to the assassination of President Lincoln. He closed his life by suicide.

       But to return to our company of cavalry and my first days as a soldier. We were sent, within a few days, to another camping ground, where we had plank sheds for shelter and where we drilled regularly. Several companies of infantry shared the camp with us. Once I had been detailed for camp guard and, having been relieved just as the company went out to drill, I saddled my horse and went along. I had no idea, that it was a breach of discipline to be doing double duty, until two men with muskets came up and told me that I was under arrest for it. I was too proud to say a word and, as my time had come, I went again to walking my rounds. Once after that, when we were in camp on Bull Run, I was talking at night with the Colonel in his tent and did not hear the bugle sounded for roll call. So a lieutenant, who happened to be in command, ordered me, as a penalty, to do duty the rest of the morning as a camp guard. He knew that my absence from roll call was not wilful but a mistake. I would not make any explanation but served my tour of duty. These were the only instances in which I was punished when a private.

       Our Circuit Judge, Fulkerson, who had served in the Mexican War, was appointed a colonel by Governor Letcher, and took command of the camp at Abingdon. But in a few days we were ordered to Richmond. Fulkerson, with the infantry, went by rail, but Jones preferred to march his Company all the way. As he had been an officer in the army on the plains, we learned a good deal from him in the two weeks on the road, and it was a good course of discipline for us. I was almost a perfect stranger in the company to which I belonged, and I felt so lonely in camp that I applied to Captain Jones for a transfer to an infantry company from Bristol. He said that I would have to get the approval of the Governor and forwarded my application to him at Richmond. Fortunately the next day we were ordered away, and I heard nothing more about the transfer.

       On May 30, in the afternoon, our company - one hundred strong - left Abingdon to join the army. In spite of a drizzling rain the whole population was out to say farewell; in fact a good many old men rode several miles with us. We marched ten miles and then disbanded to disperse in squads, under the command of an officer or of a non-commissioned officer, to spend the night at the country homes. I went under Jim King, the orderly sergeant, and spent the night at the house of Major Ab. Beattie, who gave us the best of everything, but I was so depressed at parting with my wife and children that I scarcely spoke a word. King had been a cadet at West Point for a short time and had learned something of tactics. He was afterwards transferred to the 37th Virginia Infantry and was killed in Jackson’s battle at Kernstown.

       When the roll was called the next morning at the rendezvous at old Glade Spring Church, I don’t think a man was missing. The men were boiling with enthusiasm and afraid that the war would be over before they got to the firing line. I remember one man who was conspicuous on the march; he rode at the head of the column and got the bouquets the ladies threw at us; but in our first battle he was conspicuous for his absence and stayed with the wagons. Our march to the army was an ovation. Nobody dreamed of the possibility of our failure and the last scene of the great drama at Appomattox. We made easy marches, and by the time we got to Wytheville, all of my depression of spirits had gone, and I was as lively as anybody. It took us two weeks to get to Richmond, where we spent a few days on the Fair Grounds. We were then sent to a camp of instruction at Ashland, where we remained a short time or until we, with a cavalry company from Amelia County, were ordered to in Joe Johnston’s army in the Shenandoah.

       I well remember that we were in Ashland when news came to us that Joe Johnston, on June 15, had retreated from Harper’s Ferry to Winchester. To begin the war by abandoning such an outpost, when there was no enemy near and no necessity for it, was a shock for which we were not prepared, and it chilled our enthusiasm. I couldn’t understand it - that was all - but my instinct told me at the time what was afterwards confirmed by reason and experience - that a great blunder had been committed.

       At Wytheville, on our third days march to Richmond, we got the papers which informed us that the war had actually begun in a skirmish at Fairfax, where Captain Marr had been killed. We were greatly excited by the news of the affair. Our people had been reading about war and descriptions of battles by historians and poets, from the days of Homer down, and were filled with enthusiasm for military glory. They had no experience in the hardships of military service and knew nothing, had no conception, of the suffering it brings to the homes of those who have left them. In all great wars, women and children are the chief sufferers.