CHAPTER XVII

THE SUTLER

MOSBY'S men had a decided weakness for Yankee sutlers, and though few of these capitalists were captured during the latter part of the war, the traditions of the Command about them

were so fascinating, when related by the older members, that it kept all the men constantly on the lookout for them. I remember an occasion once, in October, 1864, when we saw a covered wagon going down the pike in the Valley, guarded by a few men only. When the men caught sight of it there was a cry of joy from a hundred throats. "A sutler at last! "

And away a lot of us dashed for it, though a big force of the enemy was in sight. We overtook it and only succeeded in getting the driver to stop his team when we began firing into him. He was so near his men he thought he could reach them. When we finally hauled him up we found, instead of a sutler, that the wagon contained only a General (Duffie) and two

other officers. Some of the men who did not go to church regularly gave way to a species of profanity. It was an awful disappointment. We did not need any Generals, but we wanted good things, such as the sutler's wagon always carried, and we wanted them badly.

While the boys were chasing the wagon they were telling each other what they intended choosing when they got into the goods. One boy said to another, " If you get hold of a pair of number seven high boots,  save 'em for me, and I'll give you some of the flannel shirts I get, and don't forget to save me some figs and candy, and some cigars." When that boy saw

General Duffie he almost cried. In the early months of the Command's history the capture of sutlers was as common as the capture of soldiers. They seemed to swarm in Fairfax county,

and they traveled around without guards for, up to the time Mosby went into the country, there had been no necessity for protection. They were safe to go where they chose. On nearly all the early raids a sutler would be numbered among the spoils, and the average army sutler was not to be despised. He was ~ traveling retail general store, with a saloon attachment;

sometimes; and sometimes a bakery and confectionery' to boot. There was never any effort to divide his goods equally among the captors; each man pitched in and took what pleased his fancy, and whatever he took was his own. The men frequently exchanged with each other after the raid, things that each did not want, for others they did want.

I recollect we raided some sutlers one night, and the supply of stuff they had was simply bewildering. It was in the early autumn of 1863, September 16th, and they were located near Warrenton. I do not know how many of them were interested in the outfit, but there was a small building filled with goods, and there were several wagon loads outside. These wagons were standing in front of the house, and the horses were haltered to the wagon tongues. I dismounted and climbed into the back of one wagon, and found it loaded two-thirds of the way up to the roof of the cover. A large buffalo robe was spread over the goods and two men were lying asleep on it. They had been playing cards by candle light, for the unlit candle in their candle-stick and a deck of cards, were lying between the men on the robe.

I woke one of them out of a sound sleep and told him Mosby's men were all around him, and I wanted his pocket-book before I went any further. He cursed me and told me to "clear out" as he was tired of being held up by a lot of camp bums calling themselves Mosby's men. I tried to convince him I was in earnest, but I gathered from his growing warmth that his own men had been trying in the past to rob him, and he proposed to put a stop to it. Fearing he might get up suddenly and knock me out of the wagon (he was lying down all this time), I slipped my pistol out carefully and slid its cold barrel along his upper lip and held it there. The change was instantaneous.

He wilted and began handing out his valuables, and when he had given me everything detachable which he had, I turned him out and told him to sprint for his life. As I did not care to open and look into his big boxes and packages, I secured the robe and fastened it to my saddle and went into the house where our men were plundering. I had never seen quite as interesting a collection of sutler's goods before. These fellows actually had everything we could possibly have wanted, and I never saw such a busy lot of men as ours. It was a regular bargain counter crowd, scrambling and surging and crowding to get the best of everything. The men would eat and drink a little of everything that came within their grasp. Think of a mixture in a human stomach of sardines and raisins, cakes and claret wine, cheese, figs, beer, chocolates, pickled onions, champagne, oysters, more cheese, jelly, and Hostetter's Bitters - but where would I ever stop if I tried to mention everything?

/

Well, this is just about the collection most of the men consumed and the order of its consumption. When every man had filled a big sack with useful things, and his stomach with what he was pleased to think "nice things," we set fire to the building and wagons and started away.

One man, Sewell Williams, in the midst of all the bewildering variety, was so dazzled that he only filled his sack with cigars and playing cards, and the strange part of it was that he neither smoked nor played cards. As soon as we started off every man went to Williams and got one or more cigars and began to smoke up, whether he had ever smoked before or not. The result was that smoking, and the outraging of the Guerrilla stomachs caused by the fluids and solids recently introduced into them, brought on an illness which extended down the entire line, and Mosby's Command never appeared so abjectly miserable and helpless in all its career. One good healthy Yankee could have taken them all that night, and if he had promised to cure them of violent sick stomach they would all have been glad to go.

Among the personal property of the sutler who yielded up his all at my armed request, was a big pocket-book containing his accounts and papers. When it first fell into my hands I fancied I had the fellow's roll and I hastened to investigate it only to find papers. Among them were a lot of requisitions from army officers for supplies and delicacies which he had filled in Baltimore, and was delivering when we found him. The sutlers had printed blanks which the officers would fill out and sign, and these became vouchers later for their pay when the goods were purchased and brought to camp. My sutler seemed to have a very select trade among the officers, for his orders called for champagne, brandy, whiskey, high-grade canned and bottled goods, in fact all sorts of delicacies and necessities, and he had filled and checked up all his orders, and we got his goods.

A short time after this raid I was in Richmond for a day or two, and at my father's office, which was a sort of rendezvous for officers on leave, especially for Louisianians and Marylanders, who could not get to their homes. The morning of my arrival there I found the office pretty well filled with these officers, and among them General Pickett and old Colonel Fred Skinner. I took out my sutler's requisitions and read them to the officers, who listened with bated breath to the fairy story I was reciting. I wound up by saying:

"Now, gentlemen, you've heard me tell you of all these good things, and I'll add that we captured everyone of them and consumed them, and it is quite a common occurrence for us to do the same thing."

If you will only think that at that time a grand dinner in Richmond consisted of bacon and corn bread, you can appreciate the heartlessness of my conduct.

Old Colonel Skinner swore he would resign at once and join our Command. For the rest of my stay in my father's office I believe I was disliked by every hungry officer in the room.

Very near the close of the war, I believe it was only a few days before Lee surrendered, John Russell and I were on a scout in the Valley, when we saw a man walking with two ladies near the camps of the Union army. We galloped over to him and found he was a sutler who was taking a little stroll outside of his lines with two of his best girls. When we pounced on him the girls broke away from him with little screams, and we each took hold of one of his wrists and, keeping him between us, galloped back to where we started from, our sutler running along to keep his arms from being pulled out of their sockets. As we ran I reached down on my side of him and took his watch and chain out of his pocket, very carefully, while John Russell reached down on his side arid got his pocket-book. Then I slipped his ring gently off his finger while John as gently slipped his scarf-pin out of his tie. By the time we had finished running him we had finished searching him. We were only searching him. Then we discovered that his coat and trousers and boots, being all of fashionable style and good quality, would be very acceptable to a couple of young country fellows we knew, so we relieved him of these also. We left him his undershirt, drawers, socks and a red cravat. Then we turned him loose and told him to go back to camp, suggesting that he hurry up. He started off on a run, and we could see him until he got inside his lines for, in his efforts to avoid the two girls, he skirted around among the hills and valleys for a mile or so; we could see those little white legs trotting along faster than they had ever carried him before. If either of those girls saw him stripped

as we left him, he never got one of them for his wife.

General Augur thought to catch Mosby at one time by sending one of his detectives, named Pardon Worsely, to our country in the guise of a sutler. He came with a wagon load of fine stuff and had his wife with him. He said she was his wife, and we did not ask to see his marriage certificate. As soon as he got into our country he was promptly captured, but he

begged the men to take him before Mosby and let him tell his story, which he did. He said he had slipped through the lines with his load, believing we would be glad to protect him and buy his goods from him, if he would promise to fill our orders for anything we wanted at fair prices. It sounded very nice, but Mosby looked him over very carefully and sized him up correctly. He told Worsely he had caught too many sutlers to be caught by one, but that he would protect him if he would fill our orders and make no effort to do any funny business.

Worsely saw a fine opening for making a lot of money by fooling General Augur, and for some time we enjoyed an open express line to the North. I suppose Augur caught on in time and put our transportation line out of business.

Among the things I ordered Worsley to bring me was a big doll baby for a little girl relative at home. Worsley made me pay him twenty dollars in gold for it. I suppose he got it for five, but it was as big as a real young baby, and when it arrived in Richmond people from all parts of the city came to see it, for there had not been a new doll baby in Richmond since the war began.

I also got him to buy me cloth for a fine suit of clothes and, in fact, a general outfit of finery for which he made me pay regular blackmail prices, but I made him pay me a good stiff price for a big box of chewing tobacco and in that way I got even with him.

Colonel Mosby got old Worsley to bring him a sack of coffee from the North, and I believe he had some of that coffee on hand when the war ended. On July 13, 1863, Mosby, with twenty-seven men with him in Fairfax county, captured twenty-nine loaded sutler's wagons, about one hundred prisoners and nearly one hundred and fifty horses. He brought his captures out safely as far as Aldie on the turnpike, when he was overtaken by Colonel Lowell with two hundred men of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, and nearly all the prisoners, with all the wagons and horses, were recaptured. If the boys could only have got home safely with those twenty-nine loaded wagons we could have opened a big department store in Mosby's

confederacy.

On October II, 1863, about forty of us, under Mosby, were on a raid and scouting trip in Fairfax county, on the pike a few miles from Alexandria. We had lain hidden in the thick pines all the day before, because the Yankees were all around us, and constantly on the move along the roads. Mosby took Walter Whaley with him and hid in the bushes where he could see the pike, and Captain Smith made me go with him a little farther up the road, where we got another hiding place on the pike. A body of two hundred and fifty cavalry came along, which for obvious

reasons we did not attack. They were the escort of a long train of wagons, and we preferred wagons to large bodies of cavalry, so we waited for the wagons. Mosby and Whaley rode out from their hiding place and cut out a few of the last wagons of the train and had them driven into the woods, while Captain Smith and I picked up a straggling wagon in the extreme end of the train and gathered it into the common fund. It proved to be a gold mine, and the Waldorf-Astoria never spread before its guests a more enjoyable feast than we consumed that morning. All sorts of eatables and drinkables, all sorts of wearing apparel and useful and ornamental things and, best of all in our opinion, nearly two hundred pairs of cavalry boots. We simply revelled in riches out of that unfortunate sutler's supplies.

A man named Dunham, living in that part of the country, had been down to Alexandria with his wife trying to buy supplies, but was refused the privilege; they were on their way back to their home, in their empty wagon, when they were brought into our camp at the time we were in the midst of enjoying the sutler's goods. We listened to their hard-Iuck·story and amply recompensed them for their fruitless trip by loading up their wagon with something of the entire supply we had appropriated. I thought our men were past-masters in the art of handling sutlers' goods, but Dunham and his wife made us ashamed. It was their first experience, but they did not require any teaching from us. They got a sample of everything.

On several occasions when we captured sutlers and soldiers on the same raid and opened up the sutler's goods for distribution among our men, we always invited the prisoners to pitch in and help themselves. It was amusing to see the fiendish delight with which the boys in blue would go through their natural enemy. They always looked upon their own sutlers as

robbers, and they never got a chance to get even with ! their foe except on occasions of this sort. Mosby sent a party of us into Maryland in the summer of 1864, under Lieutenant Joe Nelson, and our objective point was Adamstown, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. When we galloped into the little town we were on the lookout for sutlers' stores more than for soldiers and, spying a rather attractive store, the boys dismounted and began appropriating the stock. The owner was frantic in his objections to our robbing him, claiming to be a good Southerner, and rushed around among the men begging and threatening by turns. We paid no attention to him, and when we filled our sacks with plunder of all sorts and were about to mount, Joe Nelson came in and ordered every lad to give back whatever he had taken or pay for it, saying we had no right to rob a good Southerner. I had my doubts about the man's loyalty to Jeff. Davis, and also had my mind firmly made up to carry back with me at all hazards my carefully selected assortment of merchandise, which I considered worth several hundred dollars. I was enough of a soldier however to obey the orders of my superior officer, so I gave the merchant five dollars in Confederate money and, without waiting for the change, or for his receipt, rode south. One of our boys who had taken a lot of the man's hats paid for them by leaving his own. We started back home after doing all the damage we could

and recrossed the Potomac near the mouth of the Monocacy river, but not before we had to whip about fifty Federals stationed there to cut us off. They thought they had us in a trap, but Joe Nelson and Harry Hatcher, each with a part of our little Command, charged them from different directions and killed four of them and captured a dozen more. We charged and scattered another crowd at the river and captured six of them. Our only casualty was the wounding of Johnny Alexander, who on that occasion, as on all others, never knew: when to stop fighting.

We brought him out safely. When we rejoined Mosby he asked some of the men, not me, where the captured good things were and was told Joe Nelson had prohibited the men from bringing any away because the store keeper was a good rebel sympathizer. Mosby said he gave no such order, and that we ought to have taken everything in the store, for the man was one of the worst Yankees in Maryland. My conscience was at once eased and I rather regretted parting with my five dollar Confederate bill, though just at that time it would have only bought me one good cigar in Richmond.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CELEBRATED GREENBACK RAID

IN reading these recollections, I would suggest that the reader should keep in sight the fact that our mission was to " annoy the enemy." How we did it, when we did it, and where we did it, were left to our own ingenuity and application, the whole idea being to make the Federal army uncomfortable. One of our modes of annoyance was to tear up part of the railroad track and stop a train. If the officers and the men had anything valuable about their persons, we annoyed them also; but it was the enemy in general, the great and glorious United States Government, that our little body of men were trying to worry and destroy piecemeal. A pretty big undertaking, wasn't it?

I suppose that if General Sheridan had been asked what he considered the greatest piece of annoyance introduced into his campaign in the Valley of Virginia in 1864, by Mosby's men, he would have cited what was known as the "greenback raid," for it annoys any officer to lose all his pay roll at one fell swoop, especially when it summed hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sheridan did not lack opportunity for comparing our different grades of annoyance, for while he was campaigning that summer and autumn in the Valley of Virginia we took good pains to let him know we were around. He had not been in the saddle but a few days when we swept down on one of his big wagon trains and cleaned it off the face of the earth.

In many respects the greenback raid was as sensational as any event for which we were responsible. It brought to our Southern friends an idea of suddenly acquired wealth beyond the dreams of avarice· for, at the time it occurred, our Confederate money was getting very low in purchasing ability, and a greenback note seemed to them as big and as green as a wheat

field in May. In fact most of them had never seen a greenback and none of them had ever owned one.

To the average Northern man it was a blow at the pocket of his Government, and a Northern man does not like a blow at his pocket. He makes his money generally by his brains, and he does not like to see it slip away from him for lack of precaution. To say the least it was an annoyance and that is just the thing we wanted it to be. It came about in this way:

On the twelfth of October, 1864, Colonel Mosby  took eighty of our Command over to the Valley to operate in Sheridan's rear. They crossed the Shenandoah river in the night and arrived on the Valley turnpike the next day in time to pick up some stray prisoners, coming and going. As nothing of special interest developed during the day, except their occasional captures, the Colonel moved the Command at dusk towards. the Baltimore & Ohio. Railroad, and halted before midnight immediately on the line of the railroad about eight or ten miles west of Harper's Ferry.' A detail of men began ripping up the track with the idea of derailing a train from Washington.

The Colonel had selected a deep cut in the road as the most likely place to derail a flyer, figuring that the high embankment would protect the train from toppling over and becoming a total wreck. He was always considerate of non-combatants, No matter how actively we might be engaged in annoying the enemy. After tearing up the rails the horses were taken

back from the immediate line of vision of the track and the men partly concealed themselves and waited for a train to round the curve.

It was one of those cold autumn nights that always seem colder in the South than anywhere else, and the boys needed something to warm their blood. Let me say here, while I am speaking of warming blood, that there was not a more temperate body of men in the army than Mosby's. Although there were a number of distilleries scattered through our country,

and home-made whiskey could be had for the asking, I very rarely saw one of our men who drank it, and I never saw a drunken Mosby man in all my army life. Mosby would not tolerate drunkenness, and the fact was that no man among us could afford to muddle his brain with drink, for he needed his wits all the time. Lots of our men carried captured canteens but

they did not contain whiskey.

Shortly after midnight the whistle of the engine was heard, and in a few minutes she came snorting along at full speed. The men hugged the ground a little closer and stopped breathing, waiting for the crunch of the wheels in the sand and gravel, and the fight  that might have to follow if the soldiers were aboard. Nearer she thundered. Every man put out a restraining

hand to hold his neighbor down. There was a flash of yellow light in the deep cut, and with a snort that was almost human the engine and entire train proceeded to rush off the track and turn over against the side of the cut on the side of the curve, where it brought up jangling and groaning. The engineer knew that the rails had been purposely removed, and throwing his throttle to dead center, stopped.

A volume of steam escaping from the exhaust filled the air with a white cloud, out of which our men began dropping on the train from the bank above. The conductor stepped from the train, waved his lantern and said: " All right, gentlemen, the train is yours."

Jim Wiltshire, Charley Dear and West Aldrich climbed into a car, emitting the Mosby yell and howled, "Surrender" to the whole crowd. A soldier at the far end of the car drew his pistol

and before he had a chance to use it Charley Dear dropped him in his tracks. He and West Aldrich rushed up to a group of five officers and demanded their surrender. Two of the group bore the rank of Major, and one of them held in his hand a bag to which he clung as if he wanted to fight for it; and his associates advised giving it up and surrendering. The persistence with which the officers adhered to the bag and tin box, supplied excellent evidence of their worth, and· Charley Dear and Aldrich insisted on taking possession of officers and luggage. They took the party to Colonel Mosby who was busy giving orders. Before they reached him with their prize somebody told somebody else that somebody had said the bag and box contained greenbacks, and that the two captured Majors were Ruggles and Moore, Paymasters of Sheridan's army.

They confirmed the rumor and admitted that they carried the pay for the army. The booty was immediately passed over to four of our boys, Grogan, Wiltshire, Dear and Aldrich, with

instructions to fly across the Shenandoah river and the Blue Ridge mountains into Loudoun county, and to there await the coming of Colonel Mosby and the Command.

In the meantime the rest of the boys were taking charge of things generally. The ten cars of which the train was made up were rapidly emptied; the civilians separated from the soldiers, and a torch was applied to the rolling stock of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

A lot of foreigners aboard who could not speak English were only induced to leave the cars when the fire was well started.

In the midst of the excitement Jim Wiltshire was seen escorting a handsome lady away from the burning train. His gallantry was never under eclipse. It was said when she reached the Colonel she threw herself, figuratively speaking, into his arms, crying, "Oh save me, save me, Colonel Mosby, my husband is a Mason."

She then tried, dramatically, to swoon, and the Colonel replied, "I can't help that, but you shan't be harmed, notwithstanding," and had her escorted back to the group of civilians, no doubt by the gallant Wiltshire.

Quite a collection of prisoners was got together for the homeward march; tender good-byes were spoken, much more tender on the part of the Rangers than the forsaken civilians and, with the sparks flaring into the black sky and the prisoners hanging their dejected heads, the little column vanished as silently as it had come, fading away into the autumnal night, once only, halting and looking back· at the group clustered around the burning cars.

The whole thing, while it was almost a bloodless affair, had its element of tragedy and some humor as well. While the Colonel sat on his horse, looking at the confusion of the burning train, Monroe Heiskell a grandson of President Monroe brought a prisoner to him who had been captured by Charley Dear. The man had on a foreign uniform, or rather part of it,

and spoke broken English. He had explained to Heiskell that Mosby's men had taken from him, in addition to everything of value which he possessed, a very highly prized ring, an heirloom, which he hoped could be restored to him. Charley did not take his ring; he only took his overcoat and gave it to Jim Wiltshire.

Mosby inquired where he was from, what uniform he wore, and learned that the man was formerly an officer in the Austrian army and that his acquaintance with American life was necessarily brief, inasmuch as he just arrived. What he wanted most, however, was to recover that family ring.II What the devil did you want to come over here to fight us for? " asked the Colonel.

" I come to learn de tactics," lie answered.

"Well, that's part of them," replied Colonel Mosby, gathering up his reins and trotting away. Before his departure, however, he asked Heiskell to try and recover the officer's ring and restore it to him, which was done, and the student of tactics was admonished to look out for himself in the future. Heiskell also handed his prisoner some money, advising that he

would find it of service to him when he got into Libby prison in Richmond, to which he was soon to be headed under guard. Not long afterwards the Austrian halted Heiskell as he passed by with wailing and lamentation, and said, "De poys haf robbed me again."

This was more tactics.

In the meantime Mosby's financial committee was hurrying into Loudoun county with the treasure-laden box and bag. It was said that one of the four men, Charley Grogan, had a fall in the darkness, and dropped his package, which burst open and let the money out on the ground, and that, when the others returned to help him gather it up and save it, he waved them away with the remark that a few thousand dollars made no difference as there must be millions of it still left.

Close on the heels of the three men followed the rest, of the Command. The plunder bearers were overtaken at the appointed spot and a balance sheet was struck, with the result that the treasury was found to contain one hundred and seventy thousand dollars in crisp new greenbacks, issued by the Government which it was our duty and our pleasure to annoy.

The money was divided then and there, each of the men who were on the raid receiving twenty-one hundred dollars. Not a cent of this money went to Colonel Mosby. He paid his own way during the whole of his Partisan Ranger career out of his private means, buying his own horses and uniforms and everything he had. It was one of his delicate notions of honor, and his men respected him for it. Officers of other Commands who took captured articles lost not .only the good opinion but the respect of their men.

Fancy the feelings of other members of the Command who were on other raids at the time, or who remained at home. No raid, no greenbacks: that was the rule. To share the spoils, a man had to share the danger and be at the capture. At the very time of the Greenback raid Captain William H. Chapman had a part of the Command on a raid in Maryland, about eighty in all, burning boats on the Chesapeake ·& Ohio Canal, capturing horses and mules, cutting telegraph wires and making himself disagreeable generally.

On his return towards the Potomac river his men were attacked by the enemy under Captain Grubb, of Cole's Battalion, but Chapman whipped him severely and captured a number of his men and horses without the loss of a man of his own Command.

If one will stop to think of the effect these raids had on the powers in Washington, the full purpose of " annoying the enemy" will be understood and appreciated. We plied our industrious calling over a radius of at least one hundred miles, at one and the same time, from one base. It was necessary for the Federal troops to guard every wagon train, railroad bridge and camp with enough active and efficient men to prevent Mosby from using his three hundred raiders in one of his destructive rushes at any hour of the night or day. Thousands of soldiers were kept from service at the front because of Mosby's activity. General Grant at one. time reported that seventeen thousand of his men were engaged in keeping Mosby from attacking his weak points, and thus away from active service on the firing line. Finally it was not safe to send despatches by a courier unless a regiment was sent

along to guard him.

Mosby frequently divided his men into small detachments, each under a competent officer, and sent them out in different directions with instructions to hit a head whenever they found it exposed; and, through his excellent judgment of men, he had surrounded himself with officers for the different companies in whom he could place implicit confidence in carrying out his orders. The men were supposed to choose their own officers for elections, but it was merely a little agreeable fiction on their part.

Mosby knew what sort of men could do his bidding intelligently and when an election was held the slate was already prepared and the men went through the hollow form of voting. He knew his business better than we knew ours. If it had been left to us to choose our captains and lieutenants, some good looking fellow with big blue eyes would win over a cool,

headed, seasoned soldier every time. What did we know or care for military talent? The boy with the dash and the merry song for us.

Washington, always with its ear towards the seat of war, would suddenly hear that a sleeping camp near Winchester had been beaten up and a hundred men and horses captured, with the usual number of killed and wounded; that a wagon train near Fairfax Court House had been stopped, the wagons burned and the horses and mules driven off; that a railroad train in

Maryland and been thrown from the track and a lot of prisoners taken and property destroyed; that a picket post on the Potomac river had been surprised and the men killed; that a raiding party had been seen not many miles from Washington. All this cheerful news would come in on the same day. Wasn't it reasonable that official nerves should be somewhat unstrung? It was Mosby's business to keep this thing up, giving as much variety to the program as possible. His mind was constantly at work devising new phases of the entertainment, besides keeping Lee and Stuart informed of every significant move of the enemy, using his own judgment as to the importance of each incident as it occurred. He could not afford to make any mistakes.

The effect of the greenback raid was electrical. Every telegraph wire between Washington and the front was kept hot with messages. From the most remote points there came back echoes of that midnight haul. Paymasters wired to Washington for instructions how to proceed or where to hide their funds.

For instance Paymaster Ladd telegraphed from Martinsburg as follows: "I have my funds in the parlor of the United States hotel here guarded by a regiment. I shall make no move until I can do so with safety and, in the meantime, await orders from you."

The war department wired to General L. Thomas, who was at Wheeling with six regiments of negro soldiers, on his way to Washington, that the Secretary of War thought it unsafe to come by the way of the Baltimore & Ohio, because of Mosby's liability to attack other points on the line; and suggested that he should take some other route. Every General or

commanding officer within reach contributed his version of the story, and Washington was smothered with telegraphic advice. Orders were sent broadcast to "overtake the Guerrillas and capture them:" Troops started out from a dozen points some in the right direction, in wild pursuit. There was a great hullabaloo everywhere; but in the quiet of a little Loudoun county village, undisturbed by any fear of interruption, Uncle Sam's crisp greenbacks were handed around equally, and liberally, among eighty of his grateful and admiring friends, and the incident was closed.

CHAPTER XIX

GLIMPSES OF GUERRILLA LIFE

WHILE the Federals were at work in the autumn of 1864, rebuilding the Manassas Gap Railroad and incidentally occupying the best part of Mosby's Confederacy, much to our disgust, Lieutenant Eq.. Thomson with about thirty men rode over to the neighborhood of Salem, now called Marshall, and stopped in a little ravine. Thomson wanted to draw the enemy out from the town so he could get at them on some sort of fair basis as to numbers, and he thought the best way to get them out was to go in town or send in and invite them out by firing into

them. He asked for three volunteers to undertake the rather risky job, and Louis Powell, Tom Benton Shipley, of Baltimore, and Bowie of the Northern Neck, stepped to the front before others could answer. They were first class men, always ready for any duty, and game.

Poor Powell ran amuck after the war and paid with his life for his mistake. While in our Command he boarded with a Mr. Payne, and in some unaccountable way, certainly in a moment of temporary insanity or mistaken loyalty to the South, he joined in the assassination of President Lincoln, taking the name of his old host, Mr. Payne, and making the name a disgrace

for the many well-born, well-bred people of our country who bore it, until they found his name was Powell.

It was he who attacked and stabbed Mr. Seward, the night that Booth killed the President. I have never heard how he became one of that crowd of crazed conspirators, but I have always held that it was the original purpose of Booth and his associates to try and kidnap Mr. Lincoln, and perhaps other prominent officials, and get them across the upper Potomac and into

our part of the county, and hide them in the mountains .until terms for their release could be made with the authorities at Washington. If Powell suggested it, I would not be surprised, for he was always keyed up for any new sensation. When he left our Command to go to Washington he became a deserter, and our connection with him ceased.

But to our story. Powell and Shipley and Bowie galloped into Salem and fired on the pickets, while Thomson and his men were concealed in the bushes, watching for the enemy to come out, and ready to signal to John Puryear to charge them, with Thomson in the rear, as they passed. Our men got them in a lane between Utterback's and Shumate's and killed, wounded, and captured all but one of them. The man who escaped was chased by Thomson and John Dulin for a mile to Tom Rector's gate, where they killed his horse, not intentionally, while he jumped the fence and got away.

When Thomson got back to his men they gathered all the prisoners together, many of them wounded, and the road was filled with their dead and dying. The prisoners were sent out to Gordonsville, and Thomson got a promise from the Misses Mountjoy to care for the wounded. He turned over one of the wounded men to a Mr. Wm. A. Morgan, a gentleman who lived in that locality, and the kindness bestowed on the man was well repaid by the protection given him by Colonel Gallop, Commander of the regiment at Salem to whom Thomson had applied for a surgeon and nurse for the wounded men. Colonel Gallop complimented Thomson for his kindness.

It is not necessary to say ·what John Puryear did that day. He was supposed to be in command of a part of our men, but he forgot all about that when the fight opened and, as he dashed along that lane where everybody was crowded, he mowed them down. We captured about seventy-five men and their horses and did not lose a man.

I never knew of any sham that could fool Mosby. No sham soldier could do it for a minute. Many people within the Confederate lines never saw a grain of real coffee after the second year of the war, and in its stead they drank decoctions of roasted peanuts, or beans, or sweet potatoes, or almost anything that would look black, and taste burnt. Mosby would not drink a drop of any such sham coffee, and he could distinguish the slightest adulterated article from the real bean.

As we were always inside the enemy's lines, there were many of the people who managed in some way to get a little coffee now and then. Those at whose homes the Colonel occasionally called to pay a short visit or take a meal. and who were so fortunate as to have a supply of coffee, would always see to it that he had a cup of the real stuff, no matter what the rest of us had to drink.

In order to insure his supply he sent North by a sutler and bought a sack of it and divided it around among his friends, as geographically equal as possible. He reserved a small portion for emergencies, and at times carried a little bag of it in his saddle pocket when he went on a raid. I do not believe the Colonel ever drank a glass of whiskey in his life.

When I asked some of the members of our Command to let me have a few of their recollections to add to mine, I got a reply from Fred Hipkins, who is a stock broker living in New York.

He said that he remembered It once upon a time, when he and I were with the Colonel on a scout in the Valley of Virginia, and the Colonel wanted a cup of coffee badly. Taking a little bag of the roasted article from his saddle pocket he gave it to me and told me to ride to Mrs. --'s not far from where we were hidden in the woods, and get her to make a cup of it for him. As I started away he told me not to let her make it unless she had some sugar to sweeten it with. When sufficient time had elapsed as he thought for the proper brewing of the beverage

he and Fred Hipkins followed me to Mrs. --'s and on entering found an elaborate breakfast prepared at my request, consisting of fried chicken, ham and eggs, hot biscuits, flannel cakes, honey, and peaches and cream. The lady served us bountifully and poured a cup of steaming hot coffee, for the Colonel, remarking as she handed it to him gracefully, " I am awfully

sorry, Colonel.Mosby, but I have not a lump of sugar in the house." Hipkins says the Colonel stopped short as if he had been stricken, and turning sharply on me said, "I thought I told you distinctly not to have my coffee made if you could not get some sugar to sweeten it." He ignored the chicken, and the ham and eggs, and the cakes, and everything else on the groaning board and only thought of his coffee. What effect his disappointment had on our hostess I do not know, but the absence of the sugar did not interfere with the healthy appetites of the Colonel's two scouts.

Captain " Bill" Kennon was a polished, highly educated, well-bred gentleman who was a conspicious member of our Command. He was somewhat of an adventurer and free lance, and had served with Walker, in his Nicaragua filibustering expedition, a few years before the war. He was a delightful man to talk to, or rather to listen to, for he was the most picturesque

liar, in a harmless way, that I ever knew. Colonel Mosby always enjoyed "Bill's" romancing, and the Captain never wearied of contributing to his and our amusement and amazement. He was not in the least coarse in his conversation, but he sometimes indulged in a little well selected profanity. It was refreshing to hear him when he used his full repertoire. On one occasion he was riding along a road in Orange county near General Stuart's camp, when he was overtaken by an army chaplain who picked up a conversation with him. Captain" Bill" was not long in discovering his chance acquaintance's calling and controlled his profane tendencies far longer than he was accustomed to. Finally the reverend gentleman asked Captain Bill what part of the army he belonged to, and the Captain said he was chaplain for Mosby's Command. In great surprise the stranger asked: " Don't you find them a hard crowd, Brother Kennon?"

The Captain was at the end of his rope, and replied: "Yes, my brother, a damned hard crowd."

He was quite a lady's man, and as he was a very handsome, as well as a fascinating man, his company was sought by the gentler sex and much enjoyed. In the early part of these recollections I said in speaking of our men in a general way that we did not know anything about bugle calls. I forgot about Brewer. Brewer said he knew all about them and none of us dared contradict him, for we had no way to prove he was lying. But there were a lot of us youngsters who doubted Brewer's assertion and we concentrated our efforts for several months after Brewer came to us with his musical bravado, on the capture of a Yankee bugler with his instrument. While we were looking for that bugler, I believe we would have scorned to capture a sutler's wagon, so intent were we on humiliating poor little Brewer. At last we were rewarded. In a fight one day with a raiding party some one of our anti-Brewer crowd spied

a bugler at the head of the column. Like the followers of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, when his heart, encased in a silver casket, was thrown far into the ranks of the enemy, then followed it with the cry,

"The heart, the Bruce's heart," there arose on the wind in that charge of ours the wild cry, "The bugler, the bugler," and we dashed after that poor noncombatant and smothered him before he could perform " one blast upon his bugle horn."

We tore his bugle from him,· and did not even take his pocket-book; no doubt some of the pro-Brewer men saw to that later. As soon as we could find Brewer the bugle was thrust into his hand and he was told to "blow her," which he proceeded to do very skillfully, much to our surprise and disgust. The truth of this story compels me to say, however, that Brewer

at once became a hero, among our little crowd who had been inclined to belittle him. Brewer assumed at once the position of Mosby's bugler, as much to our joy and amusement as his first performance had been to our surprise, for we made him blow whenever we met him.

Two or three weeks after Brewer was equipped with his new toy we went on a raid into Fairfax county.

He and two or three others stopped at a farm-house to get a good meal, while the Command went ahead; and about a mile down the road we ran into the Yankees unexpectedly, had a rattling hot fight, which, like lots of others, lasted only a few minutes, gathered the prisoners together and started back up the road and when half way back to the house where Brewer had stopped, we met him galloping down on us full tilt, his bugle to his lips, blowing the "charge," with all the power in his lungs. I do not know whether I ever laid eyes on Brewer again: in fact I do not know if I would have acknowledged his acquaintance after such an unpardonable failure to make himself and our Command famous. I took the thing to heart, for my

idol had fallen. This was the first and last bugle and bugler we ever had, and we tried to forget it.

Our Command never numbered three hundred and fifty men available for active service at  any one time, but probably not a day passed from the time Mosby arrived in Northern Virginia, in February, 1863, with his original detail of fifteen men until after Lee's surrender, that some of the men were not raiding and scouting somewhere. There was no idle time for us. We never went into winter quarters. During our career of a little over two years death was making its unceasing subtractions. In that time we had seventy of our best. men killed and nearly one hundred wounded. We had nine of our commissioned officers killed, and nineteen of them were seriously wounded. Colonel Mosby himself was honey-combed with bullets. He was severely wounded in a fight at Goodin's tavern August 24th, 1863. On the 15th of September, 1864, he was wounded not far from Centerville in Fairfax county. He had two men, Tom Love and Guy Broadwater, with him, when they ran into five of the Thirteenth New York cavalry who had been sent out to head him off. He was shot in the groin but kept his saddle and whipped the men. That bullet is in him yet.

On his way back he stopped at a house on the roadside and had his wound dressed, the old lady of the house assisting. Ten days after, he passed that same house on a raid to Fairfax and woke the old lady up to ask some questions. She opened her window and asked who it was.

"It's Colonel Mosby; don't you remember me?" he answered.

" Oh no it aint? Colonel Mosby was here ten days ago badly wounded. I wouldn't believe you unless I saw the wound."

" You're as bad as Thomas who doubted his Lord," the Colonel answered, "but I can't stop now to show you my wound."

On the 21st of December, 1864, he was again dangerously wounded at Lud Lake's house. The bullet went into the left side of his body and was cut out of the right side. He closely escaped peritonitis. All his wounds were at close range. There is a belt of wounds around his waist. Dr. W. L. Dunn was the surgeon of our Command at the time the Colonel received

all his wounds, and attended him.

One of our best men, Ned Hurst, was wounded seven times, twice in one fight. He was one of the original fifteen men who started out with Mosby, and he came pretty nearly being in all the fights of the Command, for he was often in his saddle when he ought to have been in bed. He thought he was safer in his saddle.

Dr. Jim Wiltshire wrote to me recently, charging me not to mention Ned Hurst without saying that he killed least one hundred men during his Partisan Ranger career. One night we had a fight at White Post in the Valley, and we were all pretty well mixed up in the darkness. I dropped my pistol down on a man at my side, and was about to pull the trigger, when a gentle old voice said softly, " Don't make a fool of yourself Johnny: it's me." And I recognized Ned's voice.

Another of our men, John Ballard, lost his leg in a fight in June, 1863, during winter he got hold of a second-hand artificial leg somewhere and kept up the fighting until the war ended; but in a fight in the Valley one day he broke it, and somebody after that gave him the false leg of Colonel Dahlgreen, of the Union Army, who was killed near Richmond on his celebrated raid.

Our little Command in two years lost more men killed, wounded and captured, and more officers killed and wounded, than any full cavalry regiment during the entire four years of the war, and we were in more fights, big and little, during our two years of existence, than any cavalry or infantry regiment in the army. Our loss in killed and wounded in nearly every fight was much less, proportionately to the number of men on both sides, than the enemy's, but in a few engagements our dead and wounded outnumbered theirs.

At Harper's Ferry we had eight men killed in a fight, eight of the bravest and best men in our Command, or in the Southern army. Captain William Smith of my company, D, and Lieutenant Tom Turner of company A were of the number, men on whom Mosby relied under all circumstances.

Frank Stringfellow was a scout for General Stuart who, with a detail of about a dozen men, operated in our section of the country for a short time in the winter of 1863-4. He was trusted by General Stuart and was a brave, untiring, valuable man. He informed Mosby of the condition of the camp at Harper's Ferry early in January, 1864, and, on the night of the 9th of that month, acting on his information, verified by Mosby, we attacked a camp with one hundred of our men. Major Cole and his Maryland battalion of cavalry were camped on the mountain-side of Loudoun Heights in winter quarters, with heavy re-enforcements of infantry nearby. The night was bitterly cold, and the march in single file up the frozen mountainside was a reminder of Washington at Valley Forge.

Mosby had laid his plans carefully for a successful blow at the enemy and, if Stringfellow had not blundered, Cole's Command would have been wiped from the face of the earth.

Every condition was favorable for the accomplishment of a brilliant night attack and victory, and Mosby rarely failed to carry out his plans. As a compliment to Stringfellow, Mosby ordered him to surround the Headquarters building and capture Cole and his officers, while our Command attacked and captured the camp.

We reached the rear of the camp and found everything favorable for our purpose; within one or two hundred yards of the camp Stringfellow was sent ahead on his mission, and we followed slowly in order to give him time to do his part. Suddenly and without warning, Stringfellow and his men came charging and yelling and firing into the camp, having made no effort or attempt to catch Cole or the other officers.

Mosby then charged, mistaking them for the enemy. The noise had aroused Cole and his men, and they met us with a deadly fire from their protected position in their camp. Our attack was so impetuous that they were driven into the surrounding woods, but they continued to pour their deadly fire into us and, as Stringfellow's blunder had thrown us and our plans into

confusion, and as the nearby infantry would soon be on us, we retreated in good order, bringing out our prisoners and horses safely, but leaving our dead and some of the wounded on the field. While the fight lasted it was terrific, for both sides were in deadly desperation, but they outnumbered us two to one, and we had to retreat. We killed five of Cole's men, wounded seventeen, and captured and brought out six prisoners and about sixty horses. Our loss was four killed and seven wounded, four of the latter dying in a few days. We lost only one man taken prisoner. Ordinarily the result of this fight would be considered in our favor. Nevertheless, we always looked upon it as a little Waterloo, for the men we lost seemed to us worth more than all Cole's Battalion.

CHAPTER XX

"THE CHIEF"

I HAVE referred frequently to Mr. Blackwell in preceding chapters, but I have not given any particulars of the man as we knew him. About the time I met Mosby by appointment at Blackwell's, in the summer of 1863, there was only a slight acquaintance between the two men. I don't believe to this day Colonel Mosby could give any special reason why he began

going to Blackwell's after our meeting there, but it is a fact that, unintentionally or unconsciously, the men began to call the place Mosby's Headquarters.

In fact he could be found there oftener than at any other place in "Mosby's Confederacy" when he was not in the saddle.

If our men wanted to see him or wanted to hear of him they naturally drifted to Blackwell's and if he was not there they generally learned something about him. I am inclined to believe he was attracted largely by the personality of Mr. Blackwell. The man was attractive, as well as unique; and he was loyal. There was nothing about his house or his farm to draw one to it,

for the dwelling was so small that the few of us who made it our home completely filled it. There were only five rooms in it and they were little rooms, but the warmth of welcome there was enough to have filled a baronial castle.

The little dining-room could accommodate, in a pinch, about eight people at table; and I never knew the day that a second or third relay of visitors was not entertained at the board. Joe Blackwell never let a man go away from his house uninvited to break bread with him, and all invitations were accepted. How he kept his head above water I do not knew, for his farm

did not produce a thing but grass and not much of that. His place was too much of a storm center to admit of any farming, and, as the negroes had nearly all gone North, Blackwell's field force was reduced to one gentleman from Limerick, Ireland, Mr. Lat Ryan, who was totally unable, physically, to cope with the problem of successful farming. Most of Lat's time was spent in fussing with Colonel Mosby's old negro, Aaron, who was always boss, wherever he was living, and who ordered Lat around all day and every day. I managed to keep on Lat's good side by occasionally stocking him with tobacco, or a flask of newly distilled corn nectar, from some mountain still, but if my contributions were too far apart I was sure to hear from

him in some disrespectful remark reflecting on my generosity or my bravery; and sometimes, when old Aaron had been rubbing Lat's fur backwards for a day or two, I came in for dire threats of losing my horses in the next Yankee raid, by his refusal to run off to the mountains with them.

Mr. Blackwell sometimes found fault with Lat and threatened to discharge him, but would promptly relent when he remembered that Lat was the only available farm-hand, white or black, in the county. All the negroes had run off and all the white men were soldiers except Lat, and he would gladly have been in the army if the authorities would have accepted him; but on examination he was found to be badly crippled in both legs and both feet; nearly all his teeth were gone (and teeth counted during the war, for cartridges were made of paper and had to be torn), his hands were twisted and curled up with rheumatism; both eyes were dim at certain stages of the moon (Aaron said he was moon-eyed) and he was hard of hearing when you asked him to do anything. In fact he was a sick man from a military standpoint, and was only waiting for the war to close and the Manassas Gap Railroad to resume operations, so he could get a job as flag man at the crossing nearby, a duty he had performed before the war.

But, if men were lacking on the Blackwell farm, their absence was more than made up by a force of women who did all the domestic work. The old yellow cook made biscuits and loaf bread and com pudding that would make your lips smack, and the house maids were kept on a trot from the kitchen to the house during the three meals each day. Mr. Blackwell

showed his pleasure in having the Colonel and the men around him and, little by little, he took upon himself a military importance which the Colonel encouraged and when, one day, he was addressed by Johnny Edmonds and me as "Chief," his place in the Command was settled.

From that moment everybody addressed him as "Chief," and he swelled, fairly swelled, with importance. He was colossal of stature, anyway, but the newly acquired title simply inflated him till he appeared to weigh about four hundred. He began wearing a gaudy uniform of gray, though he had never served a day in the army, and his boots were Wellingtonian. Steel spurs jangled on his heels and a brace of revolvers never left his belt except when he went to bed.

He bought a splendid horse to ride and got a complete military equipment. He strutted around his domain with infinitely more pomposity than any General in either army and, from discussing our raids, he in time began criticizing them; before the war ended he wanted to command us.

There was a question as to who was the more afraid of being captured, he or old Aaron, but he was always the first to get away when the report of the Yankees came. He bragged so much about his valor and his military ability, that we finally badgered him into going on a raid with us, and that came nearing his undoing. We held out the inducement of plunder to

him, and he fell. We took him on the Point of Rocks raid, July 4, 1864, and as he approached nearer and nearer to the Potomac, and the boys pictured to him the splendors of a sutler's store and the glory of capturing it, his enthusiasm rose to its highest, and he was frantic for the attack. Scrambling across the river at the imminent risk of drowning, he finally emerged soaking wet, and started with the rest of us in a gallop to attack the post. Just then a volley was poured into us from the men in the works, and the "Chief" broke down. He had not expected any fighting, for we told him there never was any fighting when sutlers were captured. At the first report of the guns he checked up his horse with a jerk, and began bemoaning his unhappy fate.

"Oh, my Lord, why did I ever come on this damned raid, to have my brains shot out? Why did I make a damned fool of myself just for a few yards of calico and a new pair of boots? Why didn't I stay in my own comfortable home and let the damned Guerrillas do their own fighting and robbing? Ah! will I ever see my family again? No! No! No! I am a dead man sure! How can I get away from these infernal Yankees that have been after me for a year or more? Oh! if the Lord will only forgive me this time I promise never to make an ass of myself again! If I

ever get back home again I'll stay there the balance of my life! "

But the" Chief" forgot all his woes very soon afterwards. In a few days all his bravado returned and he swore he never enjoyed anything so much as the raid on Point of Rocks; in fact he said we never would have taken the place but for him. For two or three months we all humored him in his conceit and praised his valor, and I really believe we might have induced him to go with us on another raid, but the Yankees came up to our country and settled on us for awhile and soon after their arrival they burned the" Chief's" little home and all his farm buildings, and drove him and his family away, to seek shelter elsewhere; and the happy years of our experience at Mosby's Headquarters were to become only a memory.

Few of us ever saw the Chief again during the war, but Colonel Mosby got an appointment for him in the Government service some years afterwards, which he held for a number of years. He and the Colonel kept up their friendly relations until a short while ago. As I write these lines I hear from a friend in Virginia that the old Chief has just died. I am truly sorry to hear it, for I never had a more unselfish friend.

CHAPTER XXI

THE COLONEL'S SERIOUS WOUNDING

THE little god of love captured some of our best men during the war and held them more securely than the Yankees did. There is no record of any escapes from his imprisonment, nor of any attempt at escape. Among the good men he got hold of and held onto were Colonel Chapman, Lieutenant Fount Beattie, and Ordnance-Sergeant Jake Lavinder. The latter was married on December 21st, 1864, at Mr. Blackwell's home, or rather the place he was living at after his own home had been burned. Colonel Mosby attended the wedding, the bride being a sister of Mrs. Blackwell and of Johnny Edmonds and, like all the rest of her family, great favorites of Mosby. Word came during the festivities that a raiding party was in the neighborhood and Colonel Mosby  and Tom Love started out to look for the raiders, and if necessary to gather our men together to attack them. Near Rectortown he saw them going into camp for the night, as he supposed, and rode as far as Lud Lake's where they stopped for supper, tying their horses to the front fence. The house was surrounded by Yankees before the Colonel was aware of it, and one of them shot him through a window of the room where he was at supper. The raiding party, which was a detachment of the Thirteenth and Sixteenth New York, under Major Frazer, had not gone into camp at Rectortown as Mosby supposed, but had only stopped for awhile and then resumed the march to their camp, passing by Lake's house on the way. Mosby had thrown his hat and cape and overcoat to one side when he went into Lake's house, and when the Yankees rushed into the house they captured these articles.

Seeing the Colonel lying on the floor desperately wounded, they examined him and left him to die. He had hidden his uniform coat when he fell and there was nothing to indicate his rank. The members of Lake's family and Tom Love "disowned" him, saying they thought he was a Lieutenant in some Virginia regiment.

As soon as the enemy left, taking Tom Love with them, the Colonel had Mr. Lake remove him in an ox cart to a farm a few miles away, where he remained a few days and was then taken to his father's home near Lynchburg.

The bullet had entered one side of his body and passed around the abdomen; it was cut out of the opposite side, and he did not entirely recover from the wound until some time in the following February. It was the worst jolt of many he got during the war, and but for his splendid physical condition it might have put an end to him.

Colonel Mosby's brother, William, who was our adjutant, had about half a dozen men with him on the day when he ran into this raiding party, but had to get out at double quick. The Yankees were too many for "our Billy." In the retreat a boy named Cocke was thrown from his horse and would have been captured but for Hugh McIlhaney who caught him by the arm and lifted him up behind on his horse, fighting the pursuers all the time to keep them off. They crowded Hugh closely and drove him to a fence which he tried to jump, but the load was too much for his horse and he and Cocke were captured.

Although the Yankees had Colonel Mosby's overcoat, cape, hat and hip boots to identify him by, they did not find out who it was they had wounded for several days, and then searching parties of hundreds of men were sent to our country to find him, but the bird had flown away. Our boys who were captured the day he was shot swore like gentlemen that they did not

know this man, though they gladly admitted they themselves were Mosby's men.

General Sheridan reported to General Stevenson on December 29th that he had very satisfactory evidence that Mosby was mortally wounded. On the 31st, in a despatch to Emery he said: "I have no news to report except the death of Mosby. He died from his wounds at Charlottesville."

Major Frazer, who commanded the raiding party that shot Mosby, reported on December 31st to Colonel Gamble that he examined personally the man's wounds and pronounced them mortal; that he was in a hurry to return, as he was behind time, having been skirmishing all the afternoon with the enemy (" the enemy" consisted of Billy Mosby, Johnny Foster, Hugh McIlhaney, Willie Cocke and two or three others), that all his officers saw the wounded man and none of them had the slightest idea it was Mosby; that when he went into camp an orderly brought him the captured hat and he at once knew it was a field officer's, and tried hard to make the prisoners tell him who the man was; and that on returning from a scout for  information that day, December 31st, he was unable to say the wounded man was Colonel Mosby.

Colonel Gamble endorsed the report as follows:

" I exceedingly regret that any such blunder was made. I have given orders that all wounded officers and men of the enemy be brought in, although I thought any officer ought to have brains and common sense enough to do so without an order."

Sheridan, in his report of December 27th, said:

"They fired at Mosby and some of his men through the windows, wounding Mosby in the abdomen." My own opinion is that, if some of our men who had chances to shoot Sheridan and Custer and Hancock and others as they sat at night in their tents, had committed such a murderous attack as Frazer's men did on Mosby there would have been a mighty outcry.

But then it did not matter what manner was employed to kill the Guerrilla Chief," so long as he was killed. Last year I called on a lady in New York, at Colonel Mosby's request, and identified the hat which was captured forty years before. It had been treasured as a valuable war relic all those years. She sent the hat to the Colonel, and I believe it is now in the museum in Washington with other war curiosities.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GUERRILLAS' LAST FIGHT.

WITHIN a very few days of the final winding up of our career as Partisan Rangers, or to be accurate, on the 30th day of March, 1865, there occurred a disastrous little fight. There was in our command a young fellow from the Valley of Virginia, Charley Wiltshire, who, like his brother Jim, was one of the blue hen's chickens. He had served honorably in the regular Confederate army, before he joined our Command, and had been seriously wounded several times in hard fights; in fact he was on crutches when he came to us, having been honorably discharged for disability. He began his guerrilla tactics when he should have been in the hospital. He was not long idle after he became a Mosby man, and in his first "mix-up" he broke his crutch over a Federal soldier's head. A sabre would not have been half as effectual.

Mosby thought very highly of him and told him late in the month of March, 1865, that he intended making him a lieutenant in the new company H which was soon to be organized.

On March 30, he told Charley to take a few men on a scout into the valley around Berryville, and with George Murray Gill, Bartlett Bolling, John Orrick, and Bob Eastham, he crossed the Shenandoah river beyond Snickers' Gap. Bolling and Eastham were told by Charley to stop at a house on the roadside to get some information, while the others rode on and caught sight of two Yankees at Mr. Bonham's house running towards the bam. Charley and his two companions dashed off after the two Federals who were inside the barn for protection. Charley galloped up to the door and leaning over his horse's neck, so as to reach as far as possible into the barn, he fired, and was immediately shot from within the building.

Several shots rang out from inside this " fort," and Gill and Orrick fell, the latter thrown from his horse. One of the Federals fired through a door and the other through a window. When all three of our men were down the Federals dashed out and made a run for their horses. One of them, who proved to be Lieutenant Eugene Ferris of the Thirtieth Massachusetts, caught

Charley Wiltshire's horse and mounted it, shooting at the dying boy who was lying on the ground and who had raised on his elbow to shoot at Ferris. Then, ordering the other man who was his orderly to follow him, they galloped away at top speed towards their camp nearby.

When the firing began, Bartlett Bolling and Bob Eastham rushed to the house at top speed and met Ferris and his man leaving on a run. Ferris shot Bolling in the breast as he passed but did not entirely disable him, and he and Eastham started in pursuit of the two flying men, overtaking them before they reached their pickets. Orrick recovered sufficiently to join them in the chase, which ended when they reached their camp. Bolling, wounded as he was, dragged the orderly from his horse and captured him, while Eastham fired at Ferris and began to club him from his horse, but Ferris on the captured horse got away, still chased by Bolling and Orrick.

When the race was over and they rode back to Bonham's house, they found Charley Wiltshire and George Gill desperately wounded and being cared for by the ladies. Charley was later removed to Mr. Gilbert's and died there April 6. George Gill managed to go as far as the mountains on his way back to our country, but had to stop and in a very few days died, breathing thanks with his expiring breath for the privilege of giving his young life to his country.

Mr. John Gill of Baltimore, who was then attached to General Fitzhugh Lee's staff, was in our country scouting, and had gone on several raids with our men. George Murray Gill was his cousin, and John Gill was at his death bed and gave him Christian burial on the mountainside. The body of our gallant Maryland boy now rests in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

For his part in this affair Lieutenant Ferris received from the Secretary of War a medal of honor for his distinguished gallantry in the face of the enemy.

Dr. Lawrence Wilson, of the pension office in Washington, formerly of the Seventh Ohio Infantry, First Brigade, Second Division, Twelfth and Twentieth Army Corps, read an account of this fight, in a book written in 1867 by Major John Scott. The Doctor only saw the book thirty years later and, being attracted by the story, he wrote to some of the participants and then applied to the Secretary of War. The medal resulted.

The last record of our defeat is, by a singular irony of fate, the record of our last fight, a fight that took place on the 10th of April, 1865, one day after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. We did not know of that event at the time, but possibly the fight would have taken place just the same if we had known it. The Eighth Illinois Cavalry was our adversary on this occasion,

as it had been so frequently for two years preceding. We had tested their mettle and felt their bullets sufficiently to have a proper respect for them. These men would fight at the drop of a hat, and we knew it meant bloodshed whenever we came together.

On the 9th of April Captain George Baylor of Mosby's Command was put in charge of Company H, which had been organized but a few days before, and was composed almost entirely of recent recruits to the Command. With him was a part of old Company D, and his mission was to raid the Federal communications in Fairfax county and capture a wagon train; incidentally to win his spurs. Every newly elected Captain was given the chance to show what stuff he was made of. Baylor had come to us with a fine reputation won in the regular army, but that did not signify that he would make a good Captain of Mosby's men, and so he ,vas turned loose on his own responsibility, "to do something."

Lieutenant Ed. Thomson acted as guide for the party. The wagon train which it was supposed Baylor would find hauling wood, had been withdrawn; possibly the authorities had heard of the projected raid, and he was returning with his men. He stopped at Arundel's farm for rest and feed, and the men dismounted. Baylor did not put out a picket, and suddenly out of nowhere that Eighth Illinois crowd burst on him and his men, bringing confusion with them. The Mosby men, unprepared for the attack and many of them unarmed, broke for cover. One of Baylor's boys, J. D. Shewalter, now a lawyer in Colorado Springs, acted as rear guard during the entire retreat of several miles. He was riding a horse that would not run, insisting on trotting the whole distance and, as all the rest of our men were sprinting, he was left in the rear.

The Federal Commander called on him early in the engagement to surrender and the boy was willing to do so, but that trotting horse of his would not let him. Some of the older members of the Command made an effort to check the stampede, fighting their pursuers, in a way, as they ran, but their efforts were in vain.

Among them were Captain Baylor, Joe Bryan, Ed. Thomson, Charley Dear, Jim Wiltshire, Frank Carter, Walter Gosden, and a few others. Bryan and Wiltshire saw one of their men, Sergeant Mohler, trying to escape on foot. His horse had been shot, and they rode up on each side of him and, taking hold of his wrists, galloped along with him until he overtook a

riderless horse which he mounted; but he was captured shortly afterward. He always declared that if he had been allowed to proceed under his own steam he would have got away.

Walter Gosden checked up his horse to help a man that was down. Shewalter saw the danger of stopping then and called out to him to save himself. Just then the bullets were flying pretty fast and Shewalter began using a very select brand of profanity which Gosden thought was emanating from one of his Yankee pursuers; as each new expression escaped Shewalter's lips, Gosden's spurs went deeper into the sides of his horse and, without looking around to see who was cursing, he fired his pistols back recklessly but harmlessly

at close intervals, till both were empty and Gosden was almost dead from exhaustion.

Our loss was one man wounded and four taken prisoners; the enemy's loss was four men wounded and a number of horses killed. The chase was kept up as far as Wolf Run Shoals near the old Bull Run battlefield. Jim Wiltshire and Frank Carter fired the last shots in the affair and shot the last man. Charley Dear made his will the night before this fight, and among his legatees was Joe Bryan, who was to fall heir to some new socks which Charley had come in possession of, and of which he was very proud. During the fight Charley was thrown from his horse and rolled over and over into a gulch, with his horse following a close second. Joe could not help thinking of the priceless socks that were so soon to be his. The unfortunate Ranger turned tip next day, however, safe and sound, and the new socks did not change hands.

This was the last fight and the last whipping of Mosby's Command. Colonel Mosby was not in it, but every man wished he had been, for a different story would have been told. Once before, on the 29th of October, 1864, a newly elected Captain, trying to win his spurs, had run into the Eighth Illinois Cavalry and got a thrashing. There seemed to be a fatality in pitting

a new Captain of our Command against Farnsworth's old Eighth.

The foregoing are some of the most memorable fights in which the enemy got away with us. I have not undertaken to record all our disasters; as I said, I am not writing its history. Now that I look back over it all, and review the memories of those eventful years, I cannot help thinking that the defeats we occasionally suffered did as much as our victories, if not more, to

cement us closely together in those days, and to make us feel tenderly towards each other now that we are old.

In this, our last affair, some of the first and some of the last to join the Command fought side by side, and such was the influence of the Mosby men of record upon the newcomers, that the latter sprang, full-fledged, into the booted and spurred Ranger the instant he touched elbows with the former on a raid or in a fight. After the first division of the spoils of a

successful raid all Guerrillas looked alike to me.  Usually a young fellow who joined Mosby's Command came to him with romantic ideas of the Partisan Ranger's existence. It was something vague in his mind. He was ever on the look-out for its secrets and its inner workings. He took his lessons from some one or more old models, but he learned the first day of his enlistment that he must keep awake and fight. These were the two important first lessons. In a hand-to-hand fight one day in the latter part of 1864, a young fellow who had just joined the Command the day before found himself rather bewildered by the surging, yelling, fighting crowd all around him and, turning' to Harry Hatcher, one of the old veterans, said in an innocent, schoolboy way, "How can I tell who are our men and who are the Yankees?"

"Damn the difference," Harry replied, "pitch in and shoot anything."

Just then an Eighth Illinois pistol was poked under the boy's nose, but it was not quick enough, for Harry's lesson had been learned when it was given, and a Yankee saddle was emptied.

That Mosby imparted the spirit of courage and daring to his soldiers is undoubted. I have cited many instances to show what a wonderful influence his presence in our Command had over the men who came from so many parts of the South to join him. Every member of the Battalion did something worthy of record, and I had hoped to be able to speak of it. None of the officers or men were ever idle. What I have written is a mere chapter of our story.

The little personal incidents, the individual scouts and t. fights, the daily experiences of each man, these are what would have proven most satisfactory in a book about Mosby's Men, but I could not remember a tenth of it all, and I must leave what is unwritten to some other, who will write the story as cheerfully and as lovingly as I have written my share.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

THERE came the time at last when Mosby's Men had to stop their raiding and fighting. Four years of the bitterest conflict, four years of hardship, weariness, privation and horror, had made the soldiers of both armies weary of war. We of the Partisan Rangers had had little more than two years of it on our own account and, although our Command had more of the poetry and romance in its history than fell to the regulars, we had begun to feel some of the weariness, the exhaustion and the satiety that invariably come to an army, with bloodshed; to the victors as well as to the defeated.

So far as its physical well-being was concerned, Mosby's Command had never been in better condition than when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Every man in the saddle was a seasoned Ranger, better equipped, better prepared in every way to continue fighting, than any of the cavalry in the regular army. Gradually the undesirable element had been weeded

out; the drones in the hive had been eliminated by a process which was practically the survival of the fit- /

test; the unruly element, whenever it showed itself was hustled off under guard to the regular army, and a series of unusual achievements had filled the Command with an overwhelming desire to precipitate measures that looked towards a continuance of the struggle.

That we were in magnificent shape to perform our best work there is no possible doubt; but the general relaxation that came along the line after Appomattox doubtless communicated some of its depression to us and, while we resisted its influence, we became, as did all concerned, its unconscious victims. We had cast off our old horses for new; as each individual pocket-book swelled, a better horse was added to the already good private stud. Each man's equipment was better after every raid; a new suit of buff and gold-embroidered gray was ordered from the local tailor or the underground road from the North.

Our arms were the best to be had, and the entire Command, reaping the fruits of war, found itself equipped in paraphernalia of the finest. Many of the men had exchanged the ordinary raw-hide covered McClellan saddles of the private soldier, for the more elaborate, brass-trimmed, enamel leather saddles of the commissioned officer.

Naturally we came to the conclusion that the entire Southern army was sufficiently equipped, and our hopes were lifted in proportion to the success we met on the raids we made.

It seemed to most of us that the cause for which we stood was soon to be won and that the long winter through which we had passed was to offer us full compensation in the shape of victory.

Our last fight, which I have just described, was fought by some of the best-dressed, best-mounted, and best-equipped men in the army. The last shots fired were fired by two of our young lieutenants, Jim Wiltshire and Frank Carter, mere boys, who were dandies in their gorgeous attire. Suddenly Richmond fell, General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and the curtain of war was rung down on the last act.

Mosby's Men, as I have previously related, did not know of the surrender, when, on the following day, we went into battle with the Eighth Illinois. I sometimes feel sure that, if we had known it was to be the last fight of our career, every man of us would have died rather than suffer the defeat that followed. One may imagine the effect that Lee's surrender had upon the Partisan Rangers, although the tidings did not reach us until several days afterward. The Northern forces in the Valley of Virginia were commanded by General Hancock, who, under the date of April 10th issued a circular addressed to the citizens in the neighborhood of his lines, urging their co-operation in the immediate restoration of peace. He told them, however, that Colonel Mosby, the Partisan Ranger, was not included in the terms of surrender.

On the same day, General Grant informed Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, that he thought all the fragments of the army of Northern Virginia would come in and surrender under the terms given to General Lee. He added that he " wished Hancock would try it with Mosby."

On the same date, April 10th, General Hallock, however, in sending on to Hancock the Secretary of War's Order to have the correspondence between Grant and Lee printed and circulated, closed his communication with this positive sentence:

 "The guerrilla chief, Mosby, will not be paroled."

General Augur also issued a circular in which he styled Mosby "an outlaw," stating that he would not be paroled under any circumstances. It will be seen that there was considerable confusion as to Mosby's exact status.

On April 11th General C. H. Morgan, Chief of Staff to General Hancock, addressed the following letter to Colonel Mosby:

"HEADQUARTERS MIDDLE MILITARY DIVISION,

April 11th, 1865.

Colonel John S. Mosby, Commanding Partisans. COLONEL: I am directed by Major-General Hancock to enclose to you copies of letters which passed between Generals Grant and Lee on the occasion of . the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Major-General Hancock is authorized to receive the surrender of the forces under your command on the same conditions offered to General Lee, and will send an officer of equal rank with yourself to meet you at any point and time you may designate, convenient to the lines, for the purpose of arranging details, should you conclude to be governed by the example of General Lee. Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

C. H. MORGAN,

'Brevet Brigadier-General, and Chief of Staff.

The reader will observe that General Morgan did not ask Colonel Mosby to surrender himself, but  "the forces under his command."

On the following day, April 12th, General Hancock notified General Hallock that he had sent a communication to Mosby offering to receive the surrender of his command, and added:

"It is quite as likely that Mosby will disband as that he will surrender, as all his men have fine horses and are generally armed with two pistols only. They will not give up these things, I presume, as long as they can escape. I will employ the cavalry force here in hunting them down."

Three days later, April 15th, Colonel Mosby sent his reply to General Hancock, acknowledging the receipt of General Morgan's letter of the 11th, concluding as follows:

" As yet I have no notice through any other source of the fact concerning the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, nor, in my opinion, has the emergency yet arisen which would justify the surrender of my Command. With no disposition, however, to cause the useless effusion of blood or to inflict on a war-worn population any unnecessary distress, I am ready to agree to a suspension of hostilities for a short time in order to enable me to communicate with my own authorities, or until I can obtain sufficient intelligence to determine my further action. Should you accede to this proposition I am ready to meet any person you may designate to arrange the terms of  armistice."

This communication was sent to General Hancock through the hands of Lieutenant-Colonel Chapman, Captain Walter Frankland, Adjutant William H. Mosby, and Dr. A. Monteiro, of our Command, and was delivered to the General in person.

General Hancock sent a prompt reply, agreeing to cease hostilities until the following Tuesday at noon. On the same day, April 16th, General Hancock received from General Hallock a notice that General Grant authorized him to "give Colonel Mosby and his Command the same terms as those agreed upon by " General Lee."

On the 18th, Colonel Mosby met a number of the Rangers at Paris, in Fauquier county, and proceeded with them to Millwood in the Shenandoah Valley, where he met, by appointment, General George H. Chapman and his officers. Colonel Mosby, having as yet received no news from headquarters, asked for an extension of time.

The truce was extended to the 20th, with a conditional ten days further truce if approved by General Hancock.

On the 19th, General Hancock wrote to Colonel Mosby informing him that the truce would end at noon the next day, and would not be renewed. On the same day Hancock notified Hallock of what he had done.

Promptly at noon on the 20th, Colonel Mosby, with twenty of his men, walked into one of the rooms of the little brick building in Millwood, near Winchester, where the Northern officers were waiting for his decision. The Colonel was informed that General Hancock refused to extend the truce any longer than that hour and, as Mosby refused to surrender, the Federal

Commander said to him:

"The truce is ended. We can have no further intercourse under its terms."

He looked the Colonel square in the eyes when he said it and both men appreciated the serious import of the moment. This was the first time that Mosby had come, face to face, with so critical and peculiar a situation without instantly acting. Anything approaching it in the past had meant bloodshed. To add to the suspense, one of our men, a rough diamond named John Hearn, who had remained outside among the soldiers and had got up ran impromptu horse race with one of them, discovered, at the end of his half mile dash, that a regiment of. cavalry was drawn up near the little town, hidden behind a clump of trees.

Instantly he dashed back to where Mosby was and bolted into the room where the conference was being held, shouting in a voice so loud that all assembled could hear him:

"Colonel, the d~ Yankees have got you in a trap: there is a thousand of them hid in the woods right here." .

Mosby looked squarely at his informant. " Let's fight 'em, Colonel," he continued coming to Mosby's side, "We can whip 'em."

Up to that moment the conference had been dignified, although unusual. At the conclusion of the trooper's dramatic announcement, Mosby, who had been seated during the conversation, rose to his feet and placed his hand on his revolver.

"If," he said slowly, keeping his eye on the group of Federal officers, "the truce no longer protects us,  we are at your mercy; but we shall protect ourselves."

Followed by his twenty men, all ready to draw their weapons at the signal, Mosby strode from the room. If, at that critical moment some hot-headed Partisan had made any move towards trouble, or a hammer of a six-shooter had clicked in cocking, that tavern room would have developed a catastrophe that Dodge City, or Abilene, in the palmiest days of the old cattle trail,

could not have equalled.

The handful of Rangers filed out in breathless silence, Mosby at their head. Each man mounted his horse without molestation and they galloped down the turnpike to the Shenandoah river. Plunging across it, full tilt, they rode over the Blue Ridge Mountains, into our own" Mosby's Confederacy," their arms in their holsters and chagrin in their hearts.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RANGERS DISBAND

THERE is not room here to recount all that we did and all that we felt that night. The outlook for the morrow was gloomy. Failure of the cause for which we had fought made the chilly

winds of early spring seem colder and the drizzle from the trees all the drearier. Colonel Mosby, like the rest of us, showed plainly that his heart was heavy. The blow had fallen with awful force and, though little was said, the gloomy faces of the Partisans told how tumultuous were the thoughts surging amid the memories of past achievements. Many of us slept in strange beds, or in none at all, that night, for we felt that we were to be henceforth wanderers.

In the morning, after very brief preparations, Colonel Mosby, who was at Glen Welby, the home of Major Richard Henry Carter, in Fauquier county, asked for paper and writing material, and then and there penned his farewell address to those of the Partisan Rangers who had gone through the war at his side; to those who loved him as men love their fathers, their brothers, and their kin.

By previous arrangement the whole Command, or as many as could be mustered, met on that morning at Salem, and by noon the line of faithful followers was drawn up to hear his parting words. No sadder ceremony ever occurred in the life of that little band of men and, as Mosby rode along the line, looking each man in the face, it was plain that his heart was

breaking.

The document that the Colonel had prepared earlier that morning was read to each squadron. From the original draft, now in possession of Mr. Frank R. Pemberton of New York City, I herewith quote the historic address in full:

"FAUQUIER COUNTY, April 2I, 1865

" SOLDIERS: I have summoned you together for the last time. The visions we have cherished of a free and independent country have vanished, and that country is now the spoil of the conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your Commander. After an association of more than two eventful years, I part

from you with a just pride in the fame of your achievements and a grateful recollection of your generous kindness to myself. And at this moment of bidding you a final adieu, accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard. Farewell.

JOHN S. MOSBY."

I submit this as one of the most genuine expressions of regret that was ever penned, and it is small wonder that Mosby afterward said: "When writing I had some of the feelings of Boabdil when he took his last look at the Alhambra."

It isn't possible for me to write an adequate description of the scene that followed. Each of those present was so occupied with his personal griefs and regrets that the full effect of the occasion did not present itself. Singly and in groups, the participants in this saddest of farewells, Mosby's men, gave way to their feelings in a manner that requires no description.

Strong men, who had laughed in the face of the gravest dangers and smiled at the pains of grievous wounds, walked apart to weep. Colonel Mosby, with his hat off, stood at the side of the road, receiving the clutch of friendly hands, and bestowing brave words on the men with whom he had fought for the lost cause. The wild excitement of the past two years, the

crash of pistols and carbines, the yell of victory, and those men that parting was their first sorrow. Colonel Mosby told them frankly that they could do whatever they chose; that if they went to General Hancock they could get their paroles and be protected in their homes; that he did not intend to surrender, but would go South, possibly to connect with General

Johnston's army.

In little groups the men dispersed to meet next day under Lieutenant-Colonel Chapman and proceed to the Valley of Virginia, there to surrender. Mosby was left with a handful of boys who preferred to remain at his side, to follow him blindly wherever he chose to lead them, to become Knights Errant in a new Crusade.

There were only about a half dozen boys in this remnant of Partisan Rangers who were with Mosby : at the last, and I was one of the number.

We started South with more, but only this little group got as far as the neighborhood of Richmond. Colonel Mosby sent Coley Jordan and me into the city to discover the situation and report to him the next day at a point a few miles west of the city, on the James river. I went to the old Jeff Davis mansion, which was then occupied by Federal officers, and ascertained that we could raid them successfully at night, capture the whole crowd and get out of the town with them. I then inspected the officers' stables which were on Franklin street, where I found we could take every horse in the stable and the few guards who were on duty.

After getting all the information I wanted on which to base one of the most audacious and sensational and destructive forays of our career, I rode back in the night and reported to the Colonel, who had got tired of waiting for my return and thought that I had fallen by the wayside to the pleadings of my parents to remain at home. He turned to Ben Palmer and said:

"Ben, if Munson don't come back tomorrow, I want you to go into Richmond, but don't go near your father."

While I was gone a canal boat came along from the city with some officers aboard. Ben Palmer, at Mosby's request, went down to the canal to get the news and was given a copy of a Richmond paper which contained an account of Johnston's surrender. Ben waited all night on the roadside for me, and I turned up promptly the next morning. But when I reported

to Mosby he said, "Too late I It would be murder and highway robbery now. We are soldiers, not highwaymen."

Our new-born crusade had come to a sudden end

The war was actually over.

It has always been some satisfaction to me to know that I performed, as well as I could, the last order for service ever given by my Colonel to any man in his Command; and, as I had done duty as marker of the cavalry company which performed the first active service of the war in Virginia, and as this trip to Richmond was one of the last active services of a Confederate soldier in the State, I congratulate myself that I saw the race from start to finish.

Mosby bade the four or five of us an affectionate farewell and, in company with Ben Palmer, rode away towards his home in Lynchburg. About two months later he took his parole.

The day he left us he and Ben Palmer stopped at a farm-house for dinner. He did not tell who he was, and the old farmer, unable to control a natural curiosity, asked him his name. Mosby told him, and the old man said: "Colonel, where is your Command?"

Turning around and pointing to Ben he said, "There it stands! That is all that is left of it."

No truer, braver, or better soldier in all the South, or all the North, ever unbuckled his weapons and laid them down for peace, than John S. Mosby, Commander of the Partisan Rangers of Virginia. "Mosby's Men" became a memory. They scattered far and wide, each to take his place in the busy world; each to contribute his share towards the development and progress of the re-united country over which we fought so long and bitterly: each to try and make his presence felt in the new scheme of things. That the great majority of them have proven worthy of the confidence Colonel Mosby reposed in them, is attested by their lives today. They and their children are scattered throughout the land in all walks of life, adorning the professions, the arts, the sciences and the trades.

Thirty years after the Civil War, John H. Alexander of Leesburg, Virginia, one of the foremost members of the Command, issued a call for a re-union of the survivors to be held in Alexandria, Virginia. In response, there came about one hundred and fifty of the Rangers, Colonel Mosby among them. Many speeches were made by prominent ex-officers of the

Confederate Army, but most impressive of all was that of our old Commander. I quote it in full, for I think no more graceful or appropriate re-union speech was ever made at a gathering of soldiers.

COLONEL MOSBY'S SPEECH.

"COMRADES: When, on April 21st, 1865, I told you that I was no longer your Commander, and bade you, what we then considered, a long and perhaps eternal farewell, the most hopeful among us could not reasonably have expected ever to have witnessed a scene like this. Nearly thirty years have passed away and we meet once more on the banks of the Potomac,

in sight of the Capitol, not in hostile array, but as citizens of a great and united country. Gun-boats no longer patrol the river; there are no picket guards on the banks to challenge our crossing. "Your presence here this evening recalls our last parting. I see the line drawn up to hear read the last order I ever gave you. I see the moistened eyes and quivering lips. I hear the command to break ranks. I feel the grasp of the hands and see the tears on the cheeks of men who had dared death so long that it had lost its terror. And I know now, as I knew then, that each heart suffered with mine the agony of the Titan in his resignation to fate. The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain.

" I miss among you the faces of some who were present that day, but who have since passed over the Great River. Memory brings back the image of many of that glorious band who then slept in the red burial of war. Modem skepticism has destroyed one of the most beautiful creations of Epic ages, the belief that the spirits of dead warriors met daily in the halls of Walhalla, and there around the festive board recounted the deeds they did in the other world. For this evening, at least, let us adopt the ancient superstition, if superstition it be. It may seem presumptuous in me, but a man who belonged to my Command may be forgiven for thinking that, in that assembly of heroes, when the feast of the wild boar is spread, Smith and Turner, Montjoy and Glasscock, Fox and Whitescarver, and all their comrades, will not be unnoticed in the mighty throng.

I shall make no particular allusion to the part you played in the great tragedy of war. Our personal associations were so intimate that it would not become me to do so. But, standing here as I do, amid the wreck of perished hopes, this much at least I can say - that in all the vicissitudes of fortune and all the trials of life, I have never ceased to feel, as I told you at parting, a just pride in the fame of your achievements, and a grateful recollection of your generous kindness to myself. I remember - and may my right arm wither if I ever forget - how, when the mournful tidings came from Appomattox that " Young Harry Percy's spur was cold," you stood with unshaken fidelity to the last, and never quit my side until I told you to go.

" A great poet of antiquity said, as descriptive of the Romans, that they changed their sky but not their hearts. While I lived in far Cathay, my heart, untraveled, dwelt among the people in whose defense I had shed my blood and given the best years of my life. In the solitude of exile it was a solace to hear that my name was sometimes mentioned by them with expressions of good will. Nothing that concerns the honor and welfare of Virginia can ever be indifferent to me"

"I wish that life s descending shadows had fallen upon me in the midst of friends and the scenes I loved best. But destiny not my will compels me to abide far away on the shore of that sea where the god of gladness sheds his parting smile I must soon say to you farewell, a word that must be and hath been. I shall carry back to my home by the Golden Gate proud recollections of this evening, and I shall still feel, as I have always felt, that life cannot afford a more bitter cup than the one I drained when we parted at Salem, nor any higher reward of ambition than that I received as Commander of the Forty-third Virginia Battalion of Cavalry."

THE END.