The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby E-Book

John S. Mosby

• Herausgeber: Arcadia Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

John Singleton Mosby, the ‘Gray Ghost’, was one of the most effective military leaders of the American Civil War.In his memoirs, first published in 1917, he gives a thrilling account of his tactics.This book is a fascinating account that covers Mosby’s entry into the Confederate army, daily life within it and major battles including Manassas and Gettysburg.

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

THE MEMOIRS OF COLONEL JOHN S. MOSBY

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

NOTES

John S. Mosby

THE MEMOIRS OF COLONEL JOHN S. MOSBY

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John S. Mosby

The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby

(1917)

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 pre-eminence 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 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 which we now 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.]