Thereafter, he was accepted as a Mosby man.
He was accepted by Mosby himself as a veritable godsend, since he wasacquainted with the location of every Union force in Fairfax County,and knew of a corridor by which it would be possible to penetrateWyndham's entire system of cavalry posts as far as Fairfax Courthouseitself. Here, then, was the making of the spectacular coup which Mosbyneeded to answer his critics and enemies, both at Middleburg and atarmy headquarters. He decided to attempt nothing less than a raid uponFairfax Courthouse, with the capture of Wyndham as its purpose.
This last would entail something of a sacrifice, for he had come toesteem Sir Percy highly as an opponent whose mind was an open book andwhose every move could be predicted in advance. With Wyndhameliminated, he would have to go to the trouble of learning the mentalprocesses of his successor.
However, Wyndham would be the ideal captive to grace a Mosby triumph,and a successful raid on Fairfax Courthouse, garrisoned as it was bybetween five and ten thousand Union troops, would not only secureMosby's position in his own army but would start just the sort of apanic which would result in demands that the Union rear be re-enforcedat the expense of the front.
So, on Sunday, March 8, Mosby led thirty-nine men through the gap atAldie, the largest force that had followed him to date. It was thesort of a foul night that he liked for raiding, with a drizzling rainfalling upon melting snow. It was pitch dark before they found theroad between Centreville and Fairfax, along which a telegraph line hadbeen strung to connect the main cavalry camp with General Stoughton'sheadquarters. Mosby sent one of his men, Harry Hatcher, up a pole tocut the wire. They cut another telegraph line at Fairfax Station andleft the road, moving through the woods toward Fairfax Courthouse. Atthis time, only Mosby and Yank Ames knew the purpose of theexpedition.
It was therefore with surprise and some consternation that the othersrealized where they were as they rode into the courthouse square andhalted. A buzz of excited whispers rose from the men.
"That's right," Mosby assured them calmly. "We're in FairfaxCourthouse, right in the middle of ten thousand Yankees, but don't letthat worry you. All but about a dozen of them are asleep. Now, if youall keep your heads and do what you're told, we'll be as safe asthough we were in Jeff Davis' front parlor."
He then began giving instructions, detailing parties to round uphorses and capture any soldiers they found awake and moving about. Hewent, himself, with several men, to the home of a citizen namedMurray, where he had been told that Wyndham had quartered himself, buthere he received the disappointing news that the Englishman had goneto Washington that afternoon.
A few minutes later, however, Joe Nelson came up with a prisoner, aninfantryman who had just been relieved from sentry duty at GeneralStoughton's headquarters, who said that there had been a party thereearlier in the evening and that Stoughton and several other officerswere still there. Mosby, still disappointed at his failure to secureWyndham, decided to accept Stoughton in his place. Taking several men,he went at once to the house where the prisoner said Stoughton had hisheadquarters.
* * * * *
Arriving there, he hammered loudly on the door with a revolver butt.An upstairs window opened, and a head, in a nightcap, was thrust out.
"What the devil's all the noise about?" its owner demanded. "Don't youknow this is General Stoughton's headquarters?"
"I'd hoped it was; I almost killed a horse getting here," Mosbyretorted. "Come down and open up; dispatches from Washington."
In a few moments, a light appeared inside on the first floor, and thedoor opened. A man in a nightshirt, holding a candle, stood in thedoorway.
"I'm Lieutenant Prentiss, on General Stoughton's staff. The general'sasleep. If you'll give me the dispatches ..."
Mosby caught the man by the throat with his left hand and shoved aColt into his face with his right. Dan Thomas, beside him, lifted thecandle out of the other man's hand.
"And I'm Captain Mosby, General Stuart's staff. We've just takenFairfax Courthouse. Inside, now, and take me to the general at once."
The general was in bed, lying on his face in a tangle of bedclothes.Mosby pulled the sheets off of him, lifted the tail of his nightshirtand slapped him across the bare rump.
The effect was electric. Stoughton sat up in bed, gobbling in fury. Inthe dim candlelight, he mistook the gray of Mosby's tunic for blue,and began a string of bloodthirsty threats of court-martial and firingsquad, interspersed with oaths.
"Easy, now, General," the perpetrator of the outrage soothed. "You'veheard of John Mosby, haven't you?"
"Yes; have you captured him?" In the face of such tidings, Stoughtonwould gladly forget the assault on his person.
Mosby shook his head, smiling seraphically. "No, General. He'scaptured you. I'm Mosby."
"Oh my God!" Stoughton sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes,overcome.
Knowing the precarious nature of his present advantage, Mosby thenundertook to deprive Stoughton of any hope of rescue or will toresist.
"Stuart's cavalry is occupying Fairfax Courthouse," he invented, "andStonewall Jackson's at Chantilly with his whole force. We're allmoving to occupy Alexandria by morning. You'll have to hurry anddress, General."
"Is Fitzhugh Lee here?" Stoughton asked. "He's a friend of mine; wewere classmates at West Point."
"Why, no; he's with Jackson at Chantilly. Do you want me to take youto him? I can do so easily if you hurry."
It does not appear that Stoughton doubted as much as one syllable ofthis remarkable set of prevarications. The Union Army had learned bybitter experience that Stonewall Jackson was capable of materializingalmost anywhere. So he climbed out of bed, putting on his clothes.
* * * * *
On the way back to the courthouse square, Prentiss got away from themin the darkness, but Mosby kept a tight hold on Stoughton's bridle. Bythis time, the suspicion that all was not well in the county seat hadbegun to filter about. Men were beginning to turn out under arms allover town, and there was a confusion of challenges and replies andsome occasional firing as hastily wakened soldiers mistook one anotherfor the enemy. Mosby got his prisoners and horses together and startedout of town as quickly as he could.
The withdrawal was made over much the same route as the approach,without serious incident. Thanks to the precaution of cutting thetelegraph wires, the camp at Centreville knew nothing of what hadhappened at Fairfax Courthouse until long after the raiders weresafely away. They lost all but thirty of the prisoners--in the woodsoutside Fairfax Courthouse, they escaped in droves--but they broughtStoughton and the two captains out safely.
The results were everything Mosby had hoped. He became a Confederatehero over night, and there was no longer any danger of his beingrecalled. There were several half-hearted attempts to kick himupstairs--an offer of a commission in the now defunct VirginiaProvisional Army, which he rejected scornfully, and a similar offer inthe regular Confederate States Army, which he politely declinedbecause it would deprive his men of their right to booty under theScott Law. Finally he was given a majority in the Confederate StatesArmy, with authorization to organize a partisan battalion under theScott Law. This he accepted, becoming Major Mosby of the Forty-ThirdVirginia Partisan Ranger Battalion.
The effect upon the enemy was no less satisfactory. When fullparticulars of the Fairfax raid reached Washington, Wyndham vanishedfrom the picture, being assigned to other duties where less dependedupon him. There was a whole epidemic of courts-martial and inquiries,some of which were still smouldering when the war ended. AndStoughton, the principal victim, found scant sympathy. PresidentLincoln, when told that the rebels had raided Fairfax to the tune ofone general, two captains, thirty men and fifty-eight horses, remarkedthat he could make all the generals he wanted, but that he was sorryto lose the horses, as he couldn't make horses. As yet, there was novisible re-enforcement of the cavalry in Fairfax County from thefront, but the line of picket posts was noticeably shortened.
r /> About two weeks later, with forty men, Mosby raided a post at HerndonStation, bringing off a major, a captain, two lieutenants andtwenty-one men, with a horse apiece. A week later, with fifty-odd men,he cut up about three times his strength of Union cavalry atChantilly. Having surprised a small party, he had driven them into amuch larger force, and the hunted had turned to hunt the hunters.Fighting a delaying action with a few men while the bulk of his forcefell back on an old roadblock of felled trees dating from the secondManassas campaign, he held off the enemy until he was sure hisambuscade was set, then, by feigning headlong flight, led them into atrap and chased the survivors for five or six miles. Wyndham andStoughton had found Mosby an annoying nuisance; their successors werefinding him a serious menace.
This attitude was not confined to the local level, but extended allthe way to the top echelons. The word passed down, "Get Mosby!" and itwas understood that the officer responsible for his elimination wouldfind his military career made for him. One of the Union officers whosaw visions of rapid advancement over the wreckage of Mosby's Rangerswas a captain of the First Vermont, Josiah Flint by name. He was soonto have a chance at it.
On March 31, Mosby's Rangers met at Middleburg and moved across themountain to Chantilly, expecting to take a strong outpost which hadbeen located there. On arriving, they found the campsite deserted. Thepost had been pulled back closer to Fairfax after the fight of fourdays before. Mosby decided to move up to the Potomac and attack aUnion force on the other side of Dranesville--Captain Josiah Flint'sVermonters.
They passed the night at John Miskel's farm, near Chantilly. Thefollowing morning, April 1, at about daybreak, Mosby was wakened byone of his men who had been sleeping in the barn. This man, havinggone outside, had observed a small party of Union troops on theMaryland side of the river who were making semaphore signals tosomebody on the Virginia side. Mosby ordered everybody to turn out asquickly as possible and went out to watch the signalmen with his fieldglasses. While he was watching, Dick Moran, a Mosby man who hadbilleted with friends down the road, arrived at a breakneck gallopfrom across the fields, shouting: "Mount your horses! The Yankees arecoming!"
It appeared that he had been wakened, shortly before, by the noise ofa column of cavalry on the road in front of the house where he hadbeen sleeping, and had seen a strong force of Union cavalry on themarch in the direction of Broad Run and the Miskel farm. Waiting untilthey had passed, he had gotten his horse and circled at a gallopthrough the woods, reaching the farm just ahead of them. It laterdeveloped that a woman of the neighborhood, whose head had been turnedby the attentions of Union officers, had betrayed Mosby to Flint.
The Miskel farmhouse stood on the crest of a low hill, facing theriver. Behind it stood the big barn, with a large barnyard enclosed bya high pole fence. As this was a horse farm, all the fences were eightfeet high and quite strongly built. A lane ran down the slope of thehill between two such fences, and at the southern end of the slopeanother fence separated the meadows from a belt of woods, beyond whichwas the road from Dranesville, along which Flint's column wasadvancing.
* * * * *
It was a nasty spot for Mosby. He had between fifty and sixty men,newly roused from sleep, their horses unsaddled, and he was penned inby strong fences which would have to be breached if he were to escape.His only hope lay in a prompt counterattack. The men who had come outof the house and barn were frantically saddling horses, without muchattention to whose saddle went on whose mount. Harry Hatcher, who hadgotten his horse saddled, gave it to Mosby and appropriated somebodyelse's mount.
As Flint, at the head of his cavalry, emerged from the woods, Mosbyhad about twenty of his men mounted and was ready to receive him. TheUnion cavalry paused, somebody pulled out the gate bars at the foot ofthe lane, and the whole force started up toward the farm. Havingopened the barnyard end of the lane, Mosby waited until Flint had comeabout halfway, then gave him a blast of revolver fire and followedthis with a headlong charge down the lane. Flint was killed at thefirst salvo, as were several of the men behind him. By the timeMosby's charge rammed into the head of the Union attack, the narrowlane was blocked with riderless horses, preventing each force fromcoming to grips with the other. Here Mosby's insistence upon at leasttwo revolvers for each man paid off, as did the target practice uponwhich he was always willing to expend precious ammunition. The Unioncolumn, constricted by the fences on either side of the lane andshaken by the death of their leader and by the savage attack of menwhom they had believed hopelessly trapped, turned and tried toretreat, but when they reached the foot of the lane it was discoveredthat some fool, probably meaning to deny Mosby an avenue of escape,had replaced the gatebars. By this time, the rest of Mosby's force hadmounted their horses, breaches had been torn in the fence at eitherside of the lane, and there were Confederates in both meadows, firinginto the trapped men. Until the gate at the lower end gave way underthe weight of horses crowded against it, there was a bloody slaughter.Within a few minutes Flint and nine of his men were killed, somefifteen more were given disabling wounds, eighty-two prisoners weretaken, and over a hundred horses and large quantities of arms andammunition were captured. The remains of Flint's force was chased asfar as Dranesville. Mosby was still getting the prisoners sorted out,rounding up loose horses, gathering weapons and ammunition fromcasualties, and giving the wounded first aid, when a Union lieutenantrode up under a flag of truce, followed by several enlisted men andtwo civilians of the Sanitary Commission, the Civil War equivalent ofthe Red Cross, to pick up the wounded and bury the dead. This officeroffered to care for Mosby's wounded with his own, an offer which wasdeclined with thanks. Mosby said he would carry his casualties withhim, and the Union officer could scarcely believe his eyes when he sawonly three wounded men on horse litters and one dead man tied to hissaddle.
The sutlers at Dranesville had heard the firing and were about to moveaway when Mosby's column appeared. Seeing the preponderance of blueuniforms, they mistook the victors for prisoners and, anticipating alively and profitable business, unpacked their loads and set up theircounters. The business was lively, but anything but profitable. TheMosby men looted them unmercifully, taking their money, their horses,and everything else they had.
* * * * *
All through the spring of 1863, Mosby kept jabbing at Union lines ofcommunication in northern Virginia. In June, his majority camethrough, and with it authority to organize a battalion under the ScottLaw. From that time on, he was on his own, and there was no longer anydanger of his being recalled to the regular Army. He was responsibleonly to Jeb Stuart until the general's death at Yellow Tavern a yearlater; thereafter, he took orders from no source below General Lee andthe Secretary of War.
Even before this regularization of status, Mosby's force was beginningto look like a regular outfit. From the fifteen men he had brought upfrom Culpepper in mid-January, its effective and dependable strengthhad grown to about sixty riders, augmented from raid to raid by the"Conglomerate" fringe, who were now accepted as guerrillas-pro-temwithout too much enthusiasm. A new type of recruit had begun toappear, the man who came to enlist on a permanent basis. Some wereMaryland secessionists, like James Williamson, who, after the war,wrote an authoritative and well-documented history of theorganization, Mosby's Rangers. Some were boys like John Edmonds andJohn Munson, who had come of something approaching military age sincethe outbreak of the war. Some were men who had wangled transfers fromother Confederate units. Not infrequently these men had given upcommissions in the regular army to enlist as privates with Mosby. Forexample, there was the former clergyman, Sam Chapman, who had been acaptain of artillery, or the Prussian uhlan lieutenant, Baron Robertvon Massow, who gave up a captaincy on Stuart's staff, or theEnglishman, Captain Hoskins, who was shortly to lose his life becauseof his preference for the saber over the revolver, or Captain BillKennon, late of Wheat's Louisiana Tigers, who had also served withWalker in Nicaragua. As a general thing, the new Mosby recru
it was aman of high intelligence, reckless bravery and ultra-ruggedindividualism.
For his home territory, Mosby now chose a rough quadrangle between theBlue Ridge and Bull Run Mountain, bounded at its four corners bySnicker's Gap and Manassas Gap along the former and Thoroughfare Gapand Aldie Gap along the latter. Here, when not in action, the Mosbymen billeted themselves, keeping widely dispersed, and an elaboratesystem, involving most of the inhabitants, free or slave, was set upto transmit messages, orders and warnings. In time this district cameto be known as "Mosby's Confederacy," and, in the absence of anyeffective Confederate States civil authority, Mosby became thelawgiver and chief magistrate as well as military commander. JohnMunson, who also wrote a book of reminiscences after the war, saidthat Mosby's Confederacy was an absolute monarchy, and that none wasever better governed in history.
Adhering to his belief in the paramount importance of firepower, Mosbysaw to it that none of his men carried fewer than two revolvers, andthe great majority carried four, one pair on the belt and another onthe saddle. Some extremists even carried a third pair down theirboot-tops, giving them thirty-six shots without reloading. Nor did heunderestimate the power of mobility. Each man had his string ofhorses, kept where they could be picked up at need. Unlike the regularcavalryman with his one mount, a Mosby man had only to drop anexhausted animal at one of these private remount stations and changehis saddle to a fresh one. As a result of these two practices, Unioncombat reports throughout the war consistently credited Mosby withfrom three to five times his actual strength.
In time, the entire economy of