Centreville, Aug. 9, 1863.
After I reached
camp at Fairfax Station, I was busy all the evening with parties after Mosby,
who again made his appearance capturing wagons, — we retook them all, but
didn't take Mosby, who is an old rat and has a great many holes; on Friday
moved camp to Centreville, and am not half established yet; my tents are not
here. Did I write you, that in our skirmish with Mosby ten days ago, we lost
two more men killed and two wounded, also two prisoners, but we followed him so
far that we recaptured these and eight others whom he had taken from a
Pennsylvania regiment. I dislike to have men killed in such an “inglorious
warfare” as Cousin John calls it, — but it's not a warfare of my choosing, and
it's all in the day's work.1
_______________
1 As, for the following twelve months, the
energies of Lowell and the officers and soldiers of his brigade were kept on
the strain by day, and more often by night, by the dangerous activity of the
guerrilla chief Mosby and his band, it seems well to give some account of them
here. By a strict construction of the laws of war, the practices of this and
similar bands then operating within our lines would probably have outlawed
them. The Administration, however, did not take this stand, probably from the
fear of provoking endless retaliation.
John Singleton
Mosby, born in Virginia, a lawyer by profession, was a man of intelligence,
daring, and great energy, which gifts he devoted to the service of the Southern
cause, but in an irregular channel. His first military service was as a private
in the First Virginia Cavalry, where he attracted the attention of Colonel,
afterwards General J. E. B. Stuart. Seeing the advantage which the operations
of a mounted guerrilla force would have, operating within the lines of the armies
of the United States in the neighbourhood of the national capital, their main
source of reenforcement and supplies; also the romantic and material attraction
that such service would offer to young men, in contrast to army discipline and
hardship for precarious pay, Mosby drafted a bill authorizing such a force,
which was passed by the Confederate Congress in March, 1863.
I quote, with the
publisher's permission, from Mosby's War Reminiscences, the following
passages as to this bill and the principles (if one may so call them) on which
he recruited his command and waged war: —
“The Partisan
Ranger Law was an act of the Confederate Congress, authorizing the President to
issue commissions to officers to organize partisan corps. They stood on the
same footing with other cavalry organizations in respect to rank and pay, but,
in addition, were given the benefit of the law of maritime prize. There was really
no novelty in applying this principle to land forces. England has always done
so in Her Majesty's East India service. . . . Havelock, Campbell, and Outram
returned home from the East loaded with barbaric spoils. As there is a good
deal of human nature in people, and as Major Dalgetty is still a type of a
class, it will be seen how the peculiar privileges given to my men served to
whet their zeal. I have often heard them disputing over the division of the
horses before they were captured, etc.”
* * * * * * * * *
“To destroy
supply-trains, to break up the means of conveying intelligence, and thus
isolating the army from its base, as well as its different corps from each
other, to confuse their plans by capturing despatches, are the objects of
partisan war. . . . The military value of a partisan's work is not reckoned by
the amount of property destroyed, but by the number he keeps watching. . . . I endeavoured, as far as possible, to
diminish the aggressive power of the Army of the Potomac, by compelling it to
keep a large force on the defensive. . . .
“My men had no
camps. If they had gone into camp, they would soon have all been captured. They
would scatter for safety, and gather at my call like the Children of the Mist.
. . .
“I often sent small
squads at night to attack and ran in the pickets along a line of several miles.
Of course these alarms were very annoying, for no human being knows how sweet
sleep is but a soldier. I wanted to use and consume the Northern Cavalry in
hard work. It has always been a wonder with people how I managed to collect my
men after dispersing them. The true secret was, that it was a fascinating life,
and its attractions far more than counterbalanced its hardships and dangers.
They had no camp duty to do, which, however necessary, is disgusting to
soldiers of high spirit.”2
General J. E. B.
Stuart, the brilliant cavalry leader, a friend and admirer of Mosby, shows, in
a letter to him on his appointment to the new command, that he thought it well
not to be quite frank as to this new kind of soldier. “Already a Captain,” he
writes, “you will proceed to organize a band of permanent followers for the
war, but by all means ignore the term ‘Partisan Rangers.’ It is in bad repute.
Call your command ‘Mosby's Regulars,’ and it will soon give it a tone of
meaning and solid worth which all the world will soon recognize, and you will
inscribe that name of a fearless band of heroes on the pages of our country's
history and inshrine it in the hearts of a grateful people. Let ‘Mosby's
Regulars’ be a name of pride with friends and of respectful trepidation with
enemies.” (Rebellion Record.)
Colonel Mosby has
the virtue of frankness. He says in his book: “In one respect the charge that I
did not fight fair is true. I fought for success, and not for display. There
was no man in the Confederate Army who had less of the Spirit of Knighthood in
him or who took a more practical view of war than I did. . . . There is no
authenticated act of mine which is not perfectly in accordance with approved
military usage.”
I am also allowed
to quote the following extracts from Major John Scott's Partisan Life with
Mosby, partly for the information they give concerning the method of
warfare, and partly for their interesting rhetoric and ethics.
“The principle
which distinguishes the Partisan Ranger service is the distribution, among the
officers and men, of the spoil captured from the enemy, and, though Mosby
refuses to avail himself of it, for his own enrichment, he yet values it as a
powerful magnet to attract and bind adventurous spirits to his standard. The dreaming
statesman may indulge the reverie that, in republics, the patriotic principle
is sufficient to impel men to the discharge of military duty, but the practical
and clear-sighted genius of Mosby knows that mankind are governed by the
grosser motive of immediate self-interest and, impressed by this belief, he
made the strenuous effort of which I have told you to construct his command on
this basis.”
For the honour of
American manhood one wishes here to enter a protest, and call to mind the
sufferings and sacrifices of brave Confederate soldiers of the line, by tens of
thousands, for their cause.
Major Scott goes on:
—
“This system of
warfare, defensive in its object, yet aggressive in its principle, has baffled
all these attempts [of Federal officers to suppress him], because, as soon as
the blow is inflicted, the assailants are at once scattered before time is
afforded to strike them in return. The angry cloud gathers, the thunders roll
through the sky, the fatal flash is emitted, and the discharged vapours roll
into the air.
“Mosby, in an open
country, finds security in dispersion among a friendly and chivalrous people.
With them the members of the battalion live as boarders and friends; the
farmers, for a moderate compensation, and sometimes without compensation at
all, providing food and shelter for the soldier and his horse. This familiar
association between the soldiers and the citizens has developed a very pleasant
and romantic state of society, and its elevating effects on the former are very
marked. . . . From their boarding-houses, the men called at various places of
rendezvous, which are always selected with reference to the vicinity of a
blacksmith's shop. From these places issue, daily, detachments varying in
strength. . . . In addition to his
[Mosby's] proper command, there is another element composed of loose and
unemployed material, which Mosby is now able to combine and hurl against the
invaders of his country. His custom is to advertise about a week in advance a
meeting to be held at one of the rendezvous, and to it repair those who love
adventure and plunder. But the most abundant and useful source from which these
temporary recruits are derived, is from the members of the regular cavalry at
home on detail or furlough. . . . Convalescents from the hospitals also will
sometimes join him for a single raid; but when the Yankees come in pursuit, . .
. they will find them languidly stretched upon their pallets. . . . You ask if it is by love he controls his
men? No, he is not weak enough to be cheated by that fallacy. . . . Fear and Confidence are the genii he
invokes, and, united to a conviction of his incorruptible integrity, they have
enabled him to enchain his followers to his standard.”3
Mosby's sphere of
operations included these four counties of Virginia, — Fairfax, Loudoun,
Fauquier, and Prince William; a region south of the Potomac and east of the
Blue Ridge, as large as Worcester County in Massachusetts, lying between
Washington and the Army of the Potomac, hence constantly travelled by supply-trains.
It was overwhelmingly Confederate in its sympathies. Colonel Lowell, with his
small brigade, had the principal responsibility of defending this, picking up
such information as he could from the few brave Union farmers, and helped by a
few daring local scouts.
SOURCE: Edward
Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 294,
434-9
