CHAPTER IX

THE BERRYVILLE FIGHT

ON the 7th of August, 1864, Major-General Philip H. Sheridan assumed command of the Middle Military Division of the Federal Army, with headquarters at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Colonel

Mosby set to work on a large scale to " annoy" Sheridan. On the 13th Mosby three hundred of his command, the largest number he had ever had in any single engagement up to that time, and marched--from Upperville in Fauquier county over into the valley.

We went into camp about midnight not far from Berryville in Clark county a maneuver which consisted of unsaddling our horses and lying down on the landscape to sleep. Scouts sent out to look the situation over presently returned with the information that a wagon train was moving up the pike a few miles distant. While John Russell, our most prominent valley scout,

was reporting to the Colonel, I was engaged just at that moment in trying to spread my saddle blanket among the rocks and tree roots, so it would resemble a curled hair mattress as nearly as possible. I stopped for a moment to listen to John's report, hoping secretly that it did not mean any change in the camping program, but my hopes faded away when the Colonel

said: " Saddle up, Munson, and come along with me."

Taking a few more of us, we started off for the Valley turnpike, leaving the rest of the Command to get some much needed sleep. We struck out in the direction whence, in the stillness of the night, came the rumbling echoes of the heavily laden wagons. In olden times, when the stages were run up and down the valley turnpike, it was said that the rumbling of the coach on the hard, rocky road could be heard for miles on a" still night and, on this quiet August night of which I am writing, we heard the wagon train long before we came in sight of it, which we did in an hour after Russell reported to the Colonel. We found a long line of wagons winding along the road and stretching away into the darkness as far as the eye could reach. We rode among the drivers and the guards, looking the stock over and chatting with the men in a friendly way. I asked one of the cavalrymen for a match to light my pipe and he gave it to me, and when I struck it, revealing his face and mine by its light, he did not know I was pretty soon going to begin chasing him. It was too dark to distinguish us from their own men and we mingled with them so freely that our presence created no suspicion.

Colonel Mosby asked them whatever questions he chose to, and learned that there were one hundred and fifty wagons in the train, with more than a thousand head of horses, mules, and cattle guarded by about two· thousand men, consisting of two Ohio regiments and one Maryland regiment, besides cavalry distributed along the line; all under orders of Brigadier-General Kenly, commanding. Having pumped the men dry of all the information he needed, the Colonel withdrew us from their line into the field, one by one, and sent me back to our sleeping comrades to arouse them and bring the full force up in a hurry. Just as day was beginning to dawn Chapman and Richards, with the whole Command of about three hundred men and two pieces of light artillery, twelvepounders, came out of the woods on a run and met the Colonel, who was impatiently awaiting them in full view of the wagon train. I believe it was one of these little guns that made so much noise and did so .little harm at Mount Zion Church on July 6, but I am not sure.

In the hurried rush through the woods to get to the Colonel, or immediately after it was fired, I don't remember which, one of these guns commanded by Lieutenant Frank Rahm of Richmond, was disabled and drawn out of the way. The other was posted on a little eminence looking down on the turnpike along which the wagon train was moving. A streak of light

broke in. the east, and our force was hustled into position, Mosby giving his instructions to the Command. His trouble seemed to be to keep the men from charging before he was ready. Three hundred against over two thousand meant carefulness. The flush of the morning began to blow over that beautiful valley landscape,- there are few lovelier spots than the Valley of Virginia around Berryville, and down on the pike we saw a cloud of dust rising as though a giant serpent was creeping along towards Berryville from Harper's Ferry. The entire train was

sight, all unmindful of our presence. From our position on the low hill, while we watched them in breathless suspense, Frank Rahm sent a twelve-pound shell over the train. It exploded like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky, and was followed by another which burst in the midst of the enemy. The whole train stopped and writhed in its centre as if a wound had been opened in its vitals. Apparently its guards did not see us and we got another charge into the little twelve-pounder and let it fly, and then; oh then! What on earth ever possessed them I am unable even at this date to say.

Two thousand infantry and a force of cavalry all at sea, but, as with one mind, and without making the least concerted resistance, the train began to retreat. Then we rushed them, the whole Command charging from the slope, not in columns, but spread out all over creation, each man doing his best to out yell his comrade and emptying revolvers, when we got among them, right and left. The whole wagon train was thrown into panic. Teamsters wheeled their horses and mules into the road and, plying their black-snake whips, sent the animals

galloping madly down the pike, crashing into other teams which, in turn, ran away. Infantry, stampeded in every direction. Cavalry, uncertain from which point the attack came, bolted backward and forward without any definite plan. Wounded animals all along the train were neighing and braying, adding to the confusion. Pistols and rifles were cracking singly and in volleys.

Colonel Mosby was dashing up and down the line of battle on his horse, urging the men by voice and gesture. I never saw him quite so busy or so interested in the total demolition of things. Before the attack he expressed the hope and the belief that his men would give Kenly the worst whipping any of Sheridan's men ever got, and it delighted him to see the work progressing so satisfactorily. At several points along the line Kenly's men made stands behind the stone fences, and poured volleys into us but, when charged, they invariably retreated

from their positions. The conflict was strung out over a mile and a half, which was the length of the wagon train when the fight was at its best. Our men were yelling, galloping, charging, firing, stampeding mules and horses and creating pandemonium everywhere. It was not long before we had the enemy thoroughly demoralized and were able to turn our attention to the prisoners and the spoils.

Mosby gave orders to unhitch all the teams that had not run away and to set fire to the wagons, and very soon smoke and flames filled the air and made a grand picture. Among the wagons burned was one containing a safe in which an army pay-master had his greenbacks, said to be over one hundred thousand dollars. We overlooked it, unfortunately, and it was recovered the next day by the enemy, as we always supposed; but there is a story afloat in the town of Berryville that a shoemaker who lived there at the time of the fight got hold of something very valuable among the wreckage of our raid and suddenly blossomed out into a man of means, marrying

later into one of the best families of the Valley. He never would tell what his new-found treasure was. Maybe he got the safe and greenbacks. By eight o'clock in the morning the fight was over, the enemy ours, and the wagons burning. Then a serious problem arose: how were we to get three hundred prisoners, nearly nine hundred head of captured stock, and the other spoils of war out of Sheridan's country into our own? News of the raid had gone in every direction and we were threatened with an overwhelming assault at any moment. I should have said the problem was serious to the men only. Mosby solved it very promptly by saying: "We will go directly to Rectortown and take all the prisoners and animals and booty with us."

There was not anything more to be said on the subject. Rectortown lay twenty-five miles to the south, back in Fauquier county. Stonewall Jackson's forced marches were not in it with this one of ours. Our disabled cannon had to be taken care of. When Mosby asked Frank Rahm what he proposed to do with his broken-down gun, Frank promptly replied; "I'm going to take it back home on the other gun, if I have to hold it there," and he did.

We fastened the loose harness as best we could and, herding the animals into one drove, started at a trot down the pike towards the Shenandoah river several miles away. It was the most extraordinary procession that ever headed for that historic stream; our captives were on foot while we were mounted, the victors and vanquished chatting freely together and speculating on the trip before them. A number of the Rangers, in a spirit of gayety, had decked themselves out in the fine uniforms found in the baggage of the Northern officers. Some of the coats were turned inside out so as to display the fine linings.

From one of the wagons we had resurrected a lot of musical instruments and the leaders of the mounted vanguard made the morning hideous with attempts to play plantation melodies on tuneless fiddles. No more motley throng ever came back from a successful raid. There was a song on every man's lips and those who had yelled or sung themselves hoarse legion the nine hundred head of stock, bellowing, neighing, and braying, wallowed along in the hot dust of that August morning, the steam rising from their bodies and the saliva dripping from the mouths of the fat steers, of which we had nearly two hundred and fifty head. Down the turnpike into the rushing Shenandoah, regardless of ford or pass, dashed the whole cavalcade; some swimming, some wading, others finding ferriage at the tail of a horse or steer. The orchestra in the lead scraped away bravely at their fiddles. Only the unhorsing of some of the worst of the performers saved them from bodily violence at the hands of their justly indignant comrades. In a short time, dripping but refreshed, we \ emerged from the stream, struggled on up the road and began the ascent of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Strange to say, not a man nor an animal was lost in the passage. We crossed the mountain at a breakneck pace, made a rapid descent into the Piedmont Valley, and at four o'clock that afternoon, with all hands present, the captured property was divided at Rectortown, twenty-five miles from the scene of the action fought on the morning of the same day!

Our loss in the affair was two killed and two wounded; the number of the enemy's casualties we could not ascertain, but Major Wm. E. Beardsley of the Sixth New York Cavalry, reported from Winchester on the day after the fight, to Colonel Devine, commanding the second Brigade of the first cavalry Division, as follows:

We were attacked by Mosby at daylight yesterday morning at Berryville, and a disgraceful panic ensued, resulting in the entire destruction of the reserve brigade's train and a portion of our's, with battery forges, etc., the running off of nearly all the mules, the capture of a large number of prisoners, the killing of five of our men, with many wounded. We brought out more than six hundred horses and mules, more than two hundred and fifty head of fat cattle, and about three hundred prisoners, destroying more than one hundred wagons with their valuable

contents.

After dividing the horses and plunder among the men we sent the mules and a large number of cattle to General Lee for the use of the army. They were driven through Fauquier, Rappahannock, Culpeper and Orange counties, as far as Gordonsville. On my return to the Command from carrying reports and despatches of this affair to General Lee, I could follow

the trail of the captured animals by bits of broken harness, here and there, for nearly the entire route. By six o'clock that afternoon everything was in order where a short time before all seemed to be tumult and confusion. The horses were divided, the mules and cattle corralled ready for their long drive, the guards to take the prisoners over to Gordonsville had been

detailed and given their instructions and the Command was disbanded, and each member was starting home with his share of the spoils, when the Colonel came to me and said:

" Munson, don't you want to see your sweetheart? "

I was willing. We rode together to our headquarters at Mr. Blackwell's, a few miles distant, where I got a bath and a clean outfit and a good supper and a fresh horse and, with the Colonel's written despatches, got in the saddle and galloped to Warrenton, twenty miles away. As I was about to leave, the Colonel put his arm around my shoulder and said:

"Don't let the Command suffer while you are gone." That meant, that if occasion should arise, and I found the opportunity to brag any about our Command, or to tell any Munchausen stories, I was to lie like a gentleman. My instructions, however, did not include these details, but were to ride as far as Warrenton that night, go to church the next morning and drive with the young lady referred to, who is now and has long been the happy wife of a much handsomer member of our Command, and then gallop on to Culpeper Court House, twenty-five miles, and take the cars there for General Lee's headquarters, then near Petersburg. I was so utterly worn out by my long ride of two or three days and the loss of sleep that, by the time I had galloped and trotted fifteen miles, I could stand it no longer; I unsaddled and tied my horse to a sapling on the roadside and laid down on my. saddle blanket at my horse's feet where I slept till sunrise, when I got up and galloped into Warrenton as fresh as a lark. At General Lee's headquarters I broke in on that ragged crowd like a vision. I think I was the only .

well-dressed man in his army at that time. I had on my best, and it was the best that money could buy in the North. My boots came half way up my thighs, and my spurs were hand-made with silver rowels. My entire suit was gray corduroy trimmed with buff and gold lace, my hat had a double gold cord and an ostrich plume on it, and I carried a pair of high gauntlets carelessly in one hand, while with the other I toyed with a handsome enamelled belt and a pair of Colt's revolvers.

And I was only an humble private of Mosby's Guerrillas, and not nineteen years old! If any officers or men around the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia failed to be impressed

with my appearance or with the stories I related of our Command and its doings, it was certainly not my fault. I tried to obey the Colonel's injunction not to let the Command suffer, and when I left there· I believe every man who saw and heard me thought I was only a fair sample of our entire battalion.

The result of this raid was shown by the rapidity with which Sheridan at once fell back to his old position down the Valley, where three days later he received the following telegram from General Grant: ~ . .. "When any of Mosby's men are caught, hang them "without trial."

No one who is at all familiar with Grant's admiration for a fighter will be surprised to learn that a strong friendship sprung up between the two men after the war; that Mosby stumped the state of Virginia for Grant in 1872, against Greeley; that, when he became President, Grant offered appointments to Mosby which were declined and that the last autograph letter ever written by General Grant was a request to Mr. Huntington to appoint Colonel Mosby to a good position in the law department of the Southern Pacific Railroad when he returned to California from his Consulship at Hong Kong. Grant meant it when he said" Let us have peace."

Sheridan's reply to Grant's telegram was as follows:

"Mosby has annoyed me and captured a few wagons. We hung one and shot six of his men yesterday."

There was no truth in this statement that he had hung one and shot six of our men that day.

In the busiest part of the Berryville affair, when teams were running wild in every direction and the confusion was at its worst, Colonel Mosby saw a splendid four-in-hand team of big bays attached to a heavy portable army forge which had become upset on the pike and from which the horses were struggling in vain to free themselves. Turning to me he ordered me to take a man and extricate the team from the tangle they were in, and bring them out safely.

That sounded just as easy as if he had said, "Take a cigar," but I did not find it so. I took with me a young fellow who had joined the Command only a few days. When we galloped up to the struggling team and began to untangle them we were fired upon by a lot of infantrymen hidden behind a stone fence. When the rain of bullets flattened against the metal forge it sounded as if there were a thousand of them and my young companion, this being his first engagement, toppled over in the road in a dead faint. It was no time just then to look after a sick man, for our horses were frantic with fear and excitement, and I had to hold both of them when the boy fell. I let him lie where he was and in time got my team untangled and tied securely; I was just ready to lead them out, when, very opportunely, my youngster revived.

Getting up in a surprised way he jumped on his horse and galloped off, leaving me to mount my half mad charger and get my team out as best I could. That boy developed into one of the best soldiers in the Command and, until the end of the war, was up near the front in every engagement. It was his baptism of blood, and his confirmation followed immediately after it. This was one of the ways a beginner had to be initiated into our service.

While I am in the neighborhood of Berryville I recall a fight Captain A. E. Richards had only a few days after the foregoing affair, and almost on the same ground, while he was scouting with a small squad of men in the Valley. He ran into a body of Yankee cavalry and killed the commanding officer, Lieutenant ]. S. Walker of the First United States Cavalry; wounded and captured Lieutenant Philip Dwyer of the Fifth United States Cavalry, and captured all the rest of the squad but one. When Richards reported to Colonel Mosby on this affair the Colonel replied that he was glad one man got away so he could tell Sheridan what had happened to the rest of them.

CHAPTER X

TURNING THE TABLES

THE neighborhood of Harper's Ferry was very warm in that month of August, 1864. Sheridan was much irritated by the persistent annoyance of Mosby's men. In fact the relations  between us and the other side were daily growing more bitter, and General Grant's telegram would have been obeyed if the Federals had captured any of us.

Among others who wanted to have a tilt with us was Captain Blazer, of Crook's Division. The result of his uncontrollable desire is set forth in two war despatches subsequently published by the Government.

The first, dated August 20th, 1864, is from General Sheridan to General Augur, and reads:

" I have one hundred picked men who will take the contract to clean out Mosby's gang. I want one hundred Spencer rifles for them. Send them to me if they can be found in Washington."

Captain Blazer was to command these one hundred men who stood ready to "clean out Mosby's gang."

The second despatch is dated at Harper's Ferry, November 19, and is from General Stevenson to General

Forsythe. It follows:

"Two of Captain Blazer's men came in this morning, privates Harris and Johnson. They report that Mosby attacked Blazer near Kabletown yesterday t about eleven o'clock. They say the entire Command ; with the exception of themselves were either captured or killed."

It may be interesting to know just what developed between the dates of the two telegrams. Captain Blazer thought, and General Sheridan agreed with him, that the Northern army could find some work for a husky little guerrilla band of its own to fight the devil with fire, as it were. The Captain was put at the head of one hundred picked men, selected by himself from Crook's entire division, and there is no doubt he succeeded in getting some fine material. He was provided with his Spencer rifles and, shortly after the 20th of August, started to work. He began under very favorable conditions, as Colonel Mosby was busy with bigger game than Blazer all during the summer and autumn of 1864, and paid little heed to the buzzing of the new Captain's wings around our doors. Blazer went to work at once, coming after us in our own territory, surprising a few of the Rangers here and there and generally whipping them. His first official report was that he had captured one Mosby man after chasing the Guerrillas three miles.

Early in September while on a scouting expedition in the Valley of Virginia, he surprised one of our scouting parties under Lieutenant Joe Nelson and gave it a good whipping, killing two men, wounding five and taking five prisoners. Blazer reported one killed and six wounded in the engagement. If he only had one man killed we knew where to locate the fatality, for in the running fight a Blazer man rode up alongside of Emory Pitts, of our company "B " and snapped a pistol at his head but it missed fire. Pitts greatly surprised to find his brains were still intact used them with rapidity. He leaned from his saddle, seized his antagonist by the scruff of the neck with his left hand, lifted the man from his saddle almost over on to his own lap and with his right hand held a revolver under his captive's breast and fired a bullet through him, dropping the corpse to the ground as he galloped away. The soldier happened to fall on one of our men who had been unhorsed and who was lying, half hidden among the rocks, playing possum. He reported that the body that dropped from Pitt's grip after the shot was fired never so much as quivered. Death came on swift wings to that poor fellow. But that is war.

I don't remember ever hearing Mosby mention Blazer's name or make any reference to his movements, until he finally ordered Major Richards to go over to the Valley and wipe him from the map. Mosby treated his forays into our territory merely as incidents of our regular life as Partisan Rangers. To him, Blazer and his men were " a raiding party of Yankees." We made no special attempts to capture him, nor any special pains to keep out of his way. During those three eventful months in our history we were after bigger game, and the stakes were always higher than " a Captain and one hundred picked men."

In fact they were General Phil. Sheridan and his Army; and nobody knew better than Sheridan how often we won part of the stakes. Nevertheless, he was a foe to be reckoned with, and the boys who had felt his hard knocks remembered it against a day of reckoning.

On the tenth of November, Captain Montjoy took his Company to the Shenandoah Valley and, early the next day, attacked a company of Federal Cavalry on the pike between Winchester and Newtown. He defeated them, capturing about twenty of them with their horses, and recrossed the river near Berry's Ferry. All but thirty had started for their homes when suddenly Blazer's hundred men made a fierce attack. In less time, almost, than it takes to tell it, they recaptured the prisoners and horses, killed two of our men, wounded five others and galloped away, while Montjoy and his badly whipped men sought much needed cover in the direction of the river.

It happened that, at the time the news of this affair reached Colonel Mosby, Companies A and B of our Command had nothing special to do. The Colonel summoned Major A. E. Richards and told him to take some of the men of each company over into the Valley and, "Wipe Blazer out! go through him." He did not think it necessary to go in person to command the men of A and B for, whenever he told Richards to do anything, no matter how difficult, and especially if A and B went along, Richards was sure to do it. Mosby has claimed full credit for the victories achieved by his officers when they worked by his direction. He argued that he had the judgment not only to dictate the work, and the manner of doing it, but also the discrimination to pick the officers best suited to the work. And every officer of the Command was glad to have our Colonel get the honor.

Major Richards started on the seventeenth of November with one hundred Rangers to look for Blazer. Most of his men were specially anxious to set eyes on the Northerner who had turned the trick so neatly on Montjoy and Nelson. They were not picked men,  however, but just plain, ordinary, every-day A and B Guerrillas. When he reached Castleman's Ferry

he heard that Blazer was then on one of his raids, having fully made up his mind to finish the contract about which Sheridan had wired Augur nearly three months before. Our men located him in camp near Kabletown, a favorite stopping place of his, In Jefferson county, West Virginia. Major Richards preferring a daylight fight with him, where there would be no

odds in our favor, camped near him. In the morning the men were so anxious for a final settlement of old scores with Blazer and his· Command, that they did not wait for breakfast, but at sunrise charged into Kabletown only to find that Blazer had left but shortly before and was looking for them.

When both sides were out for scalps and each looking for the other, the end could not be far off, and it took only a few hours to find the blue column. Richards turned his men from the road to draw Blazer into the field but Blazer was busy taking down the fence and dismounting his men so as to use his carbines at long range. This was a good sign. If he had been

spoiling for a fight he would have charged Richards in the road but he was apparently just as careful as our Major. It also meant a carefully planned conflict if he could have his way. But Richards upset his calculations by dividing his men and starting off with half of them as if retreating. Blazer swallowed the bait and ordered his men to mount and charge. It puts a lot

of courage into a cavalry company to see the enemy galloping away. When his men got entirely clear of the woods and into the open where there was nothing in the way of either party, Richards turned suddenly, and our two divisions charged simultaneously.

Blazer's men used their Spencer rifles until our men got close up to them when they dropped them and drew revolvers. Richards's attack was very much like a dynamite explosion at close range, inasmuch as it was entirely unexpected; for, while there is no doubt Blazer counted on a fight, and really wanted one, he had made no preparations whatever for a massacre, and that is what, all of a sudden, seemed to be imminent, for Richards and his men looked and acted like a band of Apaches. Blazer's men broke before our onslaught, defying all their Commander's efforts to rally them as they saw their ranks thinning, and, in a few minutes the flight became a panic and a rout. Richards was in their midst, each of his men apparently

picking out a special victim. They were fading away before our deadly fire, and Blazer, catching the infection of retreat from his men, did the fastest riding of his life.

One of our men, Syd Ferguson, who rode one of the handsomest and best animals in our Command, marked Blazer for his own and, touching his mare, Fashion, lightly with the spur, was soon at the Captain's side, ordering him to surrender. His pistols had been emptied in the fight and as the Captain did not, or could not stop, Syd knocked him from his horse as he dashed by. As soon as he could check and turn his mare he rode back and found his man lying apparently dead in the road but, thinking the blow of a pistol could hardly have killed a man, he got down to examine, when Blazer got up smiling and admitted who he was and that he was only stunned. He took his medicine cheerfully. His loss was more than twenty men killed, many more wounded, most of them mortally, and over thirty taken prisoners. General Stevenson's despatch of November 30, heretofore quoted, summed up the situation briefly and truthfully: "Two of Captain Blazer's men came in."

In this connection I cannot pass over an incident that, at the time of its occurrence, was widely discussed among our men. It involves the Richmond boy, John Puryear, that gallant dare-devil youth of whom I have written in the first installment of these recollections.

On the morning of the day we had balanced our books with Blazer, Puryear and Charley McDonough were ostensibly scouting for Richards but really looking up trouble for trouble's sake. They were approached by a few men dressed in gray who. McDonough instinctively feared, believing them to be some of  Blazer's men. He would not stay to decide the matter

but turned and galloped away. John Puryear, with his trust in everybody, stood his ground and heard them address him as they came near, "Hello Johnny," which completely disarmed any suspicion which he may have had. When they reached him they pounced on him in true Guerrilla style and disarmed him. Then they took him back to Blazer and he was turned over to the tender mercy of Lieutenant Cole, of Blazer's Command, who gave orders that steps be taken to extract information from the prisoner. He was brow-beaten, cuffed and threatened in a fruitless effort to loosen his tongue. Finally a halter was put around his neck and he was drawn up in the air, clear of his toes, several times; but Cole finally wearied of his attempt to make the boy tell anything and ordered him to mount the worst horse they had and follow Blazer and his men. The beast was so weary that Puryear had no difficulty in making it appear that movement was next to impossible, a state of affairs that justified him in requesting permission to dismount and cut a stick big enough to induce the animal to step lively. No objection was offered, and Puryear proceeded to get a club that was about right for the plans that were forming in his mind.

It was not long before Mosby's men came into view, and Blazer ordered the boy to the rear. This did not suit him at all, and he insisted on staying where he was, up near the front. There was no time to argue, for the long looked for moment had come. Puryear stayed. Richards told his men to watch him and try not to shoot him when they came together; and one

of our men, Graf Carlisle, yelled encouragingly to Puryear to " keep his spirits up, for everything would be lovely by-and-bye."

At the moment Richards's men came swinging down on Blazer in two divisions, Puryear rose in his stirrups, let out his rebel yell and, with a swinging, back-hand movement, dealt his guard a killing blow in the face with his club. Then he slipped from his horse in the thick of the melee, stripped his fallen enemy of his pistols, remounted on the fellow's horse and lit into the ranks of Blazer's crowd which surrounded him with an expression of ferocity that it is impossible to describe.

His black eyes literally blazed and, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, his jaws set, and his whole face livid, he started on his errand of vengeance. Nearly every man in our Command saw him swirl into the fight. His rage was something terrible to look upon. Presently his eye found Lieutenant Cole and without delay he was after him. He chased that

Federal officer around the old blacksmith's shop and overtook him just at the moment he was surrendering to John Alexander, now a prominent attorney of Leesburg, Va., who tried to restrain Puryear from wreaking his vengeance upon a man who had quit. But Puryear declared that Cole had ordered him hanged, and had abused him, a charge admitted by Cole. The

next instant Puryear fired his pistol into Cole's chest and stood back to contemplate his work. Cole fell limp and gasping against Alexander's horse, sinking gradually to the ground. He was dead in less than a minute. Puryear burst out crying like a child, and collapsed, sob after sob shaking his body. He was useless for the rest of the fight. Nature had given way

to the strain.

When Alexander took Cole's pistols from his body he found them both empty. It is only fair to say, however, that Puryear did not know this till Alexander told him; in other words until he had wreaked his ghastly vengeance. Puryear at the time was not out of his teens.

In 1865, when most of our men went over in a body to General Hancock's headquarters in the Valley of Virginia, to surrender, Blazer and Syd Ferguson met and hugged each other like long lost brothers. Blazer furnished a striking illustration of the difficulty of conducting Partisan Ranger warfare successfully. He possessed advantages greater than Mosby in some respects. He picked his men carefully from an entire Division, and had seen much hard service in West Virginia before coming to Sheridan, service of a kind to fit him for coping successfully with us. His entire Command was splendidly mounted, armed and equipped. He and his men were brave and hardened soldiers. He had a perfect country to operate in for

guerrilla warfare. He had, singular to relate, rather the good will of the people, especially of the Valley, for he permitted no vandalism among his men and, Whenever occasion arose, he was courteous and kind to them. He had the protection of Sheridan's whole army when he was" at home," while we never closed our eyes in sleep free from liability to be stirred out

of bed by him. If his ranks were thinned he had thousands of the same sort to draw on. He need ride only thirty miles from his base to be among us. The day he went down he had just as good a chance to whip us as we had to whip him. He had even more, for he was better armed to resist an attack than we. Seven shooting Spencer rifles are not to be despised in the hands of men who can stand still and receive an attack from charging horsemen. And yet, when he was put to the test of a fair, open, stand-up, hand to-hand fight, with one of Mosby's boy officers, and only a part of Mosby's Command, he was simply annihilated.

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER OF PERSONALITIES

SAMUEL WAGGAMAN, who is now a prominent physician in Washington City, enjoys the distinction of being the only man who joined Mosby's Command in Richmond; he was duly enrolled there, and transportation given him by the War Department to Gordonsville. His uncle was a prominent officer in the Quartermaster's Department, and when Sam enlisted regularly in the Command this uncle fitted him out with gorgeous jacket and trousers and presented him to the Secretary of War. In the first fight he got into, which was the rather disastrous affair at Warrenton Junction, all his finery disappeared in some way and, when he reached Upperville, through the help of Ned Hurst, "the old reliable," he was picked clean. Ned Hurst seemed to be always on hand ready to help some youngster out of a hole. At the Warrenton Junction fight Sam's horse was shot while our men were retreating, and Ned helped him through. When the Colonel sent the cattle and mules we captured from Sheridan on August 13, 1864, over to the regular army, Sam was one of the detail to take them. At Culpeper Court House he turned them into an enclosure belonging to John Minor Botts, a prominent politician who had remained a Union man. Mr. Botts objected to the use of his farm as a corral for rebel live-stock and, but for the timely arrival of General Stuart, they would not have gone into the enclosure.

But Stuart ordered them in and told Mr. Botts he was the only man in Virginia who had a fence around his bam. So in they went. Stuart told Sam if it were not for Mosby all his wagons would have remained stuck in the mud.

Sam was captured in August, 1864, after he came back from Culpeper Court House in a house near Upperville, where he and Frank Darden had hidden in a garret. Frank Darden fell through the ceiling of the family living-room and lit in the bed with the lady of the house. San) was in the dark, and when the enemy began firing he offered to surrender, but none of them would take him. There being nothing else to do, he began firing at them, and when both his pistols were empty he walked out and they seized him.

He went to Fort Warren in handcuffs, and remained there till June, 1865.

John H. Alexander had a theory, or rather he had several, about our peculiar warfare. First, he believed the precarious life that we led made us vigilant, alert and self-reliant, so that in action each man was an independent, intelligent unit, and not a mere automaton to be maneuvered by his officers. Second, he believed the enemy dreaded ambuscades, and that many

of our escapes were due to their exceeding carefulness. And, third, he had an abiding faith in the advantage we had over the enemy in our experience with the pistol. He used to say,        " There is a terrible difference between shooting to scare and shooting to kill," and he thought it did not require so much nerve to charge a platoon which was to fire by volley according to Hardee's tactics; but men had a prejudice against riding towards the muzzle of a pistol which they knew was going to hit something when it went off. They just would not go up against it.

Now, allow these theories, and it takes all the miraculous out of his story of how he held up a whole regiment of Cavalry on an open highway, in broad daylight. Our Command had gone down to Fairfax on a raid the day before, and this young fellow who was convalescing from a wound which he had recently received, had been left behind. He had recovered so far as to be able to ride around and take notice of things; and this morning he had donned his best "blockade goods" and started from the Middleburg neighborhood to calI on some ladies at Dover. Between these two points, at Macksville, the turnpike passes over a level plateau about two hundred yards wide. It is approached from the Middleburg side by a rise about the height of a rider on a horse; on the other side the road dips into a considerable hollow. deep enough and wide enough to hide a regiment.

As he rode up the hill from one side, he saw the heads of four men abreast climbing the hill to the plateau at the farther side. His first impression was that they were some of our men returning from Fairfax. But as we never took the chances of letting men ride up on us whom we did not know, he halted on the brow of the hill and drew out and cocked his revolver. As he did so the approaching party dashed towards him, yelling and shooting. This dispelled his doubts as to who they were, and he knew that he had to get away from there. As he wheeled his horse he concluded he would give them an intimation not to crowd him too closely on his morning gallop. They offered a beautiful shot as they came four abreast over

the plateau, and he held his horse a moment until they got within good range and then let go at the nearest one. He saw his victim throw his hand to his head and reel from his horse. His companions yielded to that prejudice which I mentioned above, and the promptness with which they jerked up their horses provoked a laughing ring in the tones in which our Ranger called to them to come on. But other heads were bobbing up the eastern rim of the level, and away he went.

A hundred yards up the road a lane opened into the pike at an acute angle from the south. Ere he reached the mouth of it, he recollected that his horse had a shoe off, and the thought occurred to him that in a long chase up the macadamized road his steed would go lame and be overtaken. The lane would bring him back in some degree toward the enemy and subject him to a broadside; but he was familiar with the ground and knew that it would be but a short run to the protection of a hollow in a piece of woods. So he took the chances of the dash. Sure enough some Yankees had dismounted on the plateau as they saw him turn into the lane, and the whistling of the bullets from their carbines, and their pit-pat on the rail fence alongside him, made that one of the most exhilarating rides of his life. The occasion was enlivened, too, by an old negro, who happened to be mending the fence. As our rider passed him, the slapping of the bullets against the rails scared him nearly to death, and he fell on his back, striking arms and legs in the air and hallooing at the top of his voice that he was killed.

The dash was over in a minute, and neither horse, rider nor negro got a scratch. When he was out of range, in a hollow in the lane, Alexander held up his horse. He was about three

hundred yards from the enemy and could not hear any signs of pursuit. He was unwilling to leave the vicinity without getting further information and, jumping over a fence into an adjoining field, he rode up on a hill. He saw the turnpike at Macksville full of cavalry.

As soon as he reappeared the long-range guns opened on him again, and a bullet which clipped his hat admonished him that there was a good marksman behind one of them. Yielding to an indisposition to furnish a living target for Uncle Sam's sharp-shooters to practice on, he waved an adieu with his hat and cantered off to a piece of timber at the far end of the

field. The Yankees evidently thought the Ranger was waiting for them on the turnpike, for when their vanguard first caught sight of him he was sitting still on his horse on the brow of the hill. His subsequent movements, which must have appeared as eccentric, to say the least, were interpreted as attempts to draw them on. Assuming that he was a decoy, they naturally

concluded that the woods into which he had ridden hid an ambuscade. And while he tarried under their shades he saw the regiment brought up and formed into a battle line, skirmishers deployed, and the whole array move in all pomp across the field toward him. He could linger but a short while, however, to view the striking pageant. He has assured me that one of the regrets of his life has been that he could not wait to witness their chagrin when they reached the woods and found that no more serious business awaited them than to scare the birds from the bushes.

The following contribution from Johnny Alexander, which I am sure will be read with interest after the foregoing article about him:

A LIVELY RIDE BEFORE BREAKFAST.

Hugh Waters and I lived at his mother's home, which was situated about one mile south of Middleburg. Her house was on the far edge of a large body of timber, which extended more than half way to the village. On the east side of her farm, and within a quarter of a mile of the house, ran the road from the Plains to Middleburg; and about the same distance to the west was the road from Salem (now Marshall) to Middleburg.

During the winter of 1864-5, there was a heavy snow which laid on the ground for some weeks and became covered with a thick crust. One cold night Hugh and I camped out in a rock-break on his mother's farm, within a few yards of the Plains road; but the rocky cliff, at the foot of which we made our bed and tied our horses, and the clump of trees about it, hid us from sight of the road. Indeed, we relied on the cold weather to keep our enemies at home, and the warning which we would get from the sounds of their traveling over the snow, if they should have the enterprise to turn out.

We slept the sleep of unconscious innocence. The next morning about sunrise we were awakened by Mrs. Waters's negro man, Edmond, with the information that a large body of Yankees had marched along the Plains road a short while before, had called at the house to pay their respects to us, and had gone on towards Middleburg. It is needless to say we made

a very hasty toilet and did not stand much on the order of our going away from there. We left Edmond to take charge of our bedding, and hurried off towards Middleburg to take observations. When we reached the Salem road we met Lieutenant .. Fount Beattie who had also been induced to rise early by a party scouting uncomfortably near his quarters.

He assumed responsibility for our movements, and led us on toward Middleburg in pursuit of information and, incidentally, adventure. Well, we succeeding in finding both.

We followed the road to the top of a hill on the edge of the town and saw the streets filled with blue-coated cavalry. At the same time the wearers of the blue coats saw us, and hastened to exchange greetings with us. We felt, however, that salutes at a distance were all that the occasion required of us, and retired with some precipitancy in the direction whence we came.

The Yankees insisted on closer relations, and pressed their attentions with ardor.

We were making good our courteous purpose to leave them in possession of that neighborhood, and were getting out on the Salem road in fine shape, when we rose a little hill about a half a mile out. And there, coming towards us, and not more than two hundred yards away, was a road full of Yankee cavalry. On each side of us was an abominable stone fence, which, you know, very few horses would jump. As we pulled up, the enemy in front commenced paying us attentions. It did look like a hopeless situation. But Beattie was not the man to give up as long as there was daylight between him and the toils. A short distance behind us we had passed a gap in the stone fence which would let us into a field and to the big woods beyond it; and our leader turned us back to it, as some of the Salem party sprung up the road toward us. The pursuers from Middleburg were scarcely within good range as the last one of us jumped through the gap, but a good shot gave pause to the foremost of them. Somehow, both parties of the Yankees found ways through the fence too; and in a moment the situation was this: we three, running by a straight line for the woods, the Yankees to the left oblique and Yankees to the right oblique, making after us with absolute assurance of running us down. If we should make the woods, they were barren of foliage and almost as open as the field. But just within them was a hill, and just over it - well, the Yankees did not know what. And neither did we, for that matter; but the religion of a Mosby man was never to throw up his hands as long as he could stick to his horse, for he trusted much to that chapter of accidents which is in every book of Fate. It contained deliverance for us that morning.

The snow was at least a half foot deep and, as I stated, was covered with a thick crust, and it greatly affected the speed of all parties. I was riding a horse quite recently "acquired." I was soon dismayed to find he was falling behind and, what was worse, he did not seem to care if he was. The shooting and yelling and my rigorous application of the spur made no impression on him. Whether it was actual leg weariness, sheer brute stubbornness or the aroused affinity for his old companions, I do not know. But the cold fact is that, when Beattie and Waters rode into the woods, my horse slowed down into a walk and was a considerable distance behind them.

The pursuers were then scarcely a hundred yards from me, and were calling to me in jeering tones, between shots, " Come out of that overcoat, Johnny," and other pleasant salutations. The truth was, I had on a splendid new overcoat, one of the fruits of the greenback raid and their remarks about it made me feel sick. I verily believe it was my salvation at that moment,

though. The heartless fellows were close enough to see that it was an unusually fine one, glistening with brass buttons and some other garish trimming, and they evidently took me for an officer. Now, do not lose sight of that, for I think it was the key to what followed.

As my companions were riding away over the hill, in the woods, and I realized that my horse had flunked on me, in my desperation I involuntarily called out to them to stop and take me up. They wheeled and commenced firing. The enemy doubtless heard me call to them to stop, without distinguishing what I said about taking me up. They saw my horse drop into a quiet, dignified pace, and did not understand that it was not due to my own management of him. And, attributing to the officer a most magnificent nerve, they assumed that I was rallying my men from the ambush into which we had decoyed them. The manly response of Lieutenant Beattie and Waters clinched the matter. And I pledge you my word of honor that the whole party pulled up within almost touching distance of me, and let me march in a quiet walk over the hill. I soon came up with my friends and we rode away unpursued.

I submitted the above to Lieutenant Beattie who fully corroborates it, and expressed his gratification that I wrote it for you.

Joe Bryan, of Richmond, who belonged to Montjoy's company" D," joined our Command about October, 1864, and his first raid was when we captured General Duffie in the Valley. Charley Dear says when a detachment of Company U D," which was sent out to participate in the capture, returned, he found Joe with a lot of others chafing like a caged lion. In a sort of

desperation he asked Charley how a man could make a reputation in Mosby's Command, and Charley was astonished at such a question, for just at that time the boy was standing among a lot of the best material in the Command. He told Joe, however, that it was easy enough and, as they were going to charge the Yankees in a few minutes, all he had to do, when the charge was ordered, was to break away from the ranks and ride at them full tilt. To Charley's surprise a moment later he saw Joe break away in the charge and go it alone, trying to lead all the rest. Harry Hatcher was standing near and heard the conversation. Turning to Puryear he said, "John, did you hear what Charley Dear told that boy ? He must be trying to get

him killed in the first round, before the water gets hot." The boys came back from the charge for there were too many for us.

After company" D" re-formed, Montjoy rode up to Charley and asked, " What is the name of that boy you brought up to company , D ?" 

Charley told him he was Joe Bryan, and Montjoy said, " He'll do! He is one of the old blue hen's chickens and he has won his spurs in the first round. Let him ride in the first set of fours between you and Ned Gibson and fill out Louis Adie's place." Adie was killed in the Berryville fight only a short time before and was one of the gamest and best boys in Montjoy's company of all good ones.

Joe always sustained his reputation. A youngster who could keep up his end with Charley Dear and Ned Gibson, and stay up at the front, had to be made of the right stuff, and Joe had proven what sort of stuff it was, for his career since the war has been constantly upward, until today he is perhaps as prominent as any man in Virginia.

Frank Angelo, a member of company C, was captured near Milwood in the Valley late in November, 1864, by five men of the Twenty-first New York. He was taken to headquarters and the officers had a lot of amusement out of him, for he was a very bright and witty fellow. Major Otis and General Tibbits became quite interested in him, and finally the Major bet his General that Frank would never be taken to Washington. The wager was a basket of champagne and the General lost. Frank was taken with a lot of others to Martinsburg and put in an old j ail. The door leading into an adjoining yard was fastened by a railroad spike, driven into the floor, and he managed to get hold of an axe with which he loosened the spike so the door would open, and when the opportunity offered he marched out, taking several other prisoners with him, and all got safely out of the town.

While in prison he made friends with a number of his guards. One of them, finding Frank was going to escape, and wishing to help one of his own friends who was confined for some offense, made Frank promise to take the imprisoned Yankee with him, which he did, and got him safely across the Potomac.

Frank found that escaping from jail was a small matter compared with escaping from the Valley, for the whole country was alive with camps and soldiers were on the move day and night in every direction. After almost countless narrow escapes he reached Mosby's Confederacy at last, to be welcomed by the Colonel who told him he would take him on his next scout and give him the best horse captured as a reward for his troubles and losses. Before the Colonel could keep his promise he was badly wounded at Lake's house on the 21st of December, and Chapman let Angelo go home to Richmond on a furlough.

Frank was quite a mimic, and the gift served him well in his efforts to escape from the enemy. In trying to get out of the Valley on foot, he ran unexpectedly on a picket, stationed on the railroad and, seeing that he was discovered, he rolled down the embankment into a swamp; as he waded off in the dark he imitated a sow and pigs. The Yankee was heard to say; "Damn that hog: if it was daylight, would have one of them pigs, sure." His next obstacle was a wagon camp nearby, which he found himself in before he realized it. He unhitched and saddled a

good mule, and rod e out safely, and finally landed his mule and himself at home. Angelo is living in Washington at present, and is a welcome attendant at most of the reunion s of the Command.

John McCue was one of our youngsters who had a .0 trying experience, entirely unique. He joined the Command the day before the Berryville fight and saw one of his college mates, young Louis Adie,. killed in that fight. His company was sent down with others to winter in Westmoreland county and, late in March, 1865, he went across the Potomac river with five others on a private scout, lured by the prospect of capturing a quarter of a million dollars supposed to be deposited in Leonardtown, Maryland.

They crossed the river near Stratford, the birthplace of General Robert E. Lee, and finding it impossible to do anything at Leonardtown they went to Croom, in Prince George county, where the party separated, three going to their homes, while McCue and two others concluded to capture the Post office. I suppose " capture" is a good, harmless word to use, though the authorities said the Post office was robbed. While John and his two companions were going through Uncle Sam's mail the door was suddenly opened and six detectives rushed in on them, firing their pistols at close range. John stood his ground but his companions bolted through a side door and, mounting their horses, escaped, finally getting back to Virginia. John killed one of the men, Detective Ryan, and wounded another, Jerry Coffron. Ryan had rushed the boy and was shot in the bowels by him, but the shot did not kill him and he grabbed John around the arms and while holding him received two more shots. The captors tied the boy and threatened to lynch him, but an officer coming up prevented it.

They took him to Annapolis and from there to Baltimore, where he was tried by military Commission, and found guilty of murder, assault with intent to kill and violation of the laws of war. He was sentenced to the penitentiary for life, sent to the prison at Clinton, N. Y. and put at hard labor. In the following November a petition, signed by thousands of influential Virginians, was presented to President Andrew Johnson asking for his pardon but not until General Grant had personally asked the President to release the boy was the pardon signed.

Raiding and scouting parties going into Maryland frequently had exciting experiences before they came back across the Potomac. This historic stream proved a dead-line very often, which it was dangerous to cross. John McCue undertook his scouting expedition as a sort of an outlet for his enthusiasm, which had been pent up all the winter. Colonel Chapman took part of the Command down to the Peninsula to winter and save the limited supply of forage in Loudoun and Fauquier counties for that part of the Command which remained there under

Colonel Mosby. While Colonel Mosby found plenty of work to do all winter, Chapman and his men were idle nearly all the time they were there. Boys like McCue fretted and chafed in their enforced idleness, and finally the six I have spoken of started out to accomplish something, with the result that five of them did nothing, and McCue did more than he expected. The boy only thought he got what was coming to him until they clipped his hair short, put him in chains and dressed him in stripes. "Capturing" a Post office is sometimes a serious affair.

 Captain Montjoy was a Mississippian, and Mosby made him Captain for gallantry - but he created all the Officers for the same reason, for that matter. Montjoy, however, was  conspicuously gallant: a sort of meteor that we could all see as he moved across the horizon of war. He was a very handsome young man with black eyes and hair, and his manners were very fascinating and attractive to both men and women. In addition, he was fastidious in his dress and in his general equipment. I never saw him awry in any particular. He was one of our dandies and we were proud of him. He rode the finest horses that money could buy, and his accoutrements would have suited a General. Somehow or other, when Company

" D" was organized, it seemed to contain nothing but dandies. Possibly the boys composing it took the example from Montjoy; but at any rate they were, so far as dress and equipment and general appearance went, the flower of the battalion; and, in order to sustain their prestige among their comrades, they became known to us all, and deservedly so, as game fighters.

Nearly every Marylander in our Command was in Company "D" and everyone of them was a fire eater. Montjoy was as proud of his company of fighting dandies as the Colonel was of his entire Command of fighting Guerrillas.

The manner in which Montjoy met his death - a most serious loss to the Partisan Rangers - is worth recording. It occurred on the 27th of November, 1864. He was commanding his Company, on a raid into Loudoun county, where he was trying to round up a company of local Yankees known as the Loudoun Rangers. On the morning they came together Montjoy killed, wounded and captured about twenty-five  of them, including among the latter two Lieutenants in command of their two squads, and scattered them like chaff before the wind and they flew for their lives in every direction. Montjoy picked out one of them to follow, and was close on his heels when the man threw his six-shooter over his shoulder, pointed it backwards without aim and pulled the trigger. The bullet went straight into Montjoy's head. Every man of his company who witnessed the tragedy reined in his horse involuntarily and groaned. We never filled Montjoy's place. We never tried to. There was only one Captain Montjoy.

A few days later Colonel Mosby issued the following notice:

Partisan Rangers:

The Lieutenant-Colonel Commanding announces to the battalion, with emotions of deep sorrow, the death of Captain R. P. Montjoy, who fell in action near Leesburg on the twenty-seventh ultimo, a costly sacrifice to victory. He died too early for liberty and his country's cause, but not too early for his own fame. To his Comrades in arms he has bequeathed an immortal example of daring and valor, and to his country a name that will brighten the pages of her history.

JOHN S. MOSBY,

Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding.

One of the men killed in the Blazer fight was Edward Bredell of St. Louis. He had been an officer in the regular army before he came to us, and his parents were very wealthy. Moreover, he was an only child. On the day of the fight the boys laid him to rest where he fell, but afterwards we brought his body over to our side of the mountain and buried it nearOak Hill, the former home of Chief Justice Marshall. Before the war ended young Bredell's father came down to Virginia and took his dead son's body home. When he reached St. Louis, owing to the bitter feeling there towards the Southerners, he was informed that the body could not be buried in any of the cemeteries. He thereupon had a grave dug in his own handsome grounds, and his son's body found its final rest in the shadow of his old home.

At the close of the war, or rather two years after, I went to St. Louis to live, taking with me a letter of introduction to the father of Edward Bredell, whom I found to be an old Eastern shore man of Maryland, and distantly related to family connections of mine. Upon my first visit to the old gentleman he took my hand and escorted me to the beautiful grounds in the rear of his house, where we two sat by the grave of the Partisan Ranger and talked of him as we had known him in the flesh. I called frequently at the Bredell home and I have not the slightest doubt that it gave the old man no little pleasure to hear me recount the exploits of his brave son, and to repeat, time and time again, the story of the fight in which the boy fell and died. Many a time I have sat near him in the shade of the trees that spread their limbs over the simple grave, and caught him gazing wistfully at the green mound that covered his son's body. He tried to take his sorrows philosophically, but I cannot forget his first remark as we stood together: "Maybe it is all right to give your only boy to your country, but I wish I had mine back again."

CHAPTER XII

AN UNPLEASANT EPISODE

As I have written before, the month of August, 1864, was one of the busiest in the history of our Command. Hardly a day passed without bloodshed. The Northern feeling against Mosby's

men was intense and the opportunities to crush our Command were thrown away because of the enemy's anxiety to bring about instant annihilation. When concerted attacks were arranged, some hot-headed one, guilty only in judgment, would blaze away at us from ambush and sound the signal that enabled us to slip away in time. Mosby's men, it must be remembered, knew more about the country than did any of the visitors from the North, and we knew the game of guerrilla warfare thoroughly.

One afternoon in that busy month of August Colonel Mosby with about thirty or forty men of his Command, was riding through the woods in Fairfax county. He was not expecting immediate trouble. Suddenly bullets came singing through the trees from a party of Thirteenth New Yorkers who retreated in a gallop towards Fairfax station as soon as they had

fired their volley. One of our men, George Slater, was wounded.

At the station the enemy was joined by some of the Sixteenth New York, about one hundred men in all They came swinging back through the woods and prepared to attack us. Our scouts, scattered through the underbrush, heard their commander tell them to use their carbines in the preliminary rush and then charge with their sabres. Mosby heard the order and, realizing that sabres were utterly worthless against our sixshooters, smiled when he told us simply to "Go through 'em." There was no excitement, no alarm at their greater number, three or four to our one, no surprise at the Colonel's quiet order; everything seemed to be moving along in its usual way. The order was a common one to us. " There are the Yankees

! Go through 'em."

What is there to write about? It was all over in a few minutes, and it was the same old monotonous story. We killed the commanding officer, Captain J. H. Fleming, of the Sixteenth New York and six of his men; we wounded Captain McMenamin, of the Thirteenth New York, a lieutenant and eight men, and we captured thirty prisoners and forty horses.

Why the Federal troopers so often went into battle with' those clumsy, antiquated sabres was a mystery that none of Mosby's men ever found out. They might just as well have walked up to a battery of howitzers with billiard cues. A good healthy Irishman with his shillelah would make any cavalryman with his sabre ashamed of himself. In his report of this affair Colonel Lazelle said that " A board of investigation had been called to ascertain who was responsible." The one man who could have best enlightened the Board was dead, but it would not have

been a bad idea to court-martial the officer who ordered the men to wear sabres.

There are some things in the lives of all of us that we can't refer to with pleasure, and the hanging and shooting of some of our men, by order of General Custer, and in his presence, is one of those which Mosby's men rarely refer to. Neither it, nor what followed as a result of it, are happy memories to any of us. We want to remember General Custer, and I believe we all do remember him, as the gallant martyr who went down at Little Big Horn, surrounded, almost covered up, with the dead bodies of his foes; his pistols smoking hot; his blue eyes flashing defiance; his voice ringing out in command of his brave companions.

This was the real hero, the real Custer. The Custer episode is part of our history, however, and its recital reflects nothing but credit on our Command. It was one of the important events

of our career. Its effect was far reaching on both sides and I have no doubt that it was never generally approved throughout the North. The official records of the war will bear out my story of it. At that time, August, 1864, Alger was operating in the lower Valley of Virginia, -and we frequently exchanged shots with his men, picked off their sentries, chased them and were chased by them. One afternoon Lieutenant-Colonel Chapman of our Command, with a detachment of raiders, came upon some burning dwellings in the neighborhood of Charlestown, in Jefferson county. We learned from the recent residents, huddled about their ruins, that General Alger's men had applied the torch. The entreaties of the women and children had been of no avail. The order had been given and the order was obeyed. The sight of those helpless non-combatants crouching in the rain, weeping over their burning homes, wrought up the resentment of the men and we started out to even things up in real guerrilla fashion. We passed the ruined and deserted homes of Mr. McCormick and Mr. Sowers and, learning that the burners were just ahead of us, went after them on a run, overtaking them at the residence of Colonel Morgan, to which they had just set fire. Our men were demons that

day. Thirty of the burners were killed and wounded, mostly killed. We took no prisoners and gave no quarter. Forty horses fell into our hands and we retired without further concern. No more buildings were burned by the Federals in that valley.

In order to contrast this house burning with Mosby's idea and understanding of ethics I have only to recall the case of one of our men, recently recruited, who went down with us into Loudoun county, among the Quakers. He overturned an old Quaker's milk can. The fellow knew that all the Quakers were sympathizers with the North, at least not with us. Colonel

Mosby had him arrested when he heard of it, and I was sent back with him to the regular army and instructed to turn him over to General Early, with the information that he was not sufficient of a gentleman to travel with Mosby's men and that he had a mistaken idea of the mission of the Guerrillas. I had other prisoners to take on the same trip and, as I was starting,

Colonel Mosby took me aside and told me to take the milk spiller along with me to help me guard the captured men and, when I got him to General Early's, to turn him over also.

When I reached the army and had unloaded my charges I reported to General Early's tent. The General and my father were great friends and he welcomed me. I told him all about the doings of Alger's men, how we met them at Colonel Morgan's and what we did to them, of course coloring the picture somewhat, as was my duty. He was so well pleased and so greatly interested in my recital and the result, that I did not attempt to restrain my talents, but added that we had killed every man that we could get at, and threw them all in the fire.

"I wish to heaven," he replied, "that you had thrown all of Sheridan's men in after them."

General Phil was worrying the old man greatly at the time, and I have not the slightest doubt that General Early meant just what he said.

The fight, or rather the onslaught, at Colonel Morgan's house, was not to be forgotten, however, for on the 23d of September, General Custer, still breathing fire and vengeance, captured some of Mosby's men and had some of them hanged and others shot with their hands tied behind their backs. This was in Front Royal, Va. Mosby's men have erected a handsome

monument to them in that pretty little town, and the ladies look after it for the Command. These seven men had been taken prisoners in a fair fight and by overwhelming numbers. They were captured doing the best they could and should have been sent to some northern prison like other prisoners of war. The men who did the work were, some of them, Alger's. I  received only a short while ago a letter from a prominent business man living in the West who was a member of the Fifth Michigan. He said that affair was a disgrace to the army.

Reports of the unfortunate affair came very promptly to Colonel Mosby from many sources. One of our men, Frank Angelo, had cut down and removed the bodies of some of our boys who were hanged, and he gave all the particulars of it to us. There was at once a rumor set afloat that we were to fight thereafter under the black flag, and as a proof of it Custer's act

was pointed to. Men examined their pistols more carefully. The price of good runners went up rapidly and, as the greenback raid followed the next month, and the men had money to burn, there were a number of fine horses bought. Where formerly the boys had slept with one eye open they now slept with both open, as it were. Mosby waited his time.

On the 6th of November following we got twenty-seven of these Michigan fellows in a raid. Mosby had them draw lots to determine which seven of them should be killed in retaliation for our men killed at Front Royal. It was an awful shock to the unlucky ones and a fearful suspense to all. Lieutenant Ed. Thomson was instructed to take the condemned men to a point across the Shenandoah river in the Valley and have them hanged or shot. It is safe to say he never had a more disagreeable duty to perform in all his life.

On the march one of his prisoners escaped in the darkness: A little farther on, while crossing the mountain at Ashby's gap, Thomson met Captain Montjoy returning from a raid in the Valley with some prisoners. Montjoy had recently become a Mason, and was a very enthusiastic craftsman. He ascertained in the usual way that two of the condemned men were brother Masons, and that they would be glad to enjoy any fraternal assistance that might be available at the moment; so Montjoy took them from Thomson in exchange for two of his own prisoners, and passed on.

When Mosby heard of this transfer he called Montjoy to him and said, after delivering a lecture on discipline, " I want you to understand that my Command is not a Masonic lodge."

Of the seven men to be killed only three were hanged. Two of them were shot, but not killed, and recovered later; two got away. One of these latter, when the spot for the execution was reached, asked Thomson for time to pray, which was readily accorded; the lieutenant joining silently in the petition of the condemned. The whole job was ill-suited to Thomson's inclination, but he was too good a soldier to disobey orders.

While the Michigan man was making his peace with his Creator he was incidentally " sawing wood" vigorously. With his hands clasped apparently in prayer, he slowly worked away at the cords that bound his wrists, until they were free. His appeal to the Almighty was fervent in the extreme, and at the Amen which was uttered in a voice heavy with penitence, he

turned to Thomson as if he were ready to have his head shot off. Instead, however, he planted a terrific blow with his right hand on Thomson's nose, knocked him flat on his back, jumped over his prostrate form and, without waiting to thank our men or tell them good-bye, disappeared in the darkness. I take off my hat to men who can do things like that.

Thomson, rather pleased at the celerity with which the Michigan man's appeal to heaven had been answered, picked himself up and finished his work.

To the clothing of one of the men he pinned the following note:

" These men have been hanged in retaliation for an equal number of Colonel Mosby's men hanged by order of General Custer at Front Royal. Measure for measure."

On November I I Colonel Mosby wrote a letter to General Sheridan and sent it by John Russell. It read as follows:

Major-General P. H. Sheridan,

Commanding U. S. Forces in the ·Valley.

GENERAL: Some time in the month of September, during my absence from my Command, six of my men, who had been captured by your forces, were hung and shot in the streets of Front Royal, by the order and in the presence of Brigadier-General Custer. Since then another (captured by a Colonel Powell on a plundering expedition into Rappahannock) shared

a similar fate. A label affixed to the coat of one of the murdered men declared that, " This will be the fate of Mosby and all his men."

Since the murder of my men, not less than seven hundred prisoners, including many officers of high rank, captured from your army by this Command, have been forwarded to Richmond, but the execution of my purpose of retaliation was deferred in order, as far as possible, to confine its operation to the men of Custer and Powell.

Accordingly, on the 6th instant, seven of your men were, by my order, executed on the Valley pike, your highway of travel.

Hereafter any prisoners falling into my hands will be treated with the kindness due to their condition, unless some new act of barbarity shall compel me, reluctantly, to adopt a line of policy repugnant to humanity.

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

JOHN S. MOSBY, Lieut.-Colonel.

On the 29th of October, Colonel Mosby had written a letter to General Lee, telling him of the practice of compelling helpless old men to ride exposed on the trains running over the railroads from Alexandria into Fauquier County, and of his intention to continue attacking such trains. He also told him of the murder of our men by Custer and Powell, and his intention to retaliate.

The first endorsement of Mosby's letter was as follows:

Respectfully referred to the Honorable Secretary of War for his information. I do not know how we can prevent the cruel conduct of the enemy toward our citizens. I have directed Colonel Mosby, through his Adjutant, to hang an equal number of Custer's men in retaliation for those executed by him.

"R. E. LEE, General.

The third endorsement was:

"General Lee's instructions are cordially approved. In addition, if our citizens are found exposed on any captured train, signal vengeance should be taken on all conductors and officers found on it, and every male passenger of the enemy's country should be treated as a prisoner. So instruct.

]. A. SEDDON, Secretary."

CHAPTER XIII

INCIDENTS

IN a raid we once made at midnight into the very heart of a cavalry camp near Fairfax Court House, where we were entirely surrounded by thousands of the enemy, it was necessary to go inside the stables to unfasten the horses. It was also necessary to keep absolutely quiet, for we were outnumbered a hundred to one. The pickets had been captured and ordered in whispers to follow us, and we made them unhitch the horses and help us to get them out

Captain Wm. Chapman had by his side Baron Von Massow, of whom I have spoken previously. In whispers he explained to the Baron what we were doing, and how to do it artistically; incidentally, he told the Baron of the boldness and the danger of it. The Baron proved a very apt scholar but after awhile he whispered to Captain Chapman very quietly: " This is

not fighting; this is horse-stealing." And who shall say he was wrong? But, before that job of horsestealing was finished, and when each man had from one to five, or even more, haltered or bridled horses, and was starting to lead them out to safety, the alarm was given, the troops were aroused, firing and yelling began, and the wounded were groaning and dying.

In the midst of the confusion the Guerrillas mounted the captured horses and, leading others, dashed away to where their own horses were waiting, without the loss of a man.

This was one of the many affairs that read like romance when told in the newspapers. People asked how on earth Mosby could get his raiding party inside of a big cavalry camp and, once the camp aroused, how on earth he could get it out. I do not know just how to explain it or to tell how easy it all appeared when it was over. But if you will bear in mind that everybody in the camp was fast asleep except the pickets; that we either crept stealthily upon these pickets, one by one, put pistols to their faces and told them to keep quiet, or that we rode up to them boldly and gobbled them up before they realized that we were not their own relief guard; and that, once inside, it was no more dangerous to move around quietly among five thousand sleeping men than among five; and that, when sleeping men awake suddenly, they never are instantly ready to fight; and that, when we began yelling and firing into them, they never knew whether we were five thousand or five; and that, by the time they were sufficiently aroused to fight intelligently, we had dashed out of the camp and disappeared in the darkness, it will not seem so strange.

It fell to my lot one dark night in winter to capture an infantry picket before our men could get into the camp, where we knew there were a lot of fine horses and mules. Not knowing how many pickets we might have to take the Colonel had ordered another man to go with me. His orders were merely to "take the pickets." We left our horses and started towards the camp

on foot. Within a few hundred yards of where our men were waiting for us I could see a figure moving along in the darkness, and we both dropped to the ground. I saw him march to the right and we crawled up a little and stopped. He turned and marched back, and as he passed us we crawled a little nearer. When he had gone up and down a few more times we were

in his path, and just as he came up to me I jumped up and thrust my pistol in his face. I do not recall that he said that he was pleased to make my acquaintance, but I do remember that, before we got him back to our base, he was taken suddenly sick. It was a simple case of extreme fright. He needed a good stiff drink.

I captured a Yankee soldier on the 21st of November, 1863, who never ceased to be grateful to me for doing it. Mosby had about seventy-five men on a raid below Warrenton while General Gregg's Division of Federal Cavalry was encamped there. We had stopped in a piece of pines near Bealton Station to watch " for something doing" in our line of business;

it was raining, cold and disagreeable, and the boys were all feeling ugly and impatient. Mosby saw a cavalryman and a man on foot coming along the road, and told Walter Whaley and me to bring them in to him. We had on rubber ponchos which hid our bodies entirely and, drawing our pistols under them, we marched up to the two men; we spoke only when we were a step away, and then merely said, " Surrender." The mounted man's first impulse was to draw his pistol and fight us, but he thought better of it and gave himself up. Whaley disarmed him and I had laid violent hands on the one on foot, when his face broadened into a smile.

" Oh, thank God for this," he cried, " may God bless you my boy."

I did not know exactly what to make of this demonstration, for we were not accustomed to being thanked for gobbling up the boys of the other side but, when we went through the cavalryman, who proved to be a courier bearing important despatches and papers, we unraveled the mystery. My man on foot was his prisoner, and was being taken to a nearby camp to be shot, according to a sentence of a court-martial held the day before.

When we first took the men I asked the one on horseback if he carried any papers; he said he did not and, to prove that he was a good soldier and likely to be lying, I searched him thoroughly; I did not come across the prize envelope until I got inside of his inside shirt, next to his skin, where it was sticking to him like a porous plaster. When we took our prisoners to Mosby he opened the envelope and found the order to have the man shot. We took him back with us to our part of the country, got him a suit of old clothes and, facing him Northward, turned him loose. He started for his home in Pennsylvania and no doubt he never stopped until he got there.

Among the courier's papers was an Official Order which informed us that some wagons would be along soon; in due time they arrived and we captured them, with their guard. Mosby said that it was clever of the enemy to inform us when to be on the-lookout for their good things. With the wagons we captured fifteen prisoners together with thirty horses and mules, and helped ourselves to all the medical supplies we needed for our surgeon's use. Their wagons contained a supply greater in quantity, perhaps, at that time, than the Medical Department at Richmond could boast. I know of one old local doctor, to whom I gave a few bottles of morphine shortly afterwards, who thanked me actually with tears in his eyes, assuring me that the stuff was worth more to him than its weight in gold.

The courier also carried a bundle of letters to be mailed, and these we amused ourselves with while we waited for the wagons to come along. We did not think it was wrong to open other people's mail in those days. Among them were some love letters, which we sent to Warrenton later, one of which created a mighty stir and nearly split a church in twain. For there

were many in that congregation who were horrified at the discovery that one of their number was corresponding with a "horrid Yankee Officer."

Very few of the fights of Mosby's men were pitched battles. Most of them were little affairs hardly worth writing about. Yet they were part of the almost daily experience of some of the men. I recall one of them in which I took part, where my companions killed four-fifths of the enemy, and I captured the rest. We wiped the whole crowd out completely. Colonel Mosby took five of us on a scout into Fairfax county, on one occasion, and about midnight we got information from a man living on the roadside which changed his plans and made him decide to go

back home and try again a little later. We learned, however, that a picket post of five cavalrymen were stationed on the turnpike a few hundred yards below where we were, and that a vedette stood between them and us. Colonel Mosby told us to go down and bring them in while he took a little nap in the pines, as he did not think it at all necessary to lead in person

such a formidable body as we were. We tied our horses and started on foot in a roundabout way, to get between the picket post and the supporting company, a hundred or two yards away and nearer their army corps. Captain Montjoy, being the only officer in our little party of five, assumed command without objection from any of us and suggested we string out, in

line-of-battle style, a few yards apart, and stealthily approach the post, till we could jump on the pickets and whisper to them not to create unpleasantness by firing their weapons.

We crept along noiselessly, step by step, in the dark, circling around the vedette, and keeping the pickets in full view all the time, as they were grouped around a little smouldering fire. Each of us had his pistol drawn ready for an emergency, but we hardly expected to use them. When we were within twenty feet of them one of us stepped on a dry stick which broke with a snapping sound, and the five sentinels turning to us called out, "Halt, who goes there?"

Montjoy answered, " Surrender."

In an instant five carbines were emptied at us, and four of our pistols rang out, point-blank, at them. Four of them fell dead around their little fire. In our advance on them Montjoy was on one end of our little "line-of-battle," and I was at the other, not dreaming we should have to fire on them, but thinking that we could take them noiselessly. I did not realize what Montjoy said, but mistook " Surrender" for " Friends; " and in my excitement I did not fire my pistol with the others.

We rushed on them immediately, and it fell to my lot to reach the only live one first. He understood the situation only too well, and in his anxiety to surrender to me and save his life, he pushed the muzzle of his carbine up against my stomach but, not knowing how to speak English he did not speak a word of anything.

I mistook his action just as I had mistaken Montjoy's call and, as the carbine was pressed against me, I imagined I could feel my heart, liver, lungs and vermiform appendix flying through space out of the stove pipe hole in my back. I do not believe I ever suffered such suspense for about a half minute in all my life but, as the carbine failed to do its expected deadly work of exploration, I took the fellow a prisoner and threw the gun away.

We pulled the four dead bodies out of the fire, took their pistols and belts, mounted the five horses, put the captured German up behind me, and galloped back to where the Colonel was peacefully sleeping in the pines. As we rode away from our ghastly work we could hear the lone vedette crashing through the woods on his way around us, back to his company, but we did not try to head him off and, when daylight dawned we were twenty or thirty miles away, headed for the mountains, with five horses and no German. In the darkness he had slipped off the horse he was riding, and the man who was supposed to be guarding him did not seem to be very sorry to lose him. As we rode along through the darkness we each decided to keep

the horse he was leading, instead of drawing lots for them and, as my captured animal was the friskiest of the lot, I believed I had the best. But oh! what a difference in the morning! I had a regular old plug.

One morning in the late summer, previous to my capture, I had been scouting with Colonel Mosby in the Valley, and a few of us were resting on the roadside, hidden under the trees from the view of any of the enemy who might be passing along the pike. While Sheridan was in the Valley all the roads in the vicinity of his army were pretty well covered by his cavalry in motion. Looking out under the trees from our hiding place the Colonel saw the four legs of a gray horse coming toward us, and assumed that a horse's body and a man, mounted on it, accompanied the legs; so he told me to go out and bring the man in to him. I mounted my horse and rode out to see who the newcomer was and, as he was not looking for anybody

from Mosby's Confederacy, I had no trouble in poking my pistol under his nose before he could draw his own from the holster. He surrendered very quietly and I took him back to the Colonel, in the meantime searching him carefully to be sure that he had no dynamite about his person. I was much relieved to find that he only had a harmless pocket-book and a pretty good watch which, in all kindness, I offered to keep for him and which, in equal kindness, he permitted me to do.

He proved to be Lieutenant Wright, Provost-Martial for General Merritt. During the morning we captured some other prisoners and, inasmuch as I had profited more than the other boys by the horse and the personal effects of the Lieutenant, as well as some other trinkets obtained casually from other prisoners, the Colonel made me take all the prisoners out. I had to get them from the rear of Sheridan's troops, and along the western base of the mountain till I came within the lines of our own army, which was facing Sheridan. In other words I had to describe a circle of about twenty miles to go what would have been only about five in a straight line. When I got to General Early's headquarters I tried to have Lieutenant Wright exchanged for one of our own Lieutenants, Frank Fox, who had been wounded and captured only a few days before, but my good intentions were frustrated by the death of Frank Fox, and my captured Provost-Martial was sent to Richmond. The Colonel enjoyed my ownership of the captured watch very much, and after that day he would frequently say, " What time is it, Munson, by Lieutenant Wright?"

Years and years afterwards, in fact when he had returned from his long residence in Hong Kong, where he had represented the United States Consul, he was walking with me one day in St. Louis, and turning to me with his happy smile, asked me the same old question, "What time is it, Munson, by Lieutenant J. Wright?"?

When I was captured my "Lieutenant Wright" watch became part of the spoils of my conquerors, but in all the excitement and terror of my downfall I noted the appearance of the fellow who took my watch and, when I arrived at the headquarters of my captors that night I asked the Colonel of the regiment (I think it was Farnsworth of Illinois, who later was a Congress- man to try and get my family heirloom returned to me. I pointed out the man who had it and it was given up, but not to me. It was sent along to the Old Capitol prison accompanying the prisoners. When I escaped from that prison early in 1865, I was in such a hurry that I forgot to ask for my watch.

In June, 1865, when the men who were in prison with me came home from Fort Warren, one of them told me that when my escape was discovered and our men were sent away to Boston, the superintendent of the prison restored to each man his personal effects, and when he held up that watch and asked who it belonged to, the boys told him it was Munson's.

" Well," he remarked, " if Munson will call here for ithe can have it." When I heard this I wrote him a request to send me the watch and, two days later, received it; as it is still among my possessions it has really now become an old family affair.

I met General Merritt at an entertainment in St. Louis, ten years after the war, and told him of my capture of Lieutenant Wright, and he said he was glad to learn the facts, because the Lieutenant had disappeared from the face of the earth that morning and, as no word was ever heard of or from him, he always supposed he had deserted. I heard that he died in prison in Richmond, but if I am mistaken, and if he is still alive, and if he reads this and wants his watch I will send it to him; but not his pocket-book.

I captured another watch that same summer from another man of Sheridan's Command and, at the close of the war I gave it to Mr. John Carr, a citizen who lived on the mountainside near Paris. When most of our men went over to the Valley on April 22, 1865, to surrender to General Hancock, Mr. Carr went along to get his parole also, thinking perhaps that sympathizing

citizens were included in the general terms of the surrender. The old gentleman was pretty well frightened at his surroundings when he reached the Valley, and told a friend of his he expected every minute to be his last. He wanted to know what time it was but he was afraid to pull out that watch on the street, for fear its former owner might recognize it and put him in jail. The possession of it worried him so that he slipped it down inside his trousers and let it drop into his sock, and getting on his horse he hurried out of town to his home.

Sam Alexander was one of our heavy-weights, though he was only a youngster. I would not like to say how much he weighed, but it was close around the two hundred and forty pound mark. It did not interfere in the least, however, with his riding. He came from Campbell Court House, Virginia, and was a son of Captain Jack Alexander, one of the best known men in the state and once the owner of the celebrated race horse " Red Eye," by Boston, the sire of Lexington. Sam came by his love for fine horses honestly, but I do not know where he got his fluent and variegated assortment of profanity. There was not a better rider in the Command, and there was not a gamer man. When he swept down on a sutler his process of absorption was unique. He could extract from the victim his last gasp of protest, as well as his last penny's worth of goods. I only mention this boy's name, among my stories of time-pieces, because I am reminded of him whenever I think of a captured watch. It was a fruitless raid for Sam when he did not come home with a newly absorbed watch.

There were other specialists in our Command. Some would have a peculiar fondness for new pistols, and in every fight would try to capture weapons newer than their own. Others made a point of getting handsome saddles, and still others wanted fancy saddle blankets. It is perhaps not strange that a number of the men made pocket-books a specialty. I believe I was of this number.

While the effect of robbing a captured soldier was felt largely by the victim, it formed its part of the general purpose of "harassing and annoying the enemy." It made a man in the service less anxious to fall into his captor's hands a second time, after one experience of being fleeced. I recall at even this late day that I never had any desire to become the guest of the Eighth Illinois -Cavalry after that gallant band had gone through me. And that just reminds me: It was the Major of the regiment who got my pipe and silk tobacco bag. Surely a poor private can be forgiven for indulging in his raids on the prisoners' pocket-books, when the commissioned officers set the example.

CHAPTER XIV

I AM CAPTURED

AFTER the war, when the Nation was healing its wounds and reminiscence was rife in the land, my dear old mother met a friend on the Richmond Capitol square and stopped to talk about the great conflict. "Mrs. Munson," ventured the friend, who knew my connection with the Partisan Rangers, "what do you reckon was the worst whipping Colonel Mosby's men got during the war?" 

" Well, I never heard anyone discuss it," replied my mother, smiling to herself, "but I reckon it must have been the day the Yankees captured my boy Johnny."

A good many mothers were under the impression that the entire conflict was fought right around their children, and those who sat waiting at home for the soldier who never came back had some reason for their beliefs. Fortunately for me and for the good woman who dated Mosby's greatest misfortune as simultaneous with my capture, I succeeded in escaping from the Yankees and in returning to the South before the trouble had ceased.

It was not strange that I should get into the Federal drag net sooner or later. I had been enjoying a lot of liberty during the two last years and, when it came time for me, as it did in the latter end of 1864, to throw up my hands and" come along with us," I did so with that same alacrity with which other hands had been thrown up to me.  It came about in this wise. A newly appointed Captain, chosen by Mosby from what he used to call his blue ben's chickens, because of their unfailing excellence, had a chance to win his spurs in a fight that was about due to come off near Upperville. A detachment from the Eighth Illinois Cavalry was on a short raid from their camp near Rectortown, to Upperville, and Colonel Mosby ordered them attacked.

The officer to whom I refer had been with Mosby since the very inception of the Partisan Rangers and, as an individual fighting man, had no superior in the Command, his promotion from the ranks being a just reward for a continuous record of brilliant service. His waving plume was ever at the head of the column when there was fighting to be done, and everybody in

the Command loved Walter Frankland. Captain Frankland's plan was to divide his Command for the purpose of charging a stone-wall of Federal cavalry in front and flank simultaneously. It did not work if my memory serves me right, as the enemy had our first detachment whipped before Lieutenant Grogan with his flanking party reached the scene. Grogan had no idea that Frankland had been disposed of, until the Federals turned their  attention his little squad, and discomfited him at the same handy pace. They poured a deadly carbine fire into us as we rushed on. We were charging in fours, and I was at the front, and did not know that our men had wavered and turned off from the hopeless attack until it was too late to follow them. When I discovered my predicament I believe it would have been a safe thing for me to have headed my horse straight at their line and trusted to my breaking my way through by the

impetus of the charge. It takes a good strong horse to withstand the charge of another one, head on.

What I should have done, and what I did, are two widely different things. Luck, too, was against me. I only realized that I was up against it, and must try to get away. When I headed my mare for a high and forbidding stone fence the animal refused to take the leap. For an instant, as she approached the ugly barrier, I thought she would go over, but that short, firm step that a jumper makes just before rising failed, and a wave of anxiety passed through me as she hesitated. I tried to lift her with the movement that the rider involuntarily makes, and touched her with my spur. She trembled, gave a frightened little neigh, and fell back on her haunches.

It looked bad for me. I jumped from her back, scrambled over the wall on my own hook, and was breaking the world's record in a fine two hundred yard dash for some timber on the other side. At one time I thought I would actually get away, but the Yankees found a gap in the wall that I had overlooked and got on my trail at once. My mare. jumped the wall after me like a deer, and with head and tail up defiantly, though really as badly scared as I, dashed away across the field and was found the next day riderless, miles away from the scene of my troubles.

I fancied, as I saw her fading away from me, that she looked back pityingly, but I could fancy any old thing just then.

Before I got a hundred yards from the wall they pounced on me and made the most complete capture of a rebel ever witnessed. About twenty men made as many passes at me, and the baubles and splendors of guerrilla life disappeared. They got my hat and plumes, my gloves and pistols, my watch and belt, and all my personal belongings. Before I had time to make the slightest protest, one fellow sat me down abruptly, put his foot on me, and relieved me of my boots in a most startling and finished manner. Talk about Mosby's men going through a man! There was  not a man in our Command who could swoop down and capture a pair of boots like the man who took mine! It was my initial touch at the game of retaliation, and the Yankees trimmed me well.

I have very recently received a letter from Mr. W. S. Freeman, who is now a prominent business man in Le Mars, Iowa, in which he said, "I was one of the men who captured you, and my share of the swag was your spurs. I wish I had them now, so I could send them to you. Another one of our little party was Mr. James How, of Audubon, Iowa. You overrated the number of men who captured you; there were only a few of us." I answered his friendly letter and told him my mental condition was such, when he claims to have first formed my acquaintance, that I could imagine his whole regiment had a hand in the affair. I did not regret the loss of any of my belongings  as much as that of my watch. Pocket-book, knife,  pipe, tobacco-bag and everything else could be duplicated when I should come back home, but that watch  was my pride.

Not many months before that day I had ridden out on the turnpike in the Valley and captured an officer who was riding towards me. He was Lieutenant Wright, Provost-Marshal for General Merritt.. The  first thing I took from him after disarming him was this watch. Everything else he had followed in the regular order, but 1 paid no special attention to them. I fondled that watch, for it was the first one I had ever captured.

I had learned to appreciate what we were pleased to call "a fat capture," for a great many of the men we took seemed to be waiting for the paymaster to arrive. I remember in a fight we had near Duffield Station on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, I captured, single handed, five poor, frightened infantrymen who had thrown down their guns and were absolutely harmless. From all the five men I only got sixty-five cents. I had no heart in the business for days after.

One of the best men we had was big, fat Sam Alexander. He was a dare-devil and much given to profanity. In an ugly fight one day Sam aimed his pistol at a man's head and said: "Give me your pocket book, you blankety blank, blank."

" I have not got any pocket-book," he said. " Well then, surrender," Sam said, as he proceeded to disarm the prisoner. But this is a digression.

I was taken with some other prisoners over to Rectortown, and locked up in the station of the old Manassas Gap Railroad. Had I known that the distance from the second story to the ground was less than fifteen feet, I might have jumped it and got away. As it was, I remained there that night and got some much-needed sleep. The following day we were taken to Alexandria by rail. In my guard I recognized a man whom I had befriended the previous year, when he had been my prisoner in Fauquier County.

He had not forgotten the circumstance and was willing that I should jump off the train when it came to the next stop. There was a little light ahead, some of the bread I had cast upon the waters bid fair to return. The next thing I knew my friendly guard was relieved by another man and the bread became dough. I spent the next night in the old slave pen in Alexandria.

"Served 'me right," remarked' "one of my fellow prisoners. On the following day I was marched into Washington to the Old Capitol prison. My raiment consisted of a suit of underclothes protected by a cast-off outfit that I had picked up somewhere after I had been put through the third degree by the Eighth Illinois boys and, in addition, I carried in my hand a pair of rough horsehide boots that replaced the twenty-seven dollar Wellingtons which had been skinned off me. I could not wear the boots but I did not care to give them up, for I had hopes that I

might be able to exchange them for some others to suit my size and taste in foot-gear, so I carried them around with me by the straps.

From Alexandria we were marched up the road and across the long bridge to Washington and, when we swung into Pennsylvania Avenue I was barefooted, as my socks had worn through on the march. Beside me marched Dennis Darden, a Washington man, who knew every foot of the locality through which we were passing. Carefully we worked our way down our line till we were the last two in the ranks, for we had arranged to strike down the guards on either side of us when we reached a certain alley, and make a dash for freedom. I figured on smashing my guard in the face with the horsehide boots and pulling his musket down over his back before he could empty its contents into his rebellious bosom. Incidentally, I had made up my mind to make a better run than I made two days previously. Just before we got to the alley some of Darden's friends, learning of his capture, gathered along the line of march and brought up in the rear, following at our heels, and offering cigars. Dennis turned pale and whispered to me that any attempt to escape would involve his friends, who would be arrested and possibly shot as accomplices in our escape.

About sunset we reached the Old Capitol prison, at the southeast comer of First and A streets, almost opposite the Senate Chamber. I was assigned, with thirty-six others, to a room in the front of the building overlooking the Capitol of the United States, with the gilded statue of Liberty on the dome. She stood against the winter sky and beckoned me to the freedom

that she has since given to the oppressed in many times, but in '64, I spent long days and weary nights at my grated window, playing checkers with my nose, wondering what particular. significance that golden goddess with hand outstretched had for me. She looked awfully inviting, but I could not accept. There was not much in prison life that interested me. What I was most concerned about was how to escape. I racked my brain in vain endeavor  for some brilliant idea by which I could bid adieu to everything north of Loudoun county, Virginia. One night, while exercising in the narrow yard in which we were permitted to move about, I observed the entrance of  the scavengers who came every twenty-four hours to clean out the prison. It occurred to me that I might make a deal with one of these men to escape in the cart they used.  I arranged to give one of them a five-dollar gold piece, provided he would help me out.

I had ascertained from. him that he was a former slave of a friend of mine in Virginia. He was willing enough, but offered the objection that I was a white man, while the scavengers were negroes. I agreed take care of that part of the transaction. That night I burned a big cork, and in the shadow of the exercising  yard. I blackened my face like a minstrel and sauntered up to the scavengers' cart, anxious that I should play my part in a natural and easy manner, handed me their shovels, and ordered me to hustle around lively and show what stuff I was made of. I had no choice but to shovel garbage, and I put in half an hour of the hardest work of my life. The perspiration mixed with the burnt cork, and I looked more like a coal heaver than a

Washington coon. Nevertheless, when the work was done, I jumped on the cart and we drove indifferently towards the exit. We passed the post and it looked as if we would get away. At the outer gate, however, a figure stepped out of the shadow and a well rounded Irish-American voice remarked, " Git down from that and go back to your quarthers: two of yez nagers

come in, and three of yez is thrying to go out." I crept back humbly to my grated quarters.

Within a week I had another plan. It contemplated making an exit in the contract baker's wagon which came into the prison yard every day to deliver bread. One morning when conditions seemed to be about right, I jumped into the wagon, worked my way under a stack of warm, white loaves, and snuggled down in the flour dust, waiting for my baker coachman to come out and drive me away.

One of my large feet protruded from the bread pile I and was discovered by one- of the eagle-eyed reserve guard, who dragged me from the friendly loaves, sputtering and wild with rag~ much as a butcher pulls a side of beef from an ice-box. I was promptly marched off to the guard house and advised, privately, that my next attempt at rambling would be met with

something calculated to keep me in for an indefinite period.

I was obliged to resort to these expedients because at that time the usual methods of escape had been worked to death. and necessity had become the mother of many new inventions. Tunneling, uprising, cutting bars at windows, bribing guards, and other familiar devices of prisoners were amply provided against. One of our men found a guard who for a consideration

agreed to let him escape through a window under which he was on duty. The prisoner sawed through the iron bars of his window, made a rope from his bed clothes, and with infinite caution at the appointed hour, slid slowly down to what he imagined was freedom. Just as his feet touched the pavement and the thrill of liberty began to fill his soul, a bayonet driven by the friendly guard, pierced his back and passed through his heart. The guard was rewarded with a sergeantcy. A well-deserved promotion, perhaps.

The confinement was beginning to wear on me.  While the food and the treatment were in every way satisfactory, I felt an intense longing to go back to Virginia, where the fighting and raiding and hurrahing were going on, and where I had friends, relations and countrymen. All my efforts to escape had come to naught and it seemed that I was destined remain in prison until the Federal Government saw fit to turn me loose. Nevertheless, I stuck to the principles of eternal vigilance and watched the game as it went on around me. In the daily life of the prison I observed a short, black-haired man, a member of the hospital staff, who passed in and out of the main entrance thrice a day. I found out that he took his meals outside, and that

he was never challenged by the guards. The thought occurred to me that I might surreptitiously take his place. Upon reflection, however, I observed that he was short and stumpy, about forty and black-haired, while I was a tall, rakish, clipper-built blonde of eighteen; that I wore gray, while he wore blue; that he was out while I was in. Nevertheless I made up my mind to take one more chance, for better or for worse, for life or death. This hospital steward's insignia consisted of a strip of green about two inches wide, bordered with faded yellow braid. In the center of the strip was a faded figure of Mercury with a serpent coiled around the staff of the wand, with spreading wings on top. This figure was also in yellow or gold.

I never got close enough to inspect the design carefully, but I had a pretty correct idea of its general characteristics, fixed in my mind. He wore one on either arm. I had written an appealing, and probably exaggerated letter to my aunt, Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, New York, who since that day has endeared herself to countless thousands of readers all over the world by her graceful writing in prose and verse. In the epistle I described prison life so graphically that she sent me from the north a generous supply of good gold coin with which to relieve the hardships I depicted.

Sometimes I think that if novelists could spend a few years in jail, they could turn out literature that would have an irresistible appeal to their readers' hearts. With a portion of the money sent by my aunt, I proceeded to mould myself into a hospital steward.

My first purchase was a blue blouse from a Yankee prisoner who was in for jumping the bounty for the seventeenth time, as he informed me. To this day my aunt has never forgiven me for using her loyal gold to bribe a northern soldier, even though he was a bounty jumper. But I consoled myself with the reflection that I needed the liberty and that, if one of my name were ever to accomplish anything in a military way and make it famous, she must contribute her share to it, since she was a Munson.

The next step in the scheme was to trade my gray trousers for a pair of dark-colored ones which, at a pinch, and in the evening, might be taken for good northern blue. Then came the rub; where was I to get the green strips so necessary for the strips on the arms? How could I find the yellow to make the figure of Mercury? I was in distress.

After cogitating over the matter I recollected that some of the southern uniforms contained a piece of green cloth sewed inside of the gray, or rather I thought I recollected it. How was I to get at these treasures?

Only by ripping the coats or pockets open. Whereupon for the next week when my comrades were asleep, I got up, ripped their coats open, and prospected for two strips of green cloth, holding the garments up to the moonlight. Failing in my quest, I sewed up the rents, and passed on to the next coat. I was obliged to work slowly and noiselessly. I did not find what I most desired, and quoting that old saw, "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," I metaphorically threw up my hands and abandoned the attempt.  A fortnight passed uneventfully and my determination began to reassert itself. My one object in life now was to find something green, but oddly enough it was the one color which seemed to have disappeared from the face of the world. Even the trees, rattling their bare branches in the winter winds, had lost their leaves, and the emerald hope was realized only in my dreams. One afternoon I wandered into the sutler's shop, and while dealing with him my eyes fell upon a green pasteboard box on one of the upper shelves. Luck of all luck; it was the exact shade I had been seeking for the past month. I began to tremble with excitement.

Did the sutler notice my emotion? No. I began to talk about needing a box to keep my valuables in. "That one up there on the shelf will do," I ventured, pointing to the green treasure.

You can have it, young fellow," said the sutler, reaching up and pulling the box down from its position with the tip of his finger, "but you need not be afraid of burglars around here." He laughed at his joke immoderately, and with a final chuckle tossed the precious thing into my receptive hands. I hurried away to my quarters. Ye gods! but I was happy.

That night I got up cautiously and, with nothing to see by but the light that flickered through the grated window, proceeded to cut strips of the proper dimensions from the green box. I had scarcely cut into the paper before I discovered that the body of the box was yellow straw board of a dull old-gold color that  would easily pass muster for the one of Mercury and the coiled serpent. I almost broke into cheers, in my excess of joy. I found that, by trimming the edge of each strip of its superficial green layer, a nice yellow border was to be had.

When I had fastened the two strips of the proper length so that they would encircle my arms at the biceps, I went carefully to work on a crude outline of the figure of Mercury and the serpent, which after infinite pains began to assume the proportion of the real article. Michael Angelo never worked so hard over drawings as I did over these. Perhaps he had never experienced such inspiration as that under which I labored. After what seemed an interminable time I completed the outline drawing and peeled the green layers off the cardboard, exposing the precious yellow golden tint underneath. Then I drew on my blue blouse, pinned the green badges of office on either arm and stood fearful and furtive in the silence, the

prison hospital steward. Then the gray light of morning crept in upon me. Thinking of my two clumsy efforts at deception I felt a great fear rising in my heart that perhaps failure was to be the end, and that the golden goddess on the dome of the Capitol might beckon to me In vain. A guttural tremolo broke from one of the sleepers, rousing me from my reverie. Without further delay I whisked the blouse off, tucked it under my bunk in the farthest corner and crept into bed. I could not sleep, for there passed in review before me scenes of the fight at Dranesville, dear old Chapman and Richards leading their divisions into battle, John Puryear dashing. madly among the Yankees in some dare-devil expedition, Captain Montjoy singing his happy songs to the morning, and Colonel Mosby standing with his hands at his back, gazing across the Potomac towards Washington. I wanted to be with the Command. As the memories of the past two years rushed upon me, I felt my chin quiver and found myself swallowing a big lump in my cheerless rebel throat.

In the morning of the following day, I took Dennis Darden into my confidence. He belonged to my company and I knew he could be trusted. The prevalence of spies in all the prisons made me cautious, which accounts for my reticence during the preparatory work. Before the war Darden had been in the secret service department of the Government, and I knew he could instruct me what to do if I succeeded in making my escape. He did not take kindly to the plan and advised me not to make the attempt. He urged that every step in my path was fraught with danger, and that if detected I was a dead boy. He reminded me that the reserve force had orders to kill the next man trying to escape, and volunteered the information

that the Potomac was impassable in winter. He wound up, however, by giving me the names and addresses of several people in Washington to whom I could go for help if I ran the gauntlet and got away alive.

The prison rules permitted only two men to leave anyone room and enter the yard at the same time, except for meals, and Darden therefore agreed to accompany me to the enclosure after dark. I did not dare to put on my blouse in the room occupied by my comrades; not that I mistrusted them, but I feared indiscretion of some kind. For that reason Dennis was the only man who shared my hopes and fears. There was a little interval of time between the last of twilight and the lighting of the prison candles in our rooms, and these were the saddest moments out of the twenty-four hours that made up the day. It was then that we used to think of home -and many a wan face turned to some friendly shadows, white silent tears trickled down the cold cheeks of stern soldiers. I have seen plenty of brave men cry, and to this day I do not like the late twilight when I am alone. It was at this hour that I changed my gray coat for the blue blouse. Picking up Tom Love's overcoat to hide the precious green insignia, I beckoned to Dennis Darden to follow me, and passed through the building to the yard, with Dennis at my side, our nervous hands grasped tightly in what was to be a farewell grip.

The sentries, believing that we were simply en route for our evening's exercise, passed along without comment. We trod the cold floor like spectres; both ready to "burst out crying." I wish he were alive today, so I could once again press the faithful old hand that clung to mine as a father's clings to his son's. When we got into the shadow of the yard I took

off Tom Love's overcoat and gave it to Dennis to carry up stairs. He felt at his throat as if his collar was choking him and, turning, walked back without looking at me again.

After the war he confessed that he was so wrought up that he was afraid to see me start for the door, fearing that in his emotion, that he would cry out and attract attention. I watched him cross the yard and disappear in the shadows at the other end of the enclosure. Suddenly a great and overpowering dread of the first sentry came over me and I stood as if petrified for at least a minute. Then the old longing for liberty asserted itself, and without further adieu, I marched, numb with uncertainty, up to the main doors leading into the long hall through which I must pass to freedom. The sentry made no protest and, with that for a first success, I threw out my chest and held my arms so that the insignia of the hospital steward were prominently displayed. I passed all the inner guards unchallenged, and stepped by the night relief force just being formed in the hall, finally reaching the outer door of the prison, which was opened for me and held by the man on post.

A blast of cold, fresh, free air smote me in the face.

A man on horseback with his cloak wrapped around him, cantered by on the hard pavement; lights glittering from the houses in the distance reached around and splashed on my green badges. The sentry bowed familiarly to me, and in three more steps I passed through the gates that had held me prisoner and heard them jangle and rattle as they closed behind me. The sharp click of the bolt in the big lock sounded like a pistol shot as it slipped into place. Involuntarily I contracted all my muscles, literally shrank myself up like a boy about to receive the paternal shingle, and crossed the street with a wildly beating heart, but free! free! free!

Dennis Darden hurried back to my former quarters, took our friend Captain Babcock by the arm and, leading him to the grated window, pointed to the figure sauntering across the street in the direction of the Goddess of Liberty looming on the Capitol dome. Then he whispered: "There goes John Munson home."

Now that I was actually out of prison and free to proceed whither I willed, the difficulties of the situation began to present themselves. Where could I go that a Southerner was sure of protection and assistance? I had the names Dennis Darden gave me names of people supposed to be sympathizers; but the novelty of the situation was too much for me and I began to feel like the guilty who flee when no man pursueth. Although I had been a resident of Washington for three months, I had kept strictly indoors and was not in the least familiar with

the streets and the people. All of a sudden I bethought myself of the green insignia on my arms. I wrenched them from my blouse and tore them into bits, tossing the fragments into the Capitol grounds. They fell in a green shower and lay scintillating in the reflections from the gas lamps that lined the thoroughfare. I fled from them precipitately, ever fearful that the fat, dark, hospital steward would come sauntering along and see me playing his part.

Among the names supplied by Darden was that of a woman who kept a fashionable boarding house. I decided to call on her first and after considerable difficulty I found her residence. A young darky answered the bell.

" Yes sah, de Missus is in, but I don't reckon you can see her jess at dis hour. You name sah, if you please? "

At that moment the lady happened to come down stairs and to the door where I was standing. In a low voice I told her Dennis Darden had sent me to her, but before I could proceed, she said with considerable excitement, though well controlled: Never heard of him! Who is he ? You must have made a mistake, young man."

I was heartbroken.

" George," she said presently, turning to the darky, "go up stairs and close the back window. There is a draught in the hall" The servant disappeared.

"Quick, my boy, what can I do for you? Yes, I know Dennis Darden well."

She drew me into the warm hall with motherly tenderness. "Do you want money? here it is," and she pressed me to take it. The roll of bills she offered me made me think this was another greenback raid.

" I don't want your money," I replied," I have enough for my wants; I want you to conceal me somewhere. Can you hide me for a day or two, or just for tonight?

If you can only catch on to my situation at present, I am on the run."

I said all of this in a good deal of a hurry, and in just as much of a hurry she said, "Impossible! I am suspected of being a Southern sympathizer; this house is watched by spies, and Colonel Billy Wood at the Old Capitol wilt have his detectives here as soon as he finds out you have escaped. I will tell you where to go."

She gave me another address. The servant was returning and I bowed myself out, while she protested. in a low voice that she had never heard of Dennis Darden and did not want to and I thought I heard the word "tramp" but maybe not.

By midnight I had visited four " Southern sympathizers" who protested hatred of everything south of the line. I cannot say in justice that I blamed them for giving me the cold shoulder, as Washington was full of detectives and spies engaged in ferreting out residents who were suspected of treasonable tendencies. It was a dangerous thing to display any anti-Union

leanings in those days.

An exception to my general turning down was in the case of Dennis's old mother and sister, whom I called on after I left the boarding house landlady, but I only stopped for a moment to tell them about their son and brother, for I knew their's would be one of the first houses to be searched. They welcomed me and would have had me stay and hide, but I knew that it would endanger them, and I moved on. I wandered around the back streets in a sort of panic, ducking behind trees and sneaking into shadows every time a pedestrian or horseman came into view. I thought every soldier was after me, as the roll call was sure to disclose my absence.

The last address in my possession was that of a sporting man of the name of Lunsford. He ran a gilded palace of chance down town, and his place was generally filled with army officers, with a penchant  faro and roulette. I hesitated about going there, because of its popularity among the Union officers.

Nevertheless, about midnight I decided to take the gambler's chance myself, and entered the place boldly. It literally swarmed with Federal uniforms, but by ,this time I was too desperate or perhaps too indifferent to care much what happened. I called Lunsford aside when he was pointed out to me, and told him my story, explaining how I had been turned down four times

that night.

" Serves you right," he answered; " you should have come to me first. Did not Dennis tell you I could be depended on? Confound you, this idiotic delay may cost you your liberty."

At this greeting all my fears left me, and the world seemed to be mine, especially when he added cheerfully, " Better get some grub into you, and prepare to light out of Washington before daybreak. How is old Dennis?

Does he want anything?" With that he hustled me into the back room where I satisfied myself at the guests' table, taking care of a meal that was by far the best and largest I had eaten since my capture.

At the conclusion of my assault on the viands, Lunsford called in his manager, told him to run the place until it was time to close up, and together we set out for Georgetown. It added speed to my steps when he intimated that some the soldiers in his place were probably men who were sent out to look for me, though it might have been only one of his jokes. I wanted to walk, so that if necessary I could break into a sprint, but he insisted on riding, and somewhere he got a cab and we drove into Georgetown about two o'clock in the morning. My new  friend took me to a little family hotel called "The White House," kept by a Frenchman named Tony Rodier, and instructed him to hide me until I could be safely started in the direction of Loudoun county. Lunsford thereupon bade me a warm good-bye, and after offering to share his roll with me if I was out of funds, drove back to Washington.

That was the last I saw of the brave and generous fellow, but I wrote to him after the war expressing my appreciation. I have recently heard that he is still living in Washington at  a ripe old age. I remained most of the time in a room in the attic, as my host did not care to have visible a guest whose character was likely to be questioned at any moment. On the fourth day I had about concluded to strike out after dark and make my way back to the Command as best I could. But in the meantime Madame Rodier had arranged with a country market man that I

was to leave the town with him, passing as his son; the idea being to get me outside of the picket limits and turn me loose in the open to go it alone. I did not realize then that it was infinitely harder to escape from Washington through the almost countless pickets than to get out of the Old Capitol prison. Madame Rodier told the countryman that it would be a pleasure for her to annihilate him if he failed in his mission.

Evidently the farmer was impressed, for he displayed evident signs of fear; so much so, in fact, that the hotel man's wife had to supply him with courage in the form of a bottle of brandy. The effect was instantaneous and we departed for the rural districts in fine feather.

About two miles outside of the city limits the last of the pickets we had to pass held us up and wanted to know where the farmer had" dug up" the boy, meaning me. An argument ensued, but the farmer protested stoutly that I had come in with him, and that I was sleeping among the vegetables when he entered the lines. The guard looked incredulous, and then to try and trip the old fellow, asked if he did not have something to drink. My" father" insisted that he never took a drink in his life and, after a brief parley, we were permitted to proceed. When we came to the first turn in the road where we were hidden from the soldiers, the old fellow drew out his bottle and took a long pull at the contents, saying to me, " Sonny, if you was as badly scared just now as I am you'd be mighty glad to take a swig out of that bottle, young as you is."

For several days and nights after the garden-truck man set me down, several miles outside of Georgetown, I was kept busy dodging pickets and straggling troopers, keeping out of the way of strangers and side-stepping awkward situations, to say nothing of the extreme difficulty of getting enough to eat.  I gradually made my '"ray north-westward, not far from

the Potomac at any time, and at length I began to feel that my prospect for reaching the stamping ground of the Rangers was improving.

Just about sunset on the seventh day I was set down from a stage coach in the little towns of Poolesville, in Montgomery county, Maryland, pretty tired, but hopeful, for I had caught a glimpse of the Blue Ridge Mountains that afternoon and made up my mind to reach their friendly shelter or know why. I was looking rather seedy for my clothes had seen hard usage

of late and they were not new when I got them. I found a soldier in Poolesville who was doing cavalry duty in the neighborhood. He was a Federal trooper and seemed to be a decent sort of fellow. I inquired of him the way to a certain house near the Potomac river, a house occupied by a " friend" to whom I had been directed. He advised me to keep away from the river, saying the Federal pickets might mistake me for a rebel and shoot me. I insisted on going, however, and he offered to let me walk beside his horse while he rode out into the country, promising to start me right when we got to a certain fork in the road. It was a bitter cold night and the patches of snow lay white and shimmering along the fields on the highway.

Before us, covered with frost and ice, was the winding road, sometimes in the open white light of the moon, and at other times heavy with the shadows of' trees. My guide was rather a talkative person and under the influence of his chatting I began to warm up to the trip.

Once when we were passing along a frozen stretch of the road I reached out and grabbed a pistol holster from the trooper's saddle, in an effort to support myself. The instant my fingers touched the leather a thought flashed through my mind. Why not capture him? Never had a man such a chance as this. He had everything that I lacked; a good horse, a carbine, two pistols, and a warm coat. I withdrew my hand from the holster and trudged along. The idea began to appeal to me. I recalled the time when my Captain, Billy Smith, of Mosby's Command, while being led off captive by the enemy, pulled his captor down by the wrist, dealt him a blow in the face, dragged him to the ground; how he took his pistols, mounted into the empty saddle, and galloped back to the Command, cheering his own prowess.

It would be a very simple matter to haul that Federal trooper to the earth, and the idea that the Colonel would approve of it. if I told him of it, was a consideration not to be overlooked. I did not want to execute the maneuver in a hasty and bungling manner, so I set about studying the conditions more closely. I recollect how, in my conversation, I made many gestures, all of which were calculated to bring my hands more closely in touch with the rider's boots, his revolver holsters, his stirrup,  and such other important things as were likely to come in for a share in the mixup.

Once I put my hand over on the stirrup casually, just to see how far his foot went into the slot. At that particular moment the trooper had slipped his boot almost out of the stirrup and I could have then and there carried out my plan with little risk to myself. I glanced up in his face just to see if there could be any possible suspicion in his eyes, intending to raid him when we struck the shadow of the next tree. Just then he spoke.

" If you are tired, comrade, I will walk and let you ride a spell. I guess it must be pretty hard jogging along these frozen roads."

Here I was contemplating this fellow's capture and humiliation, while he was occupied with thoughts for my comfort. It did not take long for me to assure him of my gratitude, and, when we separated a little farther up the road and I shook his hand, I hoped that the genuine warmth with which I grasped it would compensate for my unbrotherly cognitions earlier in the night. I stood there alone, watching him melt into the landscape, and the sane thought presented itself to me that the river was frozen over, making a horse unnecessary, and a prisoner would have been an awful handicap to me. There is no fool like a fool looking for a fight.

I found my way to the house I was in search of and spent that night and the next day under a dry and hospitable roof, changing my clothes for warmer garments. When I finally went down to the river's bank, under cover of darkness, I heard voices and hid behind a pile of rocks. A trio of Federal soldiers passed so near me that I heard their voices. The amusing part of it was that they were holding an animated conversation about Mosby and his captivating tactics. I gathered from what I overheard that the Command had been raising no end of trouble during my absence.

After the Yankees passed I made for the river rapidly, and found it completely frozen over, as had been reported. A bad storm was blowing up, however, and I could hear the ice crackling and humming ominously. The snow began to lose its crispness and I knew that a thaw was about to set in. This gave me another reason, an excellent one, for getting across to the soil of Virginia, and I made tracks over the frozen bosom of the old Potomac, like a timber wolf loping back home. All the way I could hear the ice sheet humming and warping under my feet. A blinding wind from the southeast was eating into the ice hummocks, and I felt the moisture coming through my boots. The thaw was on without a doubt. At every few steps my feet slipped on the rough lumps and I fell sprawling on my face, only to lie quiet for a moment, and gaze up and down the river and try to find out if I was discovered by the pickets stationed along its banks. I could see their fires for miles both ways, and my overwrought nerves made the noise of each stumble and fall appear to me like explosions of a mine. I could almost imagine the guards could hear me grunt and groan. The ice broke up and the river opened two hours after I crossed.

I landed a few miles below Leesburg and tramped into that town about ten o'clock at night. On the way I heard the sound of horses, and dropped down behind a clump of bushes to hide. They proved to be a raiding party of Yankees returning from our country to their camp in Fairfax. I spent the night at a friend's house in Leesburg and another raiding party came into town during the night and searched the house. I began to think getting out of prison was easy compared with dodging raiders. The next day I walked out to West Aldrich's home, a few miles from town, and he gave me a lift as far as Upperville, the town near which I had been captured nearly three months before, and where a meeting of the Command was being held when I reached there. I walked in on my old comrades like a specter, for some of them had heard that I had died in prison of smallpox. I had much to tell them of the boys I had left behind and much to listen to about the adventures and experiences of those that were safe. The burden of my advice was, "Don't get caught, for it is hard to get back." Colonel Mosby had not yet returned to the Command from his severe wound received late in December at Lake's house and, as the men were not particularly busy annoying the enemy," I was on indefinite leave of absence and went home to Richmond. The first questions were when I reached Upperville, about my horses especially of the mare which got me captured by refusing to take the  stone wall. Until then I did not know what had become her.

I learned at my old comrade, Emo Pitts, had taken care of all my animals in my absence and when I went into til stable where they were munching their oats, two of them, "old Champ" and the mare "Annie," stopped eating and whinnied their recognition  and welcome. Maybe it was silly and boyish, but I could not help it; I hugged both of them and cried just a 'little bit.

When at home in Richmond, I walked in on my mother, who had also heard that sickness had carried me away in a northern prison, there was a convulsive reunion. When my Mother came out that evening and asked the threadbare question, " Heard anything more about John ?" The fact that I was hiding behind the door did not deceive him as to the meaning of the expression on my Mother's face.  Well, somehow or other I got out from behind the door and fell into my father's arms like a helpless child, and for a while there was triple crying and hugging and laughing. Truly it was worth a short term in prison to be part of such a family reunion.

It may be interesting to know what happened in the Old Capitol Prison  after my departure. Within half an hour following my exit, the superintendent and his guard made their nightly rounds and 'called the roll. It was then discovered I was missing. Search was made in every conceivable spot, even up the chimney and in the sewer. Careful investigations were resorted to and after several days it was discovered that the bounty jumper had sold me his blue blouse. As a punishment he was sent to the Dry Tortugas. All the rest of the prisoners were handcuffed in pairs and sent up to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, where they were kept till the summer of 1865. I should have mentioned before that Mosby's men were not exchanged during the latter part of the war, and the only way to get home was to go home.

CHAPTER XVI

TRYING FOR BIG GAME

ABOUT the middle of August, 1864, I don't recall just the date, but I believe it was the 15th, Major " Dolly " Richards's squad killed Lieutenant Walker of the First United States Cavalry. I have referred to it previously. In one of Walker's pockets the boys found a miniature likeness of his bride, with her name and the date of her marriage inscribed on it.

Watkins of our Command gave it to a lady nearby, and asked her to see that it was sent through the lines, in safety, to that waiting bride. I hope she got it.

I don't like to think of the incident. Walker's horse was a splendid animal, and when his master was killed the poor, frightened creature dashed away toward the camps. Willie Martin chased him, but finding he could not overtake him, yelled to a Yankee soldier standing in the way to catch and hold him, which he did and, when Martin rode up, he told the man to get on the horse and "come along."

It looked like a rather ungrateful way of paying him for doing a favor. The boys presented the horse to Major Richards. One of the men went through Walker's pockets and got five hundred dollars in greenbacks. Lieutenant Alfred Glasscock took fifteen men to the Valley about this time to annoy Sheridan. He was raiding near Kemstown with his little squad of fifteen

men when he saw a company of cavalry approaching. His men wore rubber ponchos to keep off the rain. He could not distinguish the number of the enemy approaching, owing to a bend in the road, but told his men it was no time to run for, if there were too many of them, he would pass on by and trust to luck not to be discovered, but if there were not too many he

would attack them and demand their surrender. He said: " Now, boys, I am going to show you how to capture Yankees in the regular Mosby style."

As the commands approached each other, the Yankee said to Glasscock: "Hello, boys, I thought you were rebs." Glasscock smilingly told him not to be  worried on that account, and as he rode on past the  company his fifteen men scattered along the line from front to rear and, at a signal from Glasscock, every man presented a cocked pistol. The entire crowd surrendered, and not a shot was fired. We captured thirty men and their horses, and no record of their disappearance was left behind. It may have reached Sheridan's ears and "annoyed" him, or he may have heard that his men deserted in a body, or that the ghosts had spirited them away; but, whatever report of the disappearance of one of his cavalry companies was made to him, if any was, could not have added much to his cheerfulness.

Mosby had such confidence in the ability of his officers that he permitted them frequently to layout their own work, or rather the details of it. He would send an officer to the Valley, for instance, and tell him to find something to do around Winchester, while another one would be told to go with a few men to the neighborhood of Charlestown or some other point. Hardly

a day passed from the first of August, 1864, till midwinter, that some of our men were not troubling Sheridan. Some time toward the middle or last of August, Major Richards tried to capture Sheridan, and but for a simple accident, it might have been accomplished.

The game was at least worth the candle. He took a dozen of company B and crept stealthily toward the sleeping army, encountering a picket who was captured silently. He then marched into the camp of the Nineteenth New York, but the soldiers were scattered so thickly on the ground that he could not ride through them. He had to retrace his steps and get in some other way. In passing a sentinel, Willie Martin, in a spirit of fun, spoke to him in a commanding voice, and told him to hold his gun properly, saying : "That is no way for a soldier to stand on duty." The man at once assumed a soldierly position and our boys had a quiet laugh at his expense.

Wherever Richards turned the sleeping soldiers were so thick he could make no progress among them, nor could he get the information he wanted about the location of headquarters, even though he woke some of the men to ask them. He turned to the pike once more, hoping to get from some of the men moving, the location of General Sheridan. He captured a man

and took him along, hoping to extract something valuable from him, but not letting the fellow know he was a prisoner. He found him quite communicative and learned that he had just passed unchallenged through the sleeping army. Major" Dolly" proposed to do the same thing and to stop at the first officer's quarters and wake an officer up.

He and his little squad were in the heart of Sheridan's entire army, and were comparatively just as safe as if they had been in their beds at home. They were really safer. When he thought success was about to crown his bold effort, the man who was with him realized that he was in a hornet's nest of Guerrillas and, dashing away from them in his fright, began yelling at the top of his voice, as he rushed into an infantry camp:

" Wake up! the rebels are on you ! Wake up! "

Richards knew at once the game was spoiled, and galloped away for safety outside the lines of the camp, bringing out all but one of his men, and he turned up safely the next day. Outside of the camp he captured a few stragglers near Castleman's, to compensate him in a slight degree for his failure to get the General, who was destined to become in story, the hero of the twenty-mile ride; but, to counteract this petty success, he lost one of the brightest, and gamest, and the best boys that ever followed his Command into the fray. On the way home Lieutenant Willie Martin was accidentally shot and killed by one of our own men who was riding at his side. He was buried in Upperville on the 2Ist of the month. Death had snatched

away another one of our shining marks, and left a vacant place that seemed never to be filled. There were men and boys among us who had become so prominent by their individual bravery that when they left us we did not know who to stand up in their gaps, and so we left the gaps open. Willie Martin was one of them.

In the fight at Mount Zion Church a little more than a month previously, this boy had charged up among the Second Massachusetts men, and got so closely wedged among them that they clubbed him into insensibility with their carbines, as he was too close to them to be shot with safety to themselves. Company E \vas organized on July 28, 1864, and Willie Martin was named by Mosby as its second lieutenant, an appointment, like all the rest he made, for gallantry. Three weeks later with his two little modest strips on his collar, the insignia of the promotion he was so proud of and which he so justly deserved, they laid him to rest forever.

In May, 1864, Richards, with fifteen men, crossed the Shenandoah river at Berry's Ferry to find out what was "doing." We struck the Valley pike near Newtown early in the morning and picked up quite a number of stragglers during the day. Late in the evening he sent the prisoners back, and taking ten men, went into Newtown to get information. At first the people would not believe we were Confederates, but we at last convinced them, and found there were no Federal troops at 2 o'clock P. M. on that day. Richards determined to raid Winchester. It

commenced to rain about night and the darkness was very dense. We were riding in single file on the side of the pike.

On the old Kernstown battle-field we heard the enemy coming up the pike. Richards immediately halted his men and gave orders for no one to say anything, as he would do the talking, saying that, if it was a small detachment, he would try and capture them, and if it was a large body we would pass on. We again started down the road, and after going a short distance we were halted by the challenge: " Who comes there?" Richards answered, "First New York," as he knew that it was with Sigel, for we had captured some men from it that day. They answered: " All right, we are the Twenty-first boys, come on advance guard of the regiment guarding wagon trains."

The officer in command of the detachment asked where we were going, and Richards replied: " Couriers on the way to Martinsburg to telegraph that Sigel had whipped the rebels and gone on up the Valley."

The Twenty-first gave three cheers, and Richards told them to hold fast as his business was urgent, and we had to go on. As he reached the rear of the detachment he stopped, and the men turned on the Yankees and demanded their surrender. They were in the act of surrendering when some one fired a shot. I think that one of our boy's nerves gave way and he fired. The fight then became a melee, both sides hallooing and cursing. The regiment that was guarding the train charged on us and we left. Charley Dear was shot through the side.

Speaking of Charley Dear, the following contribution from him will prove interesting, I am certain. I offer it entire, and take this opportunity to thank him for it.

On January 30, 1865, Major Richards started from Bloomfield, with thirty men, to raid the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. We reached the railroad running from Harper's Ferry to Winchester about midnight; and found that road so heavily guarded by infantry, and patrolled by cavalry every half hour, that we could not accomplish anything. Richards determined not to be outdone, and sent part of his men off with John Russell, and kept about fifteen men with him. He endeavored again to cross the railroad but failed, and then called Jim Wiltshire and me to him, and told us to go and bring him a prisoner, and be certain to bring one before we returned. The weather was cold and the snow was on the ground; the moon was shining bright. Wiltshire and I moved quietly up the railroad and soon met two men who asked us where we were going. We answered, " The Twelfth Pennsylvania, sent out to see what had

become of you fellows, as you had stayed beyond your time.." We were then right up to them, and covered them with our pistols, and told them to keep quiet and go with us, which they did. We took them to Major Richards, who after a talk with them of a few minutes, called Wiltshire and me to him, and told us to take the prisoners aside, separate them and demand the countersign, which we did, with a sixshooter at their heads. They gave it to us but, when we compared notes, the word did not come up right; we tried it again, with the pistols cocked this time, and pressed against their heads, but with no idea of shooting them. It was very persuasive this time, and when we again compared notes they had agreed, as they had given us the same word: the countersign was" Dry."

Charley Wiltshire, Will Shepard, Jim Wiltshire and I were sent down the railroad to see if the word would work, which it did, and the boys brought in four more prisoners. After this it was clear sailing. After talking with the prisoners Richards determined to pay our respects to the guard-house of the Twelfth Pennsylvania Cavalry. The reason we went to the guard-house was we heard there was a prisoner there, Charley Aisquith, who was from the Second Virginia Infantry. Richards sent back the prisoners and kept with him nine men. As we approached the camp all was quiet; they little dreaming that the Mosby men were there. The interior guard halted us and Charley Wiltshire gave them, "Patrol," and riding up to him, asked him if he wanted the countersign. He said" No." Wiltshire shoved a pistol in his face and told him to keep quiet and, putting him behind one of the men, we rode quietly through the camp to the guard house, making the prisoner show us where the guard house was, with a man riding beside him with a pistol at his head telling him to remain quiet. The camp was laid out in streets, with stables on one side, where we could see the fine horses; the front of it was open, sentinels walking their beat in front; cabins on the other side covered with canvas; all asleep. We rode straight to the guard house and, as we arrived there, a soldier had just come out to replenish the fire in front of the guard tent. Charley Wiltshire jumped off his horse and captured him and Jim Wiltshire also dismounted to see if the Charlestown boy was in there. Jim Wiltshire walked to the door of the tent, pulled up the flap and he and I looked in to see

if Aisquith was inside. He was not. If he had been Jim Wiltshire was going in after him. The soldiers were lying side by side, asleep, little thinking that two of Mosby's men were looking in upon them.

Joe Bryan and Joe Gibson were also dismounted, holding their horses, and the rest of the boys commenced cutting loose the horses around the guard tent, ready to take a hand in the fray. Bartlett Bolling, seeing a sentinel standing near looking on, rode up to him and demanded his surrender. The soldier replied with a shot, and that broke up the fun.

We did not go out as quietly as we went in; the boys made it lively for them, giving the Mosby yell as we rode out, firing down through the tops of cabins, as they were covered with canvas. We were going out at a dead run and Heam was riding a very fine race mare, and his bit broke. She went through the camp fairly flying, and he called to Major Richards,

" For God's sake catch my mare, or I'll go to hell"

Richards replied, "I have been expecting you to travel that road for some time."

We got out safely with eight horses and, as we came through Charlestown, the enemy opened a fusillade on us from both sides of the street, from the old court house and the jail. It did no harm. We raised pandemonium in the camp, as bugles were blowing and men shooting in every direction. I think Reno did not sleep so quietly after that.