John Singleton Mosby: The Spirit of The Confederacy

John Singleton Mosby: The Spirit of the Confederacy

Many leaders and heroic figures emerged from the Civil War, on both the Confederate and Union sides. Ordinary people were given the chance to show their valor and conceive brilliant military strategies. One such "regular Joe" exercised the idea of attacking many spots of an army to weaken them instead of the traditional charging, and worked his way up through the ranks and become the legend known as the "Gray Ghost". John Singleton Mosby helped the Southern effort in the war by weakening the strength of the Union armies through his style of guerilla warfare, and by disrupting the supply of goods and communications within the Union through his attacks and raids.

John Mosby's life began in Edgemont Virginia on December 6th, 1833. He was baptized John Singleton Mosby by his Methodist parents Virginia Mclaurine and Alfred Mosby. John's first seven years of schooling took place in a school called Murrell's Shop. However, around 1840 his family moved to a town in the Blue Ridge Mountains four miles from Charlottesville, Virginia. For the next three years he would attend the local school in Fry's Woods. Starting at age ten, he attended Charlottesville School that taught up through high school .

Mosby had a reputation for a heated temper and one of the first occurrences of it was on March 29, 1853 after he had entered and graduated the University of Virginia .

The incident began with a disagreement between himself and another student, George R. Turpin, a medical student who was also attending the University. The tiff then escalated to the point that John shot the young man and then was sentenced to twelve months in prison and fined five hundred dollars. Surprisingly, this event seemed to help rather than hurt the reckless Mosby, for while he was in prison he studied law. After being pardoned by the governor at the time as a Christmas present, he studied in the law office of William J. Robertson. Admitted to the bar in 1855, Mosby first set up his own practice in Howardsville, Virginia. However, Mosby soon after moved his practice to Bristol but not before he met and married Pauline Clark . They were married in a Nashville hotel on December 30th, 1857 and had their first child May, on May 10th, 1859 . Unfortunately, their time together was cut short by the outbreak of the civil war in 1861.

Mosby first saw action at the first battle of Manassas, also called the first Battle of Bull Run. When Mosby enlisted in the Army he did not think of fighting for secession and all that stood for, but rather for defending his beloved State. He declared "Virginia is my mother, God bless her! I can't fight against my mother, can I?" . He joined the 1st Virginia Cavalry, and served as a private under Colonel Jones. Mosby, however, longed to be his own ruler and "emulate the Revolutionary War partisan hero Francis Marion, the legendary Swamp Fox," and have his own band of Partisan Rangers under the Confederacy's Partisan Ranger Law5. Mosby's time spent under "Grumble Jones", as he was amiably referred to, was not wasted. In fact Mosby admits that it even helped him to become a good commander. "While the cavalry did not have an opportunity to do much fighting during the first year of the war, they learned to perform the duties and endure the privations of a soldier's life. My experience in this school was of great advantage to me in the after years when I became a commander." (52-53)

Under Colonel Jones John Mosby rose to the rank of first lieutenant and adjutant of the first Virginia Cavalry. Then in June 1862 Mosby received recognition from J.E.B. Stuart by volunteering to serve as a scout for the Brigadier General and helping with Stuart's famous "Ride around McClellan". Mosby fashioned his guerilla warfare ideas from his hero Francis Marion, which used small, fast-moving cavalry as a more effective way of disrupting enemy plans and communications than large cavalry offensive actions. Finally in December 1862 Stuart permitted Mosby to go on a raid as the commander of a few men .

"On the morning he left, I went to his room, and asked him to let me stay behind for a few days with a squad of men. I thought I could do something with them. He readily assented. I got nine men--including, of course, Beattie--who volunteered to go with me. This was the beginning of my career as a partisan. The work I accomplished in two or three days with this squad induced him to let me have a larger force to try my fortune. I took my men down into Fairfax, and in two days captured twenty cavalrymen, with their horses, arms, and equipments." (59)6

Mosby's first recruits were fine soldiers from the army of Col. Fitz Lee, who took over Col. Jones's position, but whom were at the disposal of General Stuart. "I found him [Stuart] in his tent, and when I reported what I had done, he expressed great delight. So he agreed to let me go back with fifteen men and try my luck again. I went and never returned. I was not permitted to keep the men long. Fitz Lee complained of his men being with me, and so I had to send them back to him." (60) However, Mosby was not without a band of followers for too long. In a Confederate hospital in Middleburg, Mosby selected a few soldiers recuperating from the Maryland campaign they had fought in a couple months before. They proved to be a very useful bunch for the nighttime raids. "They would go down to Fairfax on a raid with me, and then return to the hospital. When the Federal cavalry came in pursuit, they never suspected that the cripples they saw lying on their couches or hobbling about on crutches were the men who created the panic at night in their camps." (60) 8.

The thrown-together group of soldiers became known as Partisan Rangers. They provided their own equipment, raided Union outposts and supply lines, then dispersed only to meet up later. "Mosby's tactics--swift night raids by small groups of rangers against trains, wagons, picket lines, outposts and small camps--made the rangers a dangerous menace to Union forces in Northern Virginia" . There was no established camp, which Mosby believed to be some incentive to join his band. "Old men and boys had joined my band. Some had run the gauntlet of Yankee pickets, and others swam the Potomac to get to me. Most men love the excitement of fighting, but abhor the drudgery of camps. I mounted, armed and equipped my command at the expense of the United States government."(60) . Mosby's lack of discipline combined with his success as a commander attracted many additional rangers to his crew.

One of their better-known escapades was that of