 Moseby's Memoirs The Chronicles of History record that in most wars some figure, through intrepidity, originality, and brilliancy of action, has raised himself above his fellows and achieved a picturesqueness which is commonly associated only with characters of fiction. In the American Civil War, or the War Between the States, three dashing cavalry leaders, Stuart, Forrest, and Moseby, so captured the public imagination that their exploits took on a glamour which we associate, as did the writers of the time, with the deeds of the Waverly characters and the heroes of Chivalry. Of the three leaders, Colonel John S. Moseby, 1833 to 1916, was perhaps the most romantic figure. In the south his dashing exploits made him one of the great heroes of the lost cause. In the north he was painted as the blackest of redoubtable scoundrels, a fact only to be explained as due to the exasperation caused by a successful enemy against whom all measures were worthless and ineffective. So great it became the fame of Moseby's partisan exploits that soldiers of fortune came even from Europe to share his adventures. Colonel Moseby was a Virginian of the Virginians, educated at the State's university, and seemed destined to past his life as an obscure Virginia attorney, when war brought him his opportunity for fame. The following pages contained the story of his life as private in the cavalry, as a scout, and as a leader of partisans. But Moseby was the type of man who was not content with the routine performance of duties, and this was illustrated early in his career as a soldier. He was ever on the watch to aid the cause in which he was engaged. Stuart's famous ride around McClellan and Lee's attack on Pope, before he could be reinforced, were deeds for which Moseby fairly earned some share of credit. These enterprises, together with his prevention of Sheridan's use of the Manassas Gap Railroad, had a distinct bearing upon the successful maintenance of the Southern Confederacy for four long years. But his great work was his distinctive warfare near Washington against the troops guarding the Potomac. Between the Northern forces aiming at Richmond for two years of almost incredible activity, Moseby himself said, I rarely rested more than a day at a time. He maintained his warfare, neutralizing at times some fifty thousand troops by compelling them to guard the rear of the enemy and his capital. The four counties of Virginia nearest Washington became known as Moseby's Confederacy. Here his blows were almost incessant, followed always by the dispersing of his band or bands among the farmhouses of the sympathetic inhabitants. Seldom or never was an attack made with more than two hundred and fifty men. Usually from thirty to sixty would be collected at a rendezvous, such as Rectortown, Aldi, or Upperville, and after discharging, as it were, a lightning flash, be swallowed up in impenetrable darkness, leaving behind only a threat of some future raid, to fall no one could foresee where. The execution of this bold plan was successful, long successful, its damage to the enemy enormous, and it exhibited a military genius of the highest order. By reason of his originality and intellectual boldness, as well as his intrepidity and success of execution, Moseby is clearly entitled to occupy a preeminence among the partisan leaders of history. And this is to be said for him that he created and kept up to the end of the Great War Moseby's Confederacy, while preserving the full confidence and regard of the nightly lee. Confederate General Marcus Wright, who assisted in editing the records of the war, wrote to Colonel Moseby as follows, Dear Colonel Moseby, it may and I know will be interesting to you that I have carefully read all of General R. E. Lee's dispatches, correspondence, et cetera, during the war of 1861 to 1865, and while he was not in the habit of paying compliments, yet these papers of his will show that you received from him more compliments and accommodations than any other officer in the Confederate Army. But an even more effective testimonial of Moseby's success comes from the records of his enemy. For a time the northern belief was that Moseby was a myth, the wandering Jew of the struggle. Later he was termed the Modern Rob Roy. Such epithets as Land Pirate, Horse Thief, Murderer, and Guerrilla bear witness of the feeling of exasperation against the man. Guerrilla, however, was the favorite epithet, and Moseby did not resent its use, for he believed that his success had made the term an honorable one. The effectiveness of Moseby's work is illustrated by the following comment of the Compte de Paris in his History of the Civil War in America. In Washington itself General Heinzelman was in command, who, besides the depots, had under his control several thousand infantry ready to take the field, and Stahl's division of cavalry numbering six thousand horses, whose only task was to pursue Moseby and the few hundred partisans led by this daring chief. General Joseph E. Hooker, in his testimony on the conduct of the war, said, I may hear state that while at Fairfax Courthouse my cavalry was reinforced by that of Major General Stahl. The latter numbered sixty one hundred sabers. The force opposed to them was Moseby's Guerrillas numbering about two hundred, and if the reports of the newspapers were to be believed this whole party was killed two or three times during the winter. From the time I took command of the Army of the Potomac there was no evidence that any force of the enemy, other than the above named, was within one hundred miles of Washington City, and yet the planks on the chain bridge were taken up at night the greater part of the winter and spring. It was this cavalry force, it will be remembered, I had occasion to ask for, that my cavalry might be strengthened when it was numerically too weak to cope with the superior numbers of the enemy. How redoubtable Moseby was considered by the northern authorities may be seen from the following. War Department, Washington, April 16, 1865. To Major General Hancock, Winchester, Virginia. In holding an interview with Moseby it may be needless to caution an old soldier like you to guard against surprise or danger to yourself, but the recent murders show such astounding wickedness that too much precaution cannot be taken. If Moseby is sincere he might do much toward detecting and apprehending the murderers of the President. Signed Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. Secretary Stanton had previously telegraphed to Hancock. There is evidence that Moseby knew of Booth's plan, concerning the assassination of Lincoln, and was here in the city with him. No one knew better than Hancock that Moseby, at the time of the assassination, was in Virginia. The notion that he had anything to do with this crime was a part of the reputation he had acquired in the north, and which was doubtless quite willing to acquire in order to give worse dreams to those of the enemy who were in the neighborhood of his operations. This reputation was fostered by soldiers who, during the war and long afterwards, entertained their firesides with tales of hair-breath escapes from the dreadful guerrillas. But some of Moseby's best friends in his later life were men who had been his prisoners. So far did the hostility and feeling against Moseby carry that as late as May 4, 1865, just a month after Lee's surrender, General Grant telegraphed to General Halleck. I would advise offering a reward of five thousand dollars for Moseby. This was done, but nobody captured him. The turning point in his career after the war was his endorsement of, and voting for, Grant in 1872. The civil war was then but seven years past, and the southern people were not prepared to follow his lead. They turned against him bitterly, against one of their chief heroes, whom they had delighted to honor, who had struggled so manfully and for so long against the storm raging against them. Young and of little experience in politics he may have thought it inconceivable that they would treat his voting for the magnanimous soldier as the unforgivable sin. His motive was rather gratitude than political, rather a response to Grant's behavior toward the Southern Army, General Lee, and himself, than any design to change the attitude of the South toward the Federal Government. Certainly the Colonel, in spite of abuse and recrimination heaped upon him, never repented of this act. During his last illness Colonel Moseby did say, no doubt to hear himself contradicted. I pitched my politics in too high a key when I voted for Grant. I ought to have accepted office under him. My family would now be comfortably supplied with money. But this was far from being his serious opinion as his own statements show. Intellectually the Colonel showed his great at constitutional impatience of restraint and his great individuality as he exhibited in his operations during the war. Perhaps his lifelong fondness for Byron's poetry resulted from a feeling that there was a resemblance between the experiences of Byron, as represented in his poems, and his own, the war of the many with one. But the resemblance was a superficial one. Moseby's impatience of restraint was a so strongly marked characteristic that he always seemed unwilling to follow a plan of his own after having disclosed it to another. Probably the reason the Yankees, trying to trap him, could never find out where he was going to be next was because he never knew himself. The following from an interview with him, which appeared in the Philadelphia Post in 1867 or 1868, illustrates his tendency to think independently. Question. Whom do you think the ablest general on the federal side? Answer. McClellan by all odds. I think he is the only man on the federal side who could have organized the army as it was. Grant had, of course, more successes in the field in the latter part of the war, but Grant only came in to reap the benefits of McClellan's previous efforts. At the same time I do not wish to disparage General Grant, for he has many abilities. But if Grant had commanded during the first years of the war, we would have gained our independence. Grant's policy of attacking would have been a blessing to us, for we lost more by inaction than we would have lost in battle. After the first Manassas the army took a sort of dry rot, and we lost more men by camp diseases than we would have by fighting. Question. What is your individual opinion of Jeff Davis? Answer. I think history will record him as one of the greatest men of the time. Every lost cause, you know, must have escaped goat, and Mr. Davis has been chosen as such. He must take all the blame without any other credit. I do not know any man in the Confederate States that could have conducted the war with the same success that he did. Question. Are there any bitter feelings cherished? Answer. No, not now, except those engendered since the war by the manner in which we have been treated. The whole administration of affairs in Virginia is in the hands of a lot of bounty-jumpers and jail-birds, and their only qualification is that they can take the iron-clad oath. But, he added, they generally take anything else they can lay their hands on. General Grant and Colonel Mosby came to be far more than political friends. In fact it was through General Grant that Mosby secured his position with the Southern Pacific Railroad, which he held from 1885 to 1901. The two men were well suited to each other. Grant was a silent man, a good listener. Mosby, abrupt and even rude toward those who wished to speak to him irrelevantly, dearly loved to talk to an intelligent person. The silent and slow commander of all the armies, guided by luminous common sense, and the nervous impetuous raider, a raider by temperament, a raider in every way, in practice of law, taking part in politics, writing memoirs, had much in common that was fundamental. They were but children in taking care of their business affairs. They were shy, and full of feeling, sentiment, and romance. The Colonel was an assistant attorney in the Department of Justice at Washington from 1904 to 1910, and continued to reside in the capital until his death, May 30, 1916. He was not often inclined to talk about his own exploits in the Civil War, though going at some length into explanations of the movements of the great armies and engaging in various controversies about them, as well as about other matters of public interest, past and present. Colonel Mosby realized that the account of the military operations at the Battle of Manassas, included in the present volume, is markedly at variance with the usual version. His efforts to unravel the story of Stuart's cavalry and the Gettysburg Campaign extended over many years, and resulted in a book and numerous articles. The account which he prepared for these memoirs he considered the best answer to Stuart's critics, and spoke of it as the final word. The Colonel was little interested in anything which did not concern man and his social relations, except, perhaps, logic and polemics. What could not be affirmed positively with the geometric QED, or in Latin, quote, erdot demonstratum, appealed to him only as it concerned war, politics, sentiment, or the like. New inventions left him cold, if not a little resentful, at their disturbing or rendering out of date the historical setting of the Civil War. But in political and social matters he was an advanced thinker, although this was rather a liberal attitude of mind, in which he took pride, than any interest in the views themselves. His horizon in general was limited by American history and politics. He was full of the anecdotal history of Virginia and conspicuous Virginians of past generations, as well as information about family relationships, information such as printed in books in New England, but in Virginia has been commonly left to oral tradition. But the events described in these memoirs were his greatest interest, and the days when he was a commander of partisans were the golden days of his over four-score years, as he said at the reunion of his battalion in 1895. Life cannot afford a more bitter cup than the one I drained at Salem, nor any higher reward of ambition, than that I received as commander of the forty-third Virginia Battalion of Cavalry. CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE I was born December 6, 1833, at the home of my grandfather, James McLaurin, in Powhatan County, Virginia. He was the son of Robert McLaurin, an Episcopal minister, who came from Scotland before the Revolution. Great-grandfather McLaurin lived at the Gleebe and is buried at Peterville Church in Powhatan. After the church was disestablished, the state appropriated the Gleebe, and Peterville was sold to the Baptists. My grandfather McLaurin lived to be very old. He was a soldier of the Revolution, and I well remember his cough, which it was said he contracted from exposure in the war when he had smallpox. My grandfather Mosby was also a native of Powhatan. He lived at Gibraltar, but moved to Nelson County, where my father Alfred D. Mosby was born. When I was a child my father bought a farm near Charlottesville, in Albemarle, on which I was raised. I recollect that one day I went with my father to our peach orchard on a high ridge, and he pointed out Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, on a mountain a few miles away, and told me some of the history of the great man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. At that time there were no public and few private schools in Virginia, but a widow opened a school in Fries Woods, adjoining my father's farm. My sister Victoria and I went as her pupils. I was seven years old when I learned to read, although I had gone a month or so to a country school in Nelson near a post office called Murrell's Shop, where I had learned to spell. As I was so young my mother always sent a Negro boy with me to the school house, and he came for me in the evening. But once I begged him to stay all day with me, and I shared my dinner with him. When playtime came, some of the larger boys put him up on a block for sale, and he was knocked down to the highest bidder. I thought it was a bona fide sale and was greatly distressed at losing such a dutiful playmate. We went home together, but he never spent another day with me at the school house. The first drunken man I ever saw was my schoolmaster. He went home at playtime to get his dinner, but took an overdose of whiskey. On the way back he fell on the roadside and went to sleep. The big boys picked him up and carried him into the school house, and he heard our lessons. The school closed soon after. I don't know why. It was a common thing in the old days of Negro slavery for a Virginia gentleman who had inherited a fortune to live in luxury with plenty of the comforts of life and die insolvent while his overseer retired to live on what he had saved. Mr. Jefferson was one example of this. I often heard that Jefferson had held in his arms Betsy Wheat, a pupil at the school where I learned to read. She was the daughter of the overseer, and, being the senior of all the other scholars, was the second in command. She exercised as much authority as the schoolmistress. As I have said, the log schoolhouse was in Fry's Woods, which had joined my father's farm. To this rude hut I walked daily for three sessions, with my eldest sister, later with two, often through a deep snow, to get the rudiments of an education. I remember that the schoolmistress, a most excellent woman, whipped her son and me for fighting. That was the only blow I ever received during the time I went to school. A few years ago I visited the spot in company with Bartlett Bowling, who was with me in the war. There was nothing left but a pile of rocks, the remains of the chimney. The associations of the place raised up phantoms of the past. I am the only survivor of the children who went to school there. I went to the spring along the same path where I had often walked when a barefooted schoolboy and got a drink of cool water from a gourd. There I first realized the pathos of the once popular air, Ben Bolt. The spring was still there in the running brook, but all of my schoolmates had gone. The Peter Parley were the standard schoolbooks of my day. In my books were two pictures that made a lasting impression on me. One was a wolf dying on the field in the arms of a soldier. The other was of Putnam, riding down the stone steps with the British close behind him. About that time I borrowed a copy of the Life of Marion, which was the first book I read, except as a task at school. I remember how I shouted when I read aloud in the nursery of the way the Great Partisan hid in the swamp and outwitted the British. I did not then expect that the time would ever come when I would have escapes as narrow as that of Putnam and take part in adventures that have been compared with Marians. When I was ten years old I began going to school in Charlottesville. Sometimes I went on horseback and sometimes I walked. Two of my teachers, James White, who taught Latin and Greek, and Alec Nelson, who taught mathematics, were afterwards professors at Washington and Lee, while General Robert E. Lee was its president. When I was sixteen years old I went as a student to the University of Virginia, some evidence of the progress I had made in getting an education. In my youth I was very delicate and often heard that I would never live to be a grown man. But the profits were wrong, for I have outlived nearly all the contemporaries of my youth. I was devoted to hunting and a servant always had coffee ready for me at daylight on a Saturday morning so that I was out shooting when nearly all were sleeping. My father was a slave-holder and I still cherished a strong affection for the slaves who nursed me and played with me in my childhood. That was the prevailing sentiment in the South, not one peculiar to myself, but one prevailing in all the South toward an institution which we now thank Abraham Lincoln for avallishing. Colonel Mosby never had a word to say, favorable to slavery, a fact which may be attributed to the influence of Miss Abby Southwick, afterwards Mrs. Stevenson of Manchester, Massachusetts, who was employed to teach his sisters. She was a strong and outspoken abolitionist and a friend of Garrison and Wendell Phillips. All the Mosby family were, and remained, devoted to Miss Southwick. She and young Mosby had numerous talks on the subject of slavery and other political topics. At the close of the war she immediately sent money and supplies to the family and told how anxiously she had read the papers, fearing to find the news that he had been killed. End of Footnote I had no taste for athletics and have never seen a ball game. My habits of study were never regular but I always had a literary taste. While I fairly recited Tacitus and Thucydides as a task, I read with delight Irving's stories of the Moors in Granada. Old Mosby's career at the University of Virginia, where he graduated in Greek and mathematics, was not so serene throughout as that of the ordinary student. One incident made a lasting impression upon his mind and affected his future course. He was convicted of unlawfully shooting a fellow student and was sentenced to a fine and imprisonment in the jail at Charlottesville. It was the case of defending the good name of a young lady, and while the law was doubtless violated, public sentiment was indicated by the legislatures remitting the fine and the governors granting a pardon. The Baltimore Sun published an account of this incident by Mr. John S. Patton, who said that Mosby had been fined ten dollars for assaulting the town's sergeant. The young Mosby had been known as one not given to lawless celerity, but as a fighter. And the colonel himself admits, continues Patton, that he got the worst of these boyish engagements except once when the fight was on between him and Charlottes' price of mechums, and in that case they were separated before victory could perch. They also go so far as to say that he was a spirited lad, though far from talkative and not far from quiet, introspective moods. His antagonist this time was George Turpin, a student of medicine in the university. Turpin had carved Frank Morrison to his taste with a pocket-knife and added to his reputation by nearly killing Fred M. Wills with a rock. When Jack Mosby, spare and delicate, Turpin was large and athletic, received the latter's threat that he would eat him, blood-raw on sight, he proceeded to get ready. The cause of the impending hostilities was an incident at a party of the Spooner residence in Modobello, which Turpin construed as humiliating to him, and with the aid of some friends who dearly loved a fisticuff he reached the conclusion that John Mosby was to blame and that it was his duty to chastise him. Mosby was due at Mathematics Lecture Room and thither he went and met Professor Courtney and did his problems first of all. That over he thrust a pepper-box pistol into his jacket and went forth to find his enemy. He had not far to go, for by this time the Turpins were keeping a boarding-house in the building then, as now, known as the Cable House, about the distance of four Baltimore blocks from the university. Thither went the future partisan leader, and with a friend was standing on the back porch when Turpin approached. He advanced on Mosby at once, but not far. The latter brought his pepper-box into action with instant effect. Turpin went down with a bullet in his throat, and was taken up as good as dead. The trial is still referred to as the cause celebre of our local court. Four great lawyers were engaged in it, the names of Robertson, Rives, Watson, and Leech, adoring the legal annals of Virginia. The prosecutor in this case was Judge William J. Robertson of Charlottesville, who made a vigorous arraignment of the young student. On visiting the jail one day after the conviction, much to his surprise Robertson was greeted by Mosby in a friendly manner. This was followed by the loan of a copy of Blackstone's commentaries to the prisoner, and a lifelong friendship between the two. Thus it was that young Mosby entered upon the study of law, which he made his profession. Colonel Mosby wrote on a newspaper clipping, giving an account of the shooting incident. I did not go to Turpin's house, but he came to my boarding house, and he had sent me a message that he was coming there to eat me up. Mosby's conviction affected him greatly, and he did not include an account of it in his story because, or at least it would seem probable, he feared that the conclusion would be drawn that he was more like the picture painted by the enemy during the war, instead of the kindly man he really was. However this may be, nothing pleased him more than the honors paid to him by the people of Charlottesville and by the University of Virginia. He spoke of these things as one of times revenges. In January 1915 a delegation from Virginia presented Colonel Mosby with a bronze medal and an embossed address which read as follows. To Colonel John S. Mosby, Warrington, Virginia. Your friends and admirers and the University of Virginia welcomed this opportunity of expressing for you their affection and esteem, and of congratulating you upon the vigor and alertness of body and mind with which you have rounded out your forescore years. Your alma mater has pride in your scholarly application in the days of your prepossessing youth, in your marshal genius manifested in a career singularly original and romantic, in the forceful fluency of your record of the history made by yourself and your comrades in the Army of Northern Virginia, and in the dignity, diligence, and sagacity with which you have served your united country at home and abroad. Endowed with a gift of friendship, which won for you the confidence of both Lee and Grant, you have proven yourself a man of war, a man of letters, and a man of affairs worthy the best traditions of your university and your state, to both of which you have been a loyal son. Chapter 2 Mosby's Memoirs. I went to Bristol, Virginia in October 1855 and opened a law office. I was a stranger and the first lawyer that located there. When attending court at Abingdon in the summer of 1860, I met William Blackford, who had been in class with me at the university and who was afterwards a colonel of engineers on General Stewart's staff. Blackford asked me to join a cavalry company which he was assisting to raise and in which he expected to be a lieutenant. To oblige him I allowed my name to be put on the muster roll, but was so indifferent about the matter that I was not present when the company organized. William E. Jones was made captain. He was a graduate of West Point and had resigned from the United States Army a few years before. Jones was a fine soldier, but his temper produced friction with his superiors and greatly impaired his capacity as a commander. There were omens of war at this time, but nobody realized the impending danger. Our first drill was on January court day, 1861. I borrowed a horse and rode up to Abingdon to take my first lesson. After the drill was over and the company had broken ranks, I went to hear John B. Floyd make a speech on the condition of the times. He had been Secretary of War and had lately resigned. Buchanan, in a history of his administration, said that Floyd's resignation had nothing to do with secession, but he requested it on account of financial irregularities he had discovered in the War Department. But to return to the campaign of 1860 I never had any talent or taste for stump-speaking or handling party machines, but with my strong convictions I was a supporter of Douglas and the Union. Colonel Mosby was almost the only Douglas Democrat in Bristol. That is to say he was in favor of recognizing the right of a territory belonging to the United States to vote against slavery within its borders. The Breckenridge Democrats believed, especially after the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, in the right of the slaveholders to take their slaves into the territories and hold them there in slavery against the wishes of the inhabitants. And a footnote. Whenever a wig became extreme on the slave question he went over to the opposition party. No doubt the majority of the Virginia Democrats agreed with the Union sentiments of Andrew Jackson. But the party was controlled by a section known as the Chivalry, who were disciples of Calhoun, and got most of the honors. It was for this reason that a Virginia senator, Mason, who belonged to that school, was selected to read to the Senate the dying speech of the great apostle of secession and slavery, Calhoun. It proved to be a legacy of woe to the South. I met Mr. Mason at an entertainment, given him on his return from London after the close of the war. He still bore himself with pride and dignity, but without that hauteur which is said to have characterized him when he declared in the Senate that he was an ambassador from Virginia. He found his home in the Shenandoah Valley desolate. It will be remembered that, with John Slidle, Mason was captured when a passenger on board an English steamer and sent a prisoner to Fort Warren in Boston Harbour, but he was released on demand of the English government. Mason told us many interesting things about his trip to London, of a conversation with Lord Brom at a dinner, and the mistake the London Post Office had made in sending his mail to the American minister, Charles Francis Adams, and Mr. Adams' mail to Mason. Seeing him thus in the wreck of his hopes, and with no future to cheer him, I was reminded of Caus Marius brooding among the rooms of Carthage. William L. Yancy of Alabama did more than any other man in the South to precipitate the sectional conflict. In a commercial convention, shortly before the campaign of 1860, he had offered resolutions in favour of repealing the laws against the African slave trade. Yancy attacked Thomas Jefferson as an abolitionist, as Calhoun had done in the Senate, and called Virginia a breeding ground for slaves to sell to the cotton states. He also charged her people with using the laws against the importation of Africans to create for themselves a monopoly in the slave market. Roger A. Pryor replied to him in a powerful speech. Yancy was more responsible than any other man for the disruption of the Democratic Party, and consequently of the Union. He came to Virginia to speak in the presidential canvas. I was attending court at Abingdon, where Yancy was advertised to speak. A few Douglas men in the county had invited Tom Rives, a famous stump orator, to meet Yancy, and I was delegated to call on the latter and repair a joint debate. Yancy was stopping at the house of Governor Floyd, then Secretary of War. I went to Floyd's home, was introduced to Yancy, and stated my business. He refused the joint debate, and I shall never forget the arrogance and contempt with which he treated me. I heard his speech that day. It was a strong one for his side. As the Virginia people had not yet been educated up to this accession point, Yancy thinly veiled his disunion purposes. That night we put up Tom Rives, who made a great speech in reply to Yancy, and pictured the horrors of disunion and war. Rives was elected a member of the convention that met the next winter, and there voted against disunion. Early in the war, the company in which I was a private was in camp near Richmond, and one day I met Rives on the street. It was the first time I had seen him since the speech at Abingdon. I had written an account of his speech for a Richmond paper, which pleased him very much, and he was very cordial. He wanted me to go with him to the Governor's house and get Governor Letcher, who had also been a Douglas man the year before, to give me a commission. I declined and told him that as I had no military training, I preferred serving as a private under a good officer. I had no idea then that I should ever rise above the ranks. A few days before the presidential election I was walking on the street in Bristol, when I was attracted by a crowd that was holding a Bell and Everett meeting. Someone called on me to make a union speech. I rose and told the meeting that I saw no reason for making a union speech at a Bell and Everett meeting, that it was my mission to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This brought down the house. I little thought that in a few months I should be regarded as one of the sinners. I was very friendly with the editor of the secession paper in my town. One day he asked me what I intended to do in the case of a collision between the government and South Carolina. I told him I would be on the side of the union. He said that I should find him on the other side. Very well, I replied, I shall meet you at Philippi. Some years after the war he called upon me in Washington and jokingly reminded me of what I had said to him. As he was about my age and did not go into the army, I was tempted to tell him that I did go to Philippi but did not meet him there. Footnote The editor in question, Mr. J. A. Sperry of the Bristol Courier, has told the story in a somewhat different way. In writing his reminiscences of Mosby he said, Mosby pursued the even tenor of his way until the memorable presidential campaign of 1860. So guarded had been his political utterances that but few of the villagers knew with which of the parties to class him, when he suddenly bloomed out as an elector on the Douglas ticket. This seemed to fix his status as a union Democrat. I say seemed, for I am now inclined to think his politics was like his subsequent fighting, independent and irregular. We saw little of him in the stirring times immediately succeeding the election. One morning, about the middle of January, 1861, I met him in the street when he abruptly accosted me. I believe you are a secessionist, per se. What has led you to that conclusion? The editorial in your paper today? You have not read it carefully, said I. There is nothing in it to justify your inference. In summing up the events of the week I find that several sovereign states have formally severed their connection with the union. We are confronted with the accomplished fact of secession. I have expressed no opinion either of the right or the expediency of the movement. I am not a secessionist, per se, if I understand the term, but a secessionist by the logic of events. I am glad to hear it, he rejoined. I have never coveted the office of Jack Ketch, but I would cheerfully fill it for one day for the pleasure of hanging a disunionist, per se. Do you know what secession means? It means bloody war, followed by feuds between the border states, which a century may not see the end of. I do not agree with you, I said. I see no reason why secession should not be peaceable, but in the event of the dreadful war you predict, which side will you take? I shall fight for the union, sir, for the union, of course, and you? Oh, I don't apprehend any such extremity, but if I am forced into the struggle I shall fight for my mother's section. Should we meet upon the field of battle, as the antsy said to Brownlow the other day, I would run a bayonet through you. Very well, we'll meet at Philippi, retorted Mosby, and stalked away. Several months elapsed before I saw him again, but the rapid and startling events of those months made them seem like years. I was sitting in my office writing, one day in the latter part of April, when my attention was attracted by the quick step of someone entering, and the exclamation, How do you like my uniform? It was a moment before I could recognize the figure pure wetting before me in the bobtail coat of a cavalry private. Why, Mosby, I exclaimed, this isn't Philippi, nor is that a federal uniform. No more of that, said he, with a twinkle of the eye. When I talk that way, Virginia had not passed the ordinance of secession. She is out of the union now. Virginia is my mother, God bless her. I can't fight against my mother, can I? End of Footnote In April 1861 came the call to arms. On the day after the bombardment by South Carolina and the surrender of Fort Sumter that aroused all the slumbering passions of the country, I was again attending court at Abington, when the telegraph operator told me of the great news that had just gone over the wire. Mr. Lincoln had called on the states for troops to suppress the rebellion. In the preceding December Floyd had ordered Major Anderson to hold Sumter against the secessionist to the last extremity. Anderson simply obeyed Floyd's orders. When the news came, Governor Floyd was at home, and I went to his house to tell him. I remember he said it would be the bloodiest war the world had ever seen. Floyd's was a sad fate. He had, as Secretary of War, given great offense to the north by the shipping of arms from the northern arsenals to the south, some months before secession. He was charged with having been in collusion with the enemies of the government under which he held office, and with treachery. At Donaldson he was the senior officer in command. When the other brigadiers refused to fight any longer, he brought off his own men and left the others to surrender to Grant. This was regarded as a breach of discipline, and Jefferson Davis relieved him of his command. When Lincoln's proclamation was issued, the Virginia Convention was still in session, and had not passed a secession ordinance, so she was not included with states against which the proclamation was first directed. With the exception of the northwestern section of the state, where there were few slaves and the Union sentiment predominated, the people of Virginia, in response to the President's call for troops to enforce the laws, sprang to arms to resist the government. The war cry to arms resounded throughout the land, and in the delirium of the hour we all forgot our Union principles and our sympathy with the pro-slavery cause and rushed to the field of Mars. In issuing his proclamation, Lincoln referred for authority to a statute in pursuance of which George Washington sent an army into Pennsylvania to suppress the whiskey insurrection. But the people were persuaded that Lincoln's real object was to abolish slavery, although at this inaugural he had said, There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension that by the accession of the Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security were endangered. Indeed the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do bequote from one of those speeches when I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." The South had always been solid for slavery, and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery if it was right to own slaves. Enforcing the laws was not coercing a state, unless the state resisted the execution of the laws. When such a collision came, coercion depended on which was the stronger side. The Virginia Convention had been in session about two months, but a majority had opposed secession up to the time of the proclamation, and even then a large minority, including many of the ablest men in Virginia, voted against it. Among that number was Jubal Early, who was prominent in the war. Nobody cared whether it was a constitutional right they were exercising, or an act of revolution. At such times reason is silent and passion prevails. The ordinance of secession was adopted in April and provided that it be submitted to a popular vote on the 4th Thursday in May. According to the state's rights theory, Virginia was still in the Union until the ordinance was ratified, but the state immediately became an armed camp, and her troops seized the United States Armory at Harpers Ferry and the Norfolk Navy Yard. Virginia went out of the Union by force of arms, and I went with her. Moseby's Memoirs by Colonel John Singleton Moseby Chapter 3 A Private and the Cavalry In that fateful April, 1861, our local company, with other companies of infantry and cavalry, went into camp in a half-finished building of the Martha Washington College in the suburbs of Abington. Captain Jones allowed me to remain in Bristol for some time to close up the business I had in hand for clients and to provide for my family. A good many owed me fees when I left home, and they still owe me. My last appearance in court was in Bluntville, Tennessee, before the Chancellor. My first night in camp I was detailed as one of the camp guards. Sergeant Tom Edmondson, a gallant soldier who was killed in June 1864, gave me the counter-sign and instructed me as to the duties of a sentinel. For two hours, in a cold wind, I walked my round and was very glad when my relief came and I could go to rest in my pallet of straw. The experience of my first night in camp rather tended to chill my military ardor and was far more distasteful than picketing near the enemy's lines on the Potomac, which I afterwards did in hot and cold weather, very cheerfully. In fact, I enjoyed it. The danger of being shot by a rifleman in a thicket, if not attractive, at least kept a vedette awake in watching. At this time I was the frailest and most delicate man in the company. But camp duty was always irksome to me, and I preferred being on the outposts. During the whole time that I served as a private, nearly a year, I only once missed going on picket three times a week. The single exception was when I was disabled one night by my horse falling over a cow lying in the road. Captain Jones had strict ideas of discipline which he enforced, but he took good care of his horses as well as his men. There was a horse inspection every morning, and the man whose horse was not well groomed got a scolding mixed with some cursing by Captain Jones. Jones was always very kind to me. He drilled his own company, and also a company of cavalry from Marion, which had come to our camp to get the benefit of his instruction in cavalry tactics. In the Marion Company was William E. Peters, professor at Emory and Henry College, who had graduated in the same class in Greek with me at the university. When he and I were students reading Thucydides, we did not expect ever to take part in a greater war than the Peloponnesian. Peters had left his literary work to be a lieutenant of cavalry. He was made a staff officer by General Floyd in his campaign that year in West Virginia. For some reason Peters was not with Floyd when the latter escaped from Fort Donaldson in February 1862. Peters was a strict churchman, but considered it his duty to fight a duel with a Confederate officer. He became a colonel of cavalry. Peters's regiment was with McCauslan when he was sent by General Early in August 1864 to Chambersburg, and his regiment was selected as the one to set fire to the town. Peters refused to obey the order, for which he is entitled to a monument to his memory. Reprisals in war can only be justified as a deterrent. As the Confederates were holding the place for only a few hours, while the Northern armies were occupying a large part of the South, no doubt, aside from any question of humanity, Peters thought it was bad policy to provoke retaliation. General Early ordered a reprisal in kind on account of the houses burned in the Shenandoah Valley, a few months before by General Hunter. As General Early made no mention of Peters in his book, I imagine it was because of his refusal to apply the torch to Chambersburg. On his return from this expedition McCauslan was surprised by Avril at Moorfield, and Peters was wounded and captured. He told me that he expected to be put under arrest for disobedience as soon as he got back to Virginia. Hunter was a member of an old Virginia family, but he showed no favor to Virginians. At Bull Run he commanded the leading division that crossed it subtly and was badly wounded, but there was no sympathy for him in Virginia. A relative of his told me that when Hunter met a lady who was a near relative, he offered to embrace her, but was repelled. She thought that in fighting against Virginia he was committing an unnatural act, and that he had the feelings described by Hamlet of one who would kill a king and marry with his brother. On Hunter's staff was his relative, Colonel Strother, who had won literary distinction over the pen name of Port Creon. Both men seemed to be animated by the same sentiments toward their kin. Hunter presided over the court that condemned Mrs. Surratt as an accessory to the assassination of President Lincoln. He closed his life by suicide. But to return to our company of cavalry and my first days as a soldier, we were sent within a few days to another camping-ground where we had plank sheds for shelter and where we drilled regularly. Several companies of infantry shared the camp with us. Once I had been detailed for a camp-guard, and having been relieved just as the company went out to drill, I saddled my horse and went along. I had no idea that it was a breach of discipline to be doing double duty until two men with muskets came up and told me that I was under arrest for it. I was too proud to say a word, and as my time had come I went again to walking my rounds. Once after that, when we were in camp on Bull Run, I was talking at night with the Colonel in his tent, and did not hear the bugle sounded for roll-call. So Lieutenant, who happened to be in command, ordered me as a penalty to do duty the rest of the morning as a camp-guard. He knew that my absence from roll-call was not willful but a mistake. I would not make any explanation but serve my tour of duty. These were the only instances in which I was punished when a private. Our circuit judge, Fulkerson, who had served in the Mexican War, was appointed a Colonel by Governor Letcher and took command of the camp at Abington. But in a few days we were ordered to Richmond. Fulkerson, with the infantry, went by rail, but Jones preferred to march his company all the way. As he had been an officer in the army on the planes, we learned a good deal from him in the two weeks on the road, and it was a good course of discipline for us. I was almost a perfect stranger in the company to which I belonged, and I felt so lonely in camp that I applied to Captain Jones for a transfer to an infantry company from Bristol. He said that I would have to get the approval of the Governor and forwarded my application to him at Richmond. Fortunately, the next day we were ordered away, and I heard nothing more about the transfer. On May 30 of the afternoon our company, 100 Strong, left Abington to join the army. In spite of a drizzling rain the whole population was out to say farewell. In fact, a good many old men rode several miles with us. We marched ten miles and then disbanded to disperse in squads, under the command of an officer, or of a non-commissioned officer, to spend the night at the country-homes. I went under Jim King, the orderly sergeant, and spent the night at the home of Major Ab Beatty, who gave us the best of everything, but I was so depressed at parting with my wife and children that I scarcely spoke a word. King had been a cadet at West Point for a short time, had had learned something of tactics. He was afterwards transferred to the 37th Virginia Infantry, and was killed in Jackson's battle at Curringstown. When the roll was called the next morning at the rendezvous at Old Glade Spring Church, I don't think a man was missing. The men were boiling with enthusiasm and afraid that the war would be over before they got to the firing line. I remember one man who was conspicuous on the march. He rode at the head of the column and got the bouquets the ladies threw at us. But in our first battle he was conspicuous for his absence and stayed with the wagons. Our march to the army was an ovation. Nobody dreamed of the possibility of our failure and the last scene of the great drama at Appomattox. We made easy marches, and by the time we got to Withville all of my depression of spirits had gone, and I was as lively as anybody. It took us two weeks to get to Richmond, where we spent a few days on the fairgrounds. We were then sent to a camp of instruction at Ashland, where we remained a short time, or until we, with a cavalry company from Amelia Cadney, were ordered to join Joe Johnson's army in the Shenandoah. I well remember that we were in Ashland when news came to us that Joe Johnson, on June 15, had retreated from Harper's Ferry to Winchester. To begin the war by abandoning such an outpost, when there was no enemy near and no necessity for it, was a shock for which we were not prepared, and it chilled our enthusiasm. I couldn't understand it. That was all, but my instinct told me at the time what was afterwards confirmed by reason and experience, that a great blunder had been committed. At Withville, on our third day's march to Richmond, we got the papers which informed us that the war had actually begun in a skirmish at Fairfax, where Captain Marr had been killed. We were greatly excited by the news of the affair. Our people had been reading about war and descriptions of battles by historians and poets from the days of Homer down, and were filled with enthusiasm for military glory. They had no experience in the hardships of military service and knew nothing, had no conception of the suffering it brings to the homes of those who have left them. In all great wars, women and children are the chief sufferers. Our company joined the first Virginia cavalry commanded by Colonel J. E. B. Stewart in the Shenandoah Valley. At Richmond, Captain Jones, who stood high with those in authority, had procured sharps carbenes for us. We considered this a great compliment, as arms were scarce in the Confederacy. We had been furnished with sabers before we left Abington, but the only real use I ever heard of their being put to was to hold a piece of meat over a fire for frying. I dragged one through the first year of the war, but when I became a commander I discarded it. The saber and lance may have been very good weapons in the days of chivalry, and my suspicion is that the combats of the Hero of Cervantes were more realistic, and not such burlesques as they are supposed to be. But certainly the saber is of no use against gunpowder. Captain Jones also made requisition for uniforms, but when they arrived there was almost a mutiny. They were a sort of done colour, and came from the Penitentiary. The men piled them up in the camp, and all but Fount Beatty and myself refused to wear them. We joined Joe Johnson's army in the Shenandoah Valley at his headquarters in Winchester, and rested there for a day. Then we went on to join Colonel J. E. B. Stewart's Regiment at Bunker Hill, a village about twelve miles distant on the pike leading to Martinsburg, where Patterson's army was camped. We were incorporated into the first Virginia cavalry, which Stewart had just organised, now on outpost to watch Patterson. I had never seen Stewart before, and the distance between us was so great that I never expected to rise to even an acquaintance with him. Stewart was a graduate of West Point, and as Lieutenant Colonel Sumner's Regiment, the first cavalry, had won distinction and had been wounded in an Indian fight. At the beginning of the war he was just twenty-eight years old. His appearance, which included a reddish beard and a ruddy complexion, indicated a strong physique and great energy. In his work on the outposts, Stewart soon showed that he possessed the qualities of a great leader of cavalry. He never had an equal in such service. He discarded the old maxims, and soon discovered that in the conditions of modern war the chief functions of cavalry are to learn the designs and to watch and report the movements of the enemy. We rested a day in camp, and many of us wrote letters to our homes, describing the hospitable welcome we had met on our long march, and our anxiety to meet the foe who was in camp a few miles away. On the following day, to our great delight, Captain Jones was ordered to take us on a scout towards Martinsburg. My first experience was near there, at Snoggrass Spring, where we came upon two soldiers who were out foraging. They ran across the field, but we overtook them. I got a canteen from one, the first I had ever seen, which I found very useful in the first battle I was in. It was a trophy which I prized highly. We got a good view of Patterson's Army, a mile or so away, and returned that evening to our bivouac, all in the highest of spirits. Nearly every man in the company wrote a letter to somebody the next day. End of chapter. Chapter 4 of Mosby's Memoirs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simseville, South Carolina. Mosby's Memoirs By Colonel John Singleton Mosby Chapter 4 Johnson's Retreat from Harper's Ferry The first great military blunder of the war was committed by Johnston in evacuating Harper's Ferry. Both Jackson and General Lee, who was then in Richmond organizing the army and acting as military adviser, were opposed to this. They wanted to hold it, not as a fortress with a garrison, but to break communication with the West, and a salient for an active force to threaten the flank of an invading army. On April 27th, Stenwell Jackson was ordered to the command of Harper's Ferry, which the militia had seized a few days before. Harper's Ferry is situated in a gap in the Blue Ridge through which flow the waters of the Potomac and the Shenandoah. John Brown had seized the place in his rebellion. The fact that he tried to start a slave insurrection in a region where there were few slaves is proof that he was a monomaniac. But Harper's Ferry was a place of great strategic value for the Confederates, as the railroad and canal on the Potomac from Washington, fifty miles below, passed through the gap. It was a salient position. Its possession by the Confederates was a menace to the north and broke direct communication between the capital and the West. A strategic offensive on the border was the best policy to encourage Southern sentiment in Maryland and defend the Shenandoah Valley from invasion. A Virginian lieutenant, Roger Jones, had been stationed at Harper's Ferry with a small guard to protect the property of the government. He remained there until the force coming to capture the place was in sight, then set fire to the buildings and retreated. His example in holding the position to the last extremity was not followed by the Confederates. When Jackson arrived at the scene of his command, without waiting for instructions, he prepared to hold it by fortifying Maryland heights. I am of the opinion, he wrote to General Lee, that this place should be defended with a spirit that actuated the defenders of Thermopylae, and if left to myself such as my determination. General Lee was in accord with Jackson's sediments. Now Jackson did not mean that Harper's Ferry should be held as a fortress to stand a siege, nor that he would stay there and die like the Spartans in the past, but that he would hold it until a likelihood of its being surrounded by superior numbers was imminent. There was no prospect of this being the case, for no investing force was near. The best way to defend the Shenandoah Valley was to hold the line of the Potomac as a menace to Washington. Major Dias, who had been sent to Harper's Ferry as an inspector of the Confederate War Department, thought that the troops showed an invincible spirit of resistance. On May 21st he wrote, I have not asked Colonel Jackson his opinion on the subject, but my own is that there is force enough here to hold the place against any attack which, under the existing state of affairs, may become depleted. And on May 23rd, the day before MacDowell's army at Washington crossed into Virginia, he reported that there were about eight thousand troops at Harper's Ferry and the outposts, including five companies of artillery and a naval battery, and that 7300 were then able to go into battle well armed. The naval batteries, he said, under Lieutenant Fauntleroy, are placed on the northern and southern salience of the village of Harper's Ferry and enveloped by their fire the whole of the town of Bolivar and the approaches of the immediate banks of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. The cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Jeb Stewart is in very good condition and quite effective. All the infantry regiments are daily drilled in the School of the Soldier and Company, and valuable assistance is received in this respect from the young men who have been instructed at the military school at Lexington. Neither Jackson nor Major Dias knew of any immediate danger of Harper's Ferry being invested. On May 24th, in accordance with orders from the Confederate government at Montgomery, General Joseph E. Johnston assumed command at the ferry, and in a few days Jackson was given a brigade of five Virginia regiments. The outposts at the ferry then extended from Williamsport on the Potomac to Point of Rocks on the river below. Johnston at once submitted a memorandum to Richmond on the conditions at Harper's Ferry, which displayed the caution for which he became distinguished. He seemed to have little confidence in his troops and thought the position could be easily turned from above or below, taking no account of the fact that he might turn the flank of an enemy who was flanking him. Johnston asked instructions from General Lee in relation to the manner in which the troops he commanded should be used. And on May 28th he again wrote in the same tone of despair, If the commander-in-chief has precise instructions to give, I beg to receive them early. I have prepared means of transportation for a march. Should it be decided that this troop should constitute a garrison, this expense can be recalled. Which shows that he was getting ready for a retreat. With this letter Johnston enclosed a memorandum from a staff officer, Major Whiting, in which the latter spoke of troops that were gathering at Carlisle and Chambersburg, intimating that in the event of the advance of this force it might be necessary to move out to prevent being shut up in a cul-de-sac. But such a thing was too remote and contingent to constitute a danger of investment at that time. No place is absolutely impregnable. Gibraltar has been captured. The answer Johnston should have received to this request for orders was that he did not command a garrison to defend a fortress, but an active force in the field, and that Harper's Ferry might be held as a picket post. The discipline of Johnston's troops ought to have been as good as that of the three-months men that Patterson was collecting at Chambersburg fifty miles away. In addition to the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute who were drilling his regiments, Johnston had in his army at least ten officers who had lately resigned from the U.S. Army. Nearly all the field officers of Jackson's Brigade had been educated at the Military Institute, and several had been officers in the Mexican War. Their conduct in battle a few weeks afterwards shows how much Johnston had underrated them. The men were volunteers full of enthusiasm for a cause, and rendered cheerful obedience to orders. It was not necessary to drill such material into machines to make them soldiers. Johnston complained of the want of discipline of his army and the danger of being surrounded by a superior force. The force that was coming to surround the ferry was a specter. McDowell's and Patterson's armies were fifty miles away and a hundred miles apart. At the request of Governor Peerpot a few regiments had crossed the Ohio, but McClellan's headquarters were still at Cincinnati. Any movement from that direction would naturally be through Central Virginia, towards Richmond, in cooperation with McDowell. Johnston continued to show great anxiety about his position, and wrote about it several times to General Lee. But neither Lee nor President Davis could see the danger as he saw it, and on June 7 General Lee, to calm his fears, wrote him, He, the President, does not think it probable that there will be an immediate attack by troops from Ohio. General N. J. Garnett, C. S. Army, with a command of four thousand men, has been dispatched to Beverly to arrest the progress of troops. Colonel McDonald has also been sent to interrupt the passage of troops over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It is hoped by these means you will be relieved from an attack in that direction, and will have merely to meet an attack in front from Pennsylvania. In the meantime, reinforcements were going to Beauregard in Johnston almost daily. Wise and Floyd had been sent into the Knaw Valley to counteract any movement there, and Garnett, with four thousand troops, had been sent to Northwest Virginia. Patterson's was the only force from which Johnston could expect an attack, and as he would have had to make detachments from it to guard his communications, Patterson could not be much superior in numbers when the collision should come. General Lee, as advisor to the War Department, was really the de facto secretary of war and directed all operations in the field. He had selected Manassas Junction as a strategic point for the concentration of troops, on account of its being in connection with the valley. On return from Manassas Junction, to relieve Johnston of anxiety about his flank being turned, Lee wrote to him that he had placed Colonel Ewell in advance at Fairfax Courthouse, and Colonel Epahunton at Lieberg on the Potomac, each with a force of infantry and cavalry in reservation, who would inform him of any movement to his rear. But Johnston continued uneasy, and although he was receiving reinforcements, he again wrote that he had heard that Patterson had ten thousand troops at Chambersburg, that some of McClellan's troops had reached Grafton, and he apprehended a junction of all those forces against him. He should at least have waited for the development of such a plan, and then, instead of retreating, have taken the offensive to defeat it. Johnston's suggestion met the abandonment of the valley. Patterson, who was organizing the force at Chambersburg, was a political general, only remembered for having allowed the force he commanded in the Shenandoah Valley to render no service at a critical time. Patterson proposed to capture Harper's Ferry, which, of course, General Scott was very willing to do. But the only support Scott could promise from Washington was to make a demonstration towards Manassas to prevent reinforcements going to the valley, and to send a force of twenty-five hundred on a secondary expedition up the Potomac. As the ferry was of great strategic value as an outpost, Scott warned Patterson of the desperate resistance he might expect from the Confederates. He did not suspect that the Confederates were then packing up to leave. On June 14, the Confederates began the evacuation of Harper's Ferry and retreated ten or twelve miles to Charlestown. No movement had been made against them from any direction. Several regiments had just arrived. There were about three thousand militia at Winchester, and a force of the enemy had retreated from Romney. On June 13, after repeated requests for instructions about holding Harper's Ferry, which showed clearly a desire to shift the responsibility for it, the War Department wrote him the conditions on which the place should be evacuated. You have been here to fore-instructed to use your own discretion as to retiring from your position at Harper's Ferry and taking the field to check the advance of the enemy. As you seem to desire, however, that the responsibility of your retirement should be assumed here, and as no reluctance is felt to bear any burden which the public interest may require, you can consider yourself authorized whenever the position of the enemy shall convince you that he is about to turn your position and thus deprive the country of the services of yourself and the troops under your command to destroy everything at Harper's Ferry. Johnston seems to have met this letter at Charlestown while it was on the way, and did not wait for it at the ferry. Johnston's report says he met a courier from Richmond with a dispatch authorizing him to evacuate Harper's Ferry at his discretion. The dispatch he received had no such instructions. The conditions on which he was authorized to abandon the place had not arisen. No enemy was threatening to turn his position. On June 15 Patterson crossed the Maryland line. His leading brigade was commanded by Colonel George H. Thomas, a Virginian, who was an officer in the Second Cavalry under Lee. It had been expected that he would go with the people of his native state. On the sixteenth his brigade waited the Potomac. When Patterson heard that Harper's Ferry had been abandoned, he was incredulous and thought it was a ruse, giving Joe Johnston a credit he himself never claimed. The evacuation of Harper's Ferry before it was compelled by the presence of an enemy was not approved at Richmond, nor was it done to set in concert with any other force, as was then supposed. The victory at Bull Run a few weeks afterwards confirmed the impression that the movement had been made in cooperation with Beauregard. The latter knew nothing of such a purpose until he heard that the Confederates had lost their advantage, and that the enemy held the key to the Shenandoah Valley. In plain words, it was a retreat. The evacuation of the post before there was any pressure to compel it made Johnston the innocent cause of a comedy at Washington. General Scott could not comprehend what could be the motive for it, except on the theory of its being a feigned retreat to capture Washington by a stratagem. No other reason could be conceived why the Confederates should surrender without making a defence the advantage of Harper's Ferry as a base. After a part of his force had crossed the Potomac to his surprise, Patterson received a telegram from General Scott on June 16, ordering him to send at once to Washington all the regular troops, horse and foot, and Burnside's Rhode Island regiment. And on the 17th of June Scott repeated the order and said, We are pressed here. Send the troops I have twice called for without delay. Where the pressure could come from was a mystery to Patterson, as he knew that Johnston was still in the Shenandoah Valley, but the order was imperative and he obeyed. The troops were sent, he said, leaving me without a single piece of artillery, and for the time with but one troop of cavalry which had not been in service over a month. So the hostile armies retreated in opposite directions, Patterson recrossed the Potomac, and Johnston, unconscious of the alarm which his retreat had given in Washington, went on to Winchester. There was another amusing episode on June 16 as a result of the Harper's Ferry operations. In anticipation of the demonstration he was to make in favor of Patterson's predicted attack on Harper's Ferry, McDowell had sent General Schenck on the Loudon Railroad as an advance guard. When turning a curve near Vienna, a fire was opened on the train by what Schenck called a massed battery. The engine was in the rear and as the engineer could not draw the train out of the range of fire, he detached the engine and disappeared under a full head of steam. So Schenck and his men had to walk back. Under a flag of truce he asked permission to bury the dead and take care of the wounded. Schenck afterwards gained notoriety as U.S. minister at London and was recalled. The only distinction he won in the war was as the inventor of the term massed battery. The battery that did so much damage was commanded by my schoolmate, Del Kemper. The whole country was greatly surprised by the news of the evacuation of Harper's Ferry. If Johnston had waited a day longer for the answer to his request for instructions, his retreat would have been a disobedience of orders. The conditions did not exist in the opinion of the War Department, which would justify the evacuation. Johnston sent a reply in which he disclaimed a desire to shift responsibility, which was clearly inconsistent with his request for instructions. Harper's Ferry should have been held until danger was imminent. It must have been a position of a strategic value, as well as of tactical strength, since it was held by eleven thousand men against the Confederates and used as a base in the Gettysburg Campaign and also when early invaded Maryland. When the ferry was evacuated, McDowell's Army was fifty miles below defending Washington, and Beauregard, in his front, fully occupied his attention. Patterson was at Hagerstown, had not crossed the Potomac, and had given no sign of doing so. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Mosby's Memoirs by Colonel John Singleton Mosby. Chapter 5 Recollections of the Battle of Manassas Footnote. This, the first battle of the war, was known in the north as the Battle of Bull Run, and in the south as the Battle of Manassas. End of Footnote. The first Virginia cavalry remained in the Shenandoah Valley until the 18th of July, when, by force marches, it was sent to join the army and take its part in the Battle of Manassas. When we left the Valley, Stewart sent Captain Patrick's Company to watch Patterson, whose army was in camp at Charlestown, and to screen the transfer of the army to the east of the Blue Ridge. It was well known that in a few days the most of Patterson's regiments would be mustered out of service and would go home. It was evident that his prime object had been not to divert Johnston's army, but to avoid a collision. Patterson no doubt thought that he had affected his purpose and was content to rest where he was. Stewart's regiment arrived at the scene of the approaching battle on the evening of July 20, and went into Bivouac near Balls Ford. The armies were so close together that there was a great deal of picket firing, and I remember very well the foreboding I felt when I lay down under a pine-tree to rest beside Fount Beatty. When the bugle sounded on the morning of the twenty-first, and counting off, I was number one in the first set of fours, and rode at the head of the squadron that day. Nothing afterwards occurred in my military career that gives me more satisfaction to remember. A few days before, six Colt pistols had been sent to our company, and Captain Jones had selected the men who were to have them. I was one of the six—I don't know why—but to reconcile those who got no pistols, Jones told them that the six should be selected for the most dangerous work. Shortly after breakfast on the morning of the battle, Stewart sent Jones to make a reconnaissance over Bull Run. When we reached the woods where he thought the enemy might be, Jones called for the six men. We all responded, and rode off into the woods to reconnoiter. But we didn't find an enemy. So the company recrossed the run. Our regiment was divided during the battle, and the squadron to which I belonged was placed under a major swan—a Marylander. Late in the day when the enemy was in retreat, swan halted us in a field within fifty yards of Kemper's guns, which were firing on the retreating troops. That was the very time for us to have been on the enemy's flank. I was near Captain Jones. He rose into Stewart's and said indignantly, Major Swan, you can't be too bold in pursuing a flying enemy. But he made no impression on swan. After dark swan marched us back over Bull Run, and I slept in a drenching rain in a fence corner. Swan did not get a man or a horse scratched. He did a life insurance business that day. Instead of swan supporting the battery, the battery supported swan. Afterwards my last official act as adjutant of the company was to carry an order from Jones, who had become Colonel, for swan's arrest. We lay all the next day near the battlefield, and I rode over it, carrying a dispatch to Stewart at Sudley. But the first thing I did in the morning was to make a temporary shelter from the rain in a fence corner, and write a letter to my wife. Monday, July 22, Battlefield of Manassas. My dearest Pauline, there was a great battle yesterday. The Yankees are overwhelmingly routed. Thousands of them killed. I was in the fight. We at one time stood for two hours under a perfect storm of shot and shell. It was a miracle that none of our company was killed. We took all their cannon from them. Among the batteries captured was Sherman's. Battle lasted about seven hours. About ninety thousand Yankees, forty-five thousand of our men. The cavalry pursued them till dark, followed six or seven miles. General Scott commanded them. I just snatched this moment to write, Am Outdoors in a Rain, and will write you all particulars when I get a chance. We start just as soon as we can get our breakfast to follow them to Alexandria. We made a forced march to get here to the battle, traveled about sixty-five miles without stopping. My love to all of you, in haste, yours devotedly. Early on Tuesday morning, July 23rd, Stuart's regiment and Ely's brigade moved to Fairfax Courthouse, and camped near there on opposite sides of the Alexandria Pike. Stuart's dispatch to General Johnston, who was still at Manassas, says we got there at nine-thirty a.m. The country looked very much like Egypt after a flood of the Nile. It was strewn with the debris of McDowell's army. I again wrote to my wife and used paper and an envelope which the Zoos had left behind. On it was a picture of a Zoos charging with a fixed bayonet and an inscription, Up Guards and At Them, which is said to have been Wellington's order at Waterloo. The Zoos were then charging on New York. Fairfax Courthouse, July 24th, 1861. My dearest Pauline. I telegraphed and wrote you from Manassas early the next morning after the battle. We made a forced march from Winchester to get to Manassas in time for the fight, travelled two whole days and one night without stopping, in the rain, and getting only one meal. We arrived the morning before the fight. It lasted about ten hours and was terrific. When we were first brought upon the field we were posted as a reserve just in rear of our artillery and directly within range of the hottest fire of the enemy. For two hours we sat there on our horses, exposed to a perfect storm of grapeshot, balls, bombs, etc. They burst over our heads, passed under our horses, yet nobody was hurt. I rode my horse nearly to death on the battlefield, going backward and forward, watching the enemy's movements to prevent their flanking our command. When I first got on the ground my heart sickened. We met Hampton's South Carolina Legion retreating. I thought the day was lost and with it the southern cause. We begged them for the honor of their state to return. But just then a shout goes up along our lines. Beauregard arrives and assures us that a day will be ours. This reanimated the troops to redouble their efforts. Our regiment had been divided in the morning. Half was taken to charge the enemy early in the action, and the remaining part, ours and Amelia Company, were held as a reserve to cover the retreat of our forces, if unsuccessful, and to take advantage of any favorable moment. When, late in the evening, the Yankees gave way, they seemed overwhelmed with confusion and despair. They abandoned everything—arms, wagons, horses, ammunition, clothing—all sorts of munitions of war. They fled like a flock of panic-stricken sheep. We took enough arms, accoutrements, et cetera, to equip the whole army. They were splendidly equipped, had every imaginable comfort and convenience which Yankee ingenuity could devise. The fight would not have been half so long had it been an open field one, but the Yankees were protected by a thick pine woods so that it was almost impossible to get at them with the cavalry. They never once stood to a clash of the bayonet, always broke and ran. In the evening, when they gave way, the order was given to charge them. We were then in the distant part of the field. In a moment we were in full pursuit, and as we swept on by the lines of our infantry at full speed, the shouts of our victorious soldiers rent the air. We pursued them for six or eight miles, until darkness covered their retreat. The whole road was blocked up with what they abandoned in their flight. All our regiment, in fact, nearly all the soldiers, now have splendid military overcoats which they took. I have provided myself very well. We took every piece of their artillery from them. Sixty-two pieces, among them one of the finest batteries in the world. Their total loss cannot be less than five thousand. Our company is now equipped with Yankee tents. I'm riding under one. We are also eating Yankee provisions, as they left enough to feed the army a long time. All of the Northern Congress came out as spectators of the fight. A senator was killed by a cannonball—foster. All of our troops fought well, but the Virginia troops bore the brunt of the battle, especially Jackson's brigade. A Washington paper says they were scarce of ammunition—a lie, for we took enough from them to whip them over again. Our captain, who you know is an old army officer, complimented our company very much for their coolness and bravery in standing fire—said that we stood like old veterans. We were placed in the most trying position in which troops can be placed, to be exposed to a fire which you cannot return. There was scarcely a minute during the battle that I did not think of you and my sweet babes. I had a picture of May, his daughter, which I took out once and looked at. For a moment the remembrance of her Prattling innocence almost unfitted me for the stern duties of a soldier. But a truce to such thoughts we are now marching on to bombard Washington City. Fairfax Courthouse, July 27, 1861 Dearest Pauline We are here, awaiting for the whole army to come up. Several of our men got scared into fits at the battle. A Dr. Blank put a blister on his heart as an excuse not to go into battle. One named Blank was so much frightened when the shells commenced bursting around us that he fell off his horse. Commenced praying, the surgeon ran up, thought he was shot, examined him, told him he was only scared to death. He got up and left the field