Mosby's War Reminiscences - Stuart's Cavalry Campaigns in Civil War. John Singleton Mosby
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The country had been abandoned to the occupation of the Federal army the year before, when Johnston retired from Centreville, and had never been held by us afterward, except during the short time when the Confederate army was passing through in Gen. Lee's first campaign into Maryland. I told Stuart that I would, by incessant attacks, compel the enemy either greatly to contract his lines or to reinforce them; either of which would be of great advantage to the Southern cause. The means supplied me were hardly adequate to the end I proposed, but I thought that zeal and celerity of movement would go far to compensate for the deficiency of my numbers. There was a great stake to be won, and I resolved to play a bold game to win it. I think that Stuart was the only man in the army of Northern Virginia, except two or three who accompanied me and knew me well, who expected that I would accomplish anything. Other detachments of cavalry had been sent there at different times that had done little or nothing.
Nearly every one thought that I was starting out on a quixotic enterprise, that would result in doing no harm to the enemy, but simply in getting all of my own men killed or captured. When at last I secured an independent command, for which I had so longed, I was as happy as Columbus when he set forth from the port of Palos with the three little barks Isabella had given him to search for an unknown continent. My faith was strong, and I never for a moment had a feeling of discouragement or doubted my ability to reap a rich harvest from what I knew was still an ungleaned field. I stopped an hour or so at Warrenton, which has always been a sort of political shrine from which the Delphian Apollo issues his oracles. After the war I made it my home, and it is generally supposed that I resided there before the war; the fact is that I never was in that section of Virginia until I went there as a soldier. The Union soldiers knew just as much about the country as I did.
I recall vividly to mind the looks of surprise and the ominous shaking of the heads of the augurs when I told them that I proposed going farther North to begin the war again along the Potomac. Their criticism on my command was pretty much the same as that pronounced on the English mission to Cabul some years ago—that it was too small for an army and too large for an embassy.
When I bade my friends at the Warren-Green Hotel "good-by," I had their best wishes for my success, but nothing more. They all thought that I was going on the foolhardy enterprise of an Arctic voyager in search of the North Pole. My idea was to make the Piedmont region of the country lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers the base of my operations. This embraces the upper portion of the counties of Fauquier and Loudoun. It is a rich, pastoral country, which afforded subsistence for my command, while the Blue Ridge was a safe point to which to retreat if hard pressed by the superior numbers that could be sent against us. It was inhabited by a highly refined and cultivated population, who were thoroughly devoted to the Southern cause. Although that region was the Flanders of the war, and harried worse than any of which history furnishes an example since the desolation of the Palatinates by Louis XIV.,1 yet the stubborn faith of the people never wavered. Amid fire and sword they remained true to the last, and supported me through all the trials of the war. While the country afforded an abundance of subsistence, it was open and scant of forests, with no natural defensive advantages for repelling hostile incursions. There was no such shelter there as Marion had in the swamps of the Pedee, to which he retreated. It was always my policy to avoid fighting at home as much as possible, for the plain reason that it would have encouraged an overwhelming force to come again, and that the services of my own command would have been neutralized by the force sent against it. Even if I defeated them, they would return with treble numbers. On the contrary, it was safer for me, and greater results could be secured, by being the aggressor and striking the enemy at unguarded points. I could thus compel him to guard a hundred points, while I could select any one of them for attack. If I could do so, I generally slipped over when my territory was invaded and imitated Scipio by carrying the war into the enemy's camps.
I have seen it stated in the reports of some Federal officers that they would throw down the gage of battle to me in my own country and that I would not accept it. I was not in the habit of doing what they wanted me to do. Events showed that my judgment was correct. After I had once occupied I never abandoned it, although the wave of invasion several times rolled over it.
News of the surrender, or, rather, the evacuation, of Richmond came to me one morning in April, 1865, at North Fork, in Loudoun County, where my command had assembled to go on a raid. Just two or three days before that I had defeated Colonel Reno, with the Twelfth Pennsylvania Cavalry, at Hamilton, a few miles from there, which was the last fight in which I commanded. Reno afterward enjoyed some notoriety in connection with the Custer massacre. My purpose was to weaken the armies invading Virginia, by harassing their rear. As a line is only as strong as its weakest point, it was necessary for it to be stronger than I was at every point, in order to resist my attacks. It is easy, therefore, to see the great results that may be accomplished by a small body of cavalry moving rapidly from point to point on the communications of an army. To destroy supply trains, to break up the means of conveying intelligence, and thus isolating an army from its base, as well as its different corps from each other, to confuse their plans by capturing despatches, are the objects of partisan war. It is just as legitimate to fight an enemy in the rear as in front. The only difference is in the danger. Now, to prevent all these things from being done, heavy detachments must be made to guard against them. The military value of a partisan's work is not measured by the amount of property destroyed, or the number of men killed or captured, but by the number he keeps watching. Every soldier withdrawn from the front to guard the rear of an army is so much taken from its fighting strength.
I endeavored, as far as I was able, to diminish this aggressive power of the army of the Potomac, by compelling it to keep a large force on the defensive. I assailed its rear, for there was its most vulnerable point. My men had no camps. If they had gone into camp, they would soon have all been captured. They would scatter for safety, and gather at my call, like the Children of the Mist. A blow would be struck at a weak or unguarded point, and then a quick retreat. The alarm would spread through the sleeping camp, the long roll would be beaten or the bugles would sound to horse, there would be mounting in hot haste and a rapid pursuit. But the partisans generally got off with their prey. Their pursuers were striking at an invisible foe. I often sent small squads at night to attack and run in the pickets along a line of several miles. Of course, these alarms were very annoying, for no human being knows how sweet sleep is but a soldier. I wanted to use and consume the Northern cavalry in hard work. I have often thought that their fierce hostility to me was more on account of the sleep I made them lose than the number we killed and captured. It has always been a wonder with people how I managed to collect my men after dispersing them. The true secret was that it was a fascinating life, and its attractions far more than counterbalanced its hardships and dangers. They had no camp duty to do, which, however necessary, is disgusting to soldiers of high spirit. To put them to such routine work is pretty much like hitching a race-horse to a plow.
Many expeditions were undertaken and traps laid to capture us, but all failed, and my command continued to grow and flourish until the final scene at Appomattox. It had just reached its highest point of efficiency when the time came to surrender. We did not go into a number of traps set to catch us, but somehow we always brought the traps off with us. One stratagem was after the model of the Grecian horse, and would have done credit to Ulysses. They sent a train of wagons up the Little River turnpike from Fairfax, apparently without any guard, thinking that such a bait would surely catch me. But in each wagon were concealed six of the Bucktails, who would, no doubt, have stopped my career, if I had given them a chance. Fortunately, I never saw them, for on that very day I had gone by another route down to Fairfax. When the Bucktails returned, they had the satisfaction of knowing that I had been there in their absence. At that time Hooker's army was in winter quarters on the Rappahannock, with a line of communication with Washington, both by land and water. The troops belonging to the defences at Washington were mostly cantoned in Fairfax, with their advance post at Centreville. West of the Blue Ridge, Milroy occupied Winchester. From my rendezvous east of the ridge I could move on the radius and strike any point on the circumference of the circle which was not too strongly guarded. But if I compelled them to be stronger everywhere than I was, then so much the better. I had done my work. Panics had often occurred in the camp when we were not near; the pickets became so nervous, expecting attacks, that they fired at every