Mosbys Rangers by Jeffry D. Wert

Author:Jeffry D. Wert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Chapter 12

BLOODY SEPTEMBER

“The feeling is becoming desperate there is no safety in leaving the command even short distances the bushwhackers fire on them on all occasions,” William Thompson wrote to his wife around the beginning of September 1864. A quartermaster officer in Wesley Merritt’s cavalry division, Thompson spoke for thousands of his comrades in the Army of the Shenandoah. Each day, it seemed, brought a new attack or incursion by Mosby’s Rangers. 1

Several days after Thompson penned the letter to home, a party of Union soldiers discovered the bodies of several members of the 5th Michigan Cavalry. The Michiganders had been foraging for food at farmhouses when Confederate guerrillas captured them. The Rebels shot or hanged every one of them and, on one of those hanged, tied a ham to each leg and pinned a card. On the card, according to a Northerner, a partisan scribbled “with oaths that that was the way every Michigan man would be served caught out foraging.” The Federals blamed Mosby’s men. 2

About the same time a train of ambulances belonging to George Crook’s command were moving on a road near Kabletown, a small village between Berryville and Charlestown. Suddenly, a group of horsemen galloped up, shouting that the ambulances were under attack by Mosby’s men. “This spread through our train and before anything could be done the whole thing was in confusion,” reported an officer. It was a frantic dash away from something unseen, but known. The Rangers were not attacking and, as the officer concluded: “The affair was disgraceful.” 3

The fear of a Ranger assault disquieted the camps of Sheridan’s army. Mosby, a New Yorker avowed, was “a terror to all soldiers disposed to straggle.” A Michigan cavalryman called the partisans, “Mosby and cutthroat band,” a term also favored by William Thompson. A veteran member of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry believed that “this is the most dangerous place to picket I ever saw.” No small party of Union soldiers, or wagon train, or picket post or guard detail appeared safe. 4

Indicative of the grip Mosby had achieved upon the Federals in a month was an incident which occurred about the first of September. A dozen or so members of Company B, 23rd Ohio Infantry ran into their brigade campsite, swinging their hats and yelling: “See the prisoners! Mosby a prisoner!” Soldiers scrambled to get a look at the famous partisan; others relayed the startling news from regiment to regiment. Then, as brigade commander Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes related, “the thing took and the whole camp clear to army headquarters a mile off or more, perhaps ten thousand men, followed their example. Officers of course ran, major-generals and all. Then the ‘sell’ was discovered, and such laughing and shouting I never heard before.” At least some Yankees had retained their sense of humor. 5

Several factors explain Mosby’s fearsome reputation among Union troops. During much of August the Rangers enjoyed notable success with few casualties. Secondly, for Mosby, the campaign against Sheridan was the most vital in the battalion’s history.

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