Mosby's Confederacy came to be gearedto Mosby's operations, just as the inhabitants of seventeenth centuryTortugas or Port Royal depended for their livelihood on the loot ofthe buccaneers. The Mosby man who lived with some farmer's family paidfor his lodging with gifts of foodstuffs and blankets looted from theenemy. There was always a brisk trade in captured U. S. Army horsesand mules. And there was a steady flow of United States currency intothe section, so that in time Confederate money was driven out ofcirculation in a sort of reversal of Gresham's law. Every prisonertaken reasonably close to Army pay day could be counted on for a fewdollars, and in each company there would be some lucky or skillfulgambler who would have a fairly sizeable roll of greenbacks. And, ofcourse, there was the sutler, the real prize catch; any Mosby manwould pass up a general in order to capture a sutler.
And Northern-manufactured goods filtered south by the wagonload. Manyof the Mosby men wore Confederate uniforms that had been tailored forthem in Baltimore and even in Washington and run through the Unionlines.
By mid-June, Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania had begun and thecountryside along Bull Run Mountain and the Blue Ridge exploded into aseries of cavalry actions as the Confederate Army moved north alongthe Union right. Mosby kept his little force out of the main fighting,hacking away at the Union troops from behind and confusing theircombat intelligence with reports of Rebel cavalry appearing where noneought to be. In the midst of this work, he took time out to dashacross into Fairfax County with sixty men, shooting up a wagon train,burning wagons, and carrying off prisoners and mules, the latter beingturned over to haul Lee's invasion transport. After the two armies hadpassed over the Potomac, he gathered his force and launched aninvasion of Pennsylvania on his own, getting as far as Mercersburg andbringing home a drove of over 200 beef cattle.
He got back to Mosby's Confederacy in time to learn of Lee's defeat atGettysburg. Realizing that Lee's retreat would be followed by apursuing Union army, he began making preparations to withstand thecoming deluge. For one thing, he decided to do something he had notdone before--concentrate his force in a single camp on the top of BullRun Mountain. In the days while Lee's army was trudging southward,Mosby gathered every horse and mule and cow he could find and drovethem into the mountains, putting boys and slaves to work herding them.He commandeered wagons, and hauled grain and hay to his temporarycamp. His men erected huts, and built corrals for horses and astockade for prisoners. They even moved a blacksmith shop to thehidden camp. Then Mosby sat down and waited.
A few days later, Meade's army began coming through. The Forty-ThirdPartisan Ranger Battalion went to work immediately. For two weeks,they galloped in and out among the Union columns, returning to theirhidden camp only long enough to change horses and leave the prisonersthey had taken. They cut into wagon trains, scattering cavalryescorts, burning wagons, destroying supplies, blowing up ammunition,disabling cannon, running off mules. They ambushed marching infantry,flitting away before their victims had recovered from the initialsurprise. Sometimes, fleeing from the scene of one attack, they wouldburst through a column on another road, leaving confusion behind todelay the pursuit.
Finally, the invaders passed on, the camp on the mountain top wasabandoned, the Mosby men went back to their old billets, and theForty-Third Battalion could take it easy again. That is to say, theyonly made a raid every couple of days and seldom fought a pitchedbattle more than once a week.
The summer passed; the Virginia hills turned from green to red andfrom red to brown. Mosby was severely wounded in the side and thighduring a fight at Gooding's Tavern on August 23, when two of his menwere killed, but the raiders brought off eighty-five horses and twelveprisoners and left six enemy dead behind. The old days of bloodlesssneak raids on isolated picket posts were past, now that they hadenough men for two companies and Mosby rarely took the field withfewer than a hundred riders behind him.
Back in the saddle again after recovering from his wounds, Mosbydevoted more attention to attacking the Orange and Alexandria and theManassas Gap railroads and to harassing attacks for the rest of thewinter.
In January, 1864, Major Cole, of the Union Maryland cavalry, begangoing out of his way to collide with the Forty-Third Virginia, themore so since he had secured the services of a deserter from Mosby, aman named Binns who had been expelled from the Rangers for some pieceof rascality and was thirsting for revenge. Cole hoped to capitalizeon Binns' defection as Mosby had upon the desertion of Sergeant Ames,and he made several raids into Mosby's Confederacy, taking a number ofprisoners before the Mosby men learned the facts of the situation andeverybody found a new lodging place.
On the morning of February 20, Mosby was having breakfast at afarmhouse near Piedmont Depot, on the Manassas Gap Railroad, alongwith John Munson and John Edmonds, the 'teen-age terrors, and agunsmith named Jake Lavender, who was the battalion ordnance sergeantand engaged to young Edmonds' sister. Edmonds had with him a couple ofSharps carbines he had repaired for other members of the battalion andwas carrying to return to the owners. Suddenly John Edmonds' youngerbrother, Jimmy, burst into the room with the news that several hundredUnion cavalrymen were approaching. Lavender grabbed the two carbines,for which he had a quantity of ammunition, and they all ran outside.
Sending the younger Edmonds boy to bring re-enforcements, Mosby,accompanied by John Edmonds, Munson, and Jake Lavender, started tofollow the enemy. He and Munson each took one of Lavender's carbinesand opened fire on them, Munson killing a horse and Mosby a man. Thatstarted things off properly. Cole's Marylanders turned and gave chase,and Mosby led them toward the rendezvous with Jimmy Edmonds and there-enforcements. Everybody arrived together, Mosby's party, thepursuers, and the re-enforcements, and a running fight ensued, withCole's men running ahead. This mounted chase, in the best horse-operamanner, came thundering down a road past a schoolhouse just as thepupils were being let out for recess. One of these, a 14-year-old boynamed Cabell Maddox, jumped onto the pony on which he had ridden toschool and joined in the pursuit, armed only with a McGuffy's ThirdReader. Overtaking a fleeing Yank, he aimed the book at him anddemanded his surrender; before the flustered soldier realized that hiscaptor was unarmed, the boy had snatched the Colt from his belt andwas covering him in earnest. This marked the suspension, for theduration of hostilities, of young Maddox's formal education. From thathour on he was a Mosby man, and he served with distinction to the endof the war.
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The chase broke off, finally, when the pursuers halted to get theirprisoners and captured horses together. Then they discovered that oneof their number, a man named Cobb, had been killed. Putting the deadman across his saddle, they carried the body back to Piedmont, and thenext day assembled there for the funeral. The services had not yetstarted, and Mosby was finishing writing a report to Stuart on theprevious day's action, when a scout came pelting in to report Unioncavalry in the vicinity of Middleburg.
Leaving the funeral in the hands of the preacher and the civilianmourners, Mosby and the 150 men who had assembled mounted and startedoff. Sam Chapman, the ex-artillery captain, who had worked up from theranks to a lieutenancy with Mosby, was left in charge of the mainforce, while Mosby and a small party galloped ahead to reconnoiter.The enemy, they discovered, were not Cole's men but a Californiabattalion. They learned that this force had turned in the direction ofLeesburg, and that they were accompanied by the deserter, Binns.
Mosby made up his mind to ambush the Californians on their way back totheir camp at Vienna. He had plans, involving a length of rope, forhis former trooper, Binns. The next morning, having crossed Bull RunMountain the night before, he took up a position near Dranesville,with scouts out to the west. When the enemy were finally reportedapproaching, he was ready for them. Twenty of his 150, with carbinesand rifles, were dismounted and placed in the center, underLieutenant Mountjoy. The rest of the force was divided into two equalsections, under Chapman and Frank Williams, and kept mounted on theflanks. Mosby himself took his place with Williams on the right.
Whilethey waited, they could hear the faint boom of cannon from Washington,firing salutes in honor of Washington's Birthday.
A couple of men, posted in advance, acted as decoys, and the Unioncavalry, returning empty-handed from their raid, started after them inhopes of bringing home at least something to show for their efforts.Before they knew it, they were within range of Mountjoy's concealedriflemen. While they were still in disorder from the surprise volley,the two mounted sections swept in on them in a blaze of revolver fire,and they broke and fled. There was a nasty jam in a section of fencedroad, with mounted Mosby men in the woods on either side andMountjoy's rifles behind them. Before they could get clear of this,they lost fifteen killed, fifteen more wounded, and over seventyprisoners, and the victorious Mosby men brought home over a hundredcaptured horses and large quantities of arms and ammunition. To