Ghost in the Saddle: The Wild Ride of John Mosby

John S. Mosby during the Civil War. Public Domain

Books and movies have often saluted highly trained outfits like the Navy SEALs, Marine Force Recon., the Army’s Rangers and Green Berets, and the Special Tactics teams of the Air Force. Consequently, these elite troops are familiar to many Americans.

Less well-known are the ancestors of these special ops forces. The French and Indian War (1754–63), for instance, produced Roger’s Rangers, the company of backwoodsmen under the command of New Hampshire’s Capt. Robert Rogers. Fighting alongside the British, the Rangers won their fame for their hit-and-run tactics, intelligence gathering, and raw courage. A dozen years later, some of these same irregulars would turn on their former comrades and help America win its freedom from Britain.

That Revolution created a similar folk hero in South Carolina’s Francis Marion, known as the “Swamp Fox” for his cunning and his ability to launch unexpected strikes against superior British forces. Nearly all American wars since then have given rise to leaders and military forces who fought conventional wars by unconventional means.

Among the most famous of these warriors was the Confederacy’s “Gray Ghost.”

The Ghost in the Night

Mosby's Rangers: Confederate Cavalry Col. John S. Mosby and some of his men. Col. Mosby is in the 2nd row, fourth from left. Public Domain

On March 9, 1863, with the countryside deep in darkness, 29 Confederate riders and their commander entered the war-battered village of Fairfax Court House, Virginia. Within just a mile or so of a large Union encampment, they began scooping up Union soldiers stationed in the town to protect 24-year-old Edwin H. Stoughton, a West Point graduate and the North’s youngest general.

The stealthy raiders then quickly learned the whereabouts of the home where Stoughton had bedded down for the night. Having roused an aide from sleep, the commander of the raiders ordered him to take them to the general’s bedroom. There, he jerked back the bedding and shook the sleeping general. “Do you know Mosby, general?” he asked.

“Yes! Have you got the rascal?” “I am Mosby,” said the intruder.

Without firing a shot or losing a man, Mosby had pulled off one of the war’s greatest coups, capturing a general, two captains, 30 enlisted soldiers, and 58 much-needed horses.

Before and After the War

Though sickly as a youth and slight of build, John Singleton Mosby (1833–1916) was not a man to be trifled with. While he was a student at the University of Virginia, for instance, a much larger bully, George Turpin, threatened to beat Mosby. When the two met, and his adversary attacked him, Mosby drew a pistol borrowed for the occasion and fired, wounding Turpin in the neck.

Both in war and in peacetime, Mosby also practiced what we today would describe with the adage “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Dismissed from the university and sentenced to prison for the shooting, Mosby began studying law books in his cell, obtained an early release and pardon for his poor health, read the law with a friendly attorney, and soon hung out his own shingle.

After the Civil War ended—Mosby was one of the last Confederate officers to surrender—he risked and received the enmity of his fellow Southerners by becoming a Republican and by befriending and endorsing Ulysses Grant, his old opponent, for the presidency. The two remained friends until Grant’s death in 1885. From 1878 to 1885, Mosby served as U.S. consul to Hong Kong, fighting the corruption he found in the foreign service, and later worked as an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He rejected the postwar “Lost Cause” ideals of the Old South, mocked those who claimed that slavery was not the cause of the war, and until the end of his life, followed his own singular political path.

From boyhood through all these other endeavors, Mosby was known for his resilience and fighting spirit.

And never were those qualities more fully on display than in his war years.

Mosby’s Confederacy

Though he opposed secession, once war broke out, Mosby joined the Confederate Army as a private. He fought in the First Battle of Manassas, and then showed such a special skill for scouting out the Union Army that his superior,  J.E.B. Stuart, promoted him to first lieutenant in early 1862. Later that year, under Stuart’s command, Mosby conducted a series of raids in Northern Virginia. By the following year, he had won the rank of major and had taken charge of the 43rd Virginia Cavalry, which would become known as Mosby’s Rangers.

Col. John S. Mosby in the early 1860s. Public Domain

With this command and operating at times with Stuart, at times on his own, Mosby began the raids and the harassment of Union forces that would win him his nickname “Gray Ghost.” Not only did this tactic of sudden attacks and then disappearing into the region’s foothills and forests, or blending in with the general population, spread fear among his enemies, but these raids also brought much-needed supplies and weapons to the South.

Frequently operating close to Washington in the Union-controlled counties of Northern Virginia, Mosby and his men delivered so many strikes against Union supply and communications lines that the area became known as “Mosby’s Confederacy,” even in the Northern press.

Meanwhile, his exploits brought both fame and notoriety. Southerners adored and romanticized his exploits; Northerners reviled him for his raids and the humiliation and death that came with them.

Of all these feats, his capture of Gen. Stoughton was the most renowned. Yet another incident in the fall of 1864 reveals both Mosby’s tough hide and his sense of justice and humanity.

Death at the End of a Rope

Late that summer, frustrated by the damage done by Mosby’s raids on Union morale and materials, Ulysses Grant ordered his subordinate Phil Sheridan to hang as spies any of Mosby’s men caught out of uniform. When six of these troopers were captured in Front Royal, Virginia, Sheridan promptly had them executed, with a note pinned to one of the bodies: “This shall be the fate of all Mosby’s men.” A short time later, another of Mosby’s men was executed as well.

Having confirmed these killings, Mosby retaliated by ordering seven captured Union soldiers put to death, although two escaped and two more, both shot, were left for dead and miraculously survived.

Perhaps foreseeing where these eye-for-an-eye reprisals might lead, or perhaps from remorse, a few days later, Mosby contacted Sheridan and proposed the cessation of such executions and instead show a greater humanity toward prisoners of war. Sheridan agreed, and the killings ended.

The Making of a Legend

Promised protection by Grant—and more than two months after Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox—on June 17, 1865, Mosby officially gave up the fight.

By then, via newspapers and word of mouth, his name was a household word. In 1866, Herman Melville of “Moby Dick” fame published a 113-stanza poem, “The Scout Toward Aldie,” based on experiences gained during an 1864 visit to a cousin in the Union Army and Melville’s participation in a patrol looking for Mosby. The poem vividly depicted the grip of awe and fear Mosby inspired in his enemies. Ironically, today, the main thoroughfare through the small Northern Virginia town in the poem’s title is Route 50, the John Mosby Highway.

View east along US 50 at SR 629 in Stoke, Loudoun County, Va. Famartin/CC BY-SA 4.0

In “Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby,” author James A. Ramage records an amusing anecdote from the Shenandoah Valley that succinctly renders the powerful hold Mosby had on the imagination:

“A Union officer knocked on the door of a plantation house. A woman slave answered the door, and he asked if anybody was home. ‘Nobody but Mosby,’ she answered. ‘Is Mosby here?’ he inquired excitedly. ‘Yes,’ she answered, and he jumped on his horse and rode away. Shortly, he returned, surrounding the house with a company of cavalry. He came to the door and asked if Mosby was still there. ‘Yes,’ the woman said, inviting him in. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded, and she pointed to her infant son in a cradle and proudly announced: ‘There he is. I call him “Mosby,” Sir, “Colonel Mosby,” that’s his name.'”

In addition to Melville’s verse, numerous historical markers and monuments around Virginia bear witness to Mosby’s military actions. Two movies, a popular 1950s television show, several biographies and novels, and even a computer game also mark his impact on American history.

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