Rebel Raider Read online

quarters!", Chapman's men drove them into a maze of stone fencesand killed about a third of them before the rest were able toextricate themselves.

  This didn't stop the house burnings, by any means. The devastation ofthe Shenandoah Valley had been decided upon as a matter of strategy,and Sheridan was going through with it. The men who were ordered to dothe actual work did not have their morale improved any by theknowledge that Mosby's Rangers were refusing quarter to incendiarydetails, however, and, coming as it did on the heels of the wagontrain affair of the 13th, Sheridan was convinced that somethingdrastic would have to be done about Mosby. Accordingly, he set up aspecial company, under a Captain William Blazer, each man armed with apair of revolvers and a Spencer repeater, to devote their entireefforts to eliminating Mosby and his organized raiders.

  On September 3, this company caught up with Joe Nelson and about 100men in the valley and gave them a sound drubbing, the first that theMosby men had experienced for some time. It was a humiliating defeatfor them, and, on the other side, it was hailed as the beginning ofthe end of the Mosby nuisance. A few days later, while raiding to theeast of Bull Run Mountain, Mosby was wounded again, and was taken toLynchburg. He was joined by his wife, who remained with him atLynchburg and at Mosby's Confederacy until the end of the war.

  During his absence, the outfit seems to have been run by a sort ofpresidium of the senior officers. On September 22, Sam Chapman took120 men into the valley to try to capture a cavalry post supposed tobe located near Front Royal, but, arriving there, he learned that hisinformation had been incorrect and that no such post existed. Campingin the woods, he sent some men out as scouts, and the next morningthey reported a small wagon train escorted by about 150 cavalry,moving toward Front Royal. Dividing his force and putting half of itunder Walter Frankland, he planned to attack the train from the rearwhile Frankland hit it from in front. After getting into position, hekept his men concealed, waiting for the wagons to pass, and as it did,he realized that his scouts had seen only a small part of it. Theescort looked to him like about three regiments. Ordering his men toslip away as quietly as possible, he hurried to reach Frankland.

  "Turn around, Walter!" he yelled. "Get your men out of here! You'reattacking a whole brigade!"

  "What of it?" Frankland replied. "Why, Sam, we have the bastards onthe run already!"

  Chapman, the erstwhile clergyman, turned loose a blast of theologicallanguage in purely secular connotation. Frankland, amazed at thisblasphemous clamor from his usually pious comrade, realized that itmust have been inspired by something more than a little serious, andbegan ordering his men to fall back. Before they had all gotten away,two of the three Union regiments accompanying the wagons camegalloping up and swamped them. Most of the men got away but six ofthem, Anderson, Carter, Overby, Love, Rhodes and Jones, were captured.

  Late that night some of the stragglers, making their way back toMosby's Confederacy on foot, reported the fate of these six men. Theyhad been taken into Front Royal, and there, at the personal order ofGeneral George A. Custer, and under circumstances of extremebrutality, they had all been hanged. Rhodes' mother, who lived inFront Royal, had been forced to witness the hanging of her son.

  To put it conservatively, there was considerable excitement in Mosby'sConfederacy when the news of this atrocity was received. The seniorofficers managed to restore a measure of calmness, however, and it wasdecided to wait until Mosby returned before taking any action on thematter.

  In addition to the hangings at Front Royal, Custer was acquiring a badreputation because of his general brutality to the people of theShenandoah Valley. After the battle of the Little Bighorn, SittingBull would have probably won any popularity contest in northernVirginia without serious competition.

  On September 29, Mosby was back with his command; his wound had notbeen as serious as it might have been for the bullet had expended mostof its force against the butt of one of the revolvers in his belt.Operations against the railroads had been allowed to slacken duringMosby's absence; now they were stepped up again. Track was repeatedlytorn up along the Manassas Gap line, and there were attacks on campsand strong points, and continual harassing of wood-cutting partiesobtaining fuel for the locomotives. The artillery was taken out, andtrains were shelled. All this, of course, occasioned a fresh wave ofUnion raids into the home territory of the raiders, during one ofwhich Yank Ames, who had risen to a lieutenancy in the Forty-Third,was killed.

  The most desperate efforts were being made, at this time, to keep theManassas Gap Railroad open, and General C. C. Augur, who had charge ofthe railroad line at the time, was arresting citizens indiscriminatelyand forcing them to ride on the trains as hostages. Mosby obtainedauthorization from Lee's headquarters to use reprisal measures onofficers and train crews of trains on which citizens were being forcedto ride, and also authority to execute prisoners from Custer's commandin equal number to the men hanged at Front Royal and elsewhere.

  It was not until November that he was able to secure prisoners fromCuster's brigade, it being his intention to limit his retaliation tomen from units actually involved in the hangings. On November 6, heparaded about twenty-five such prisoners and forced them to draw lots,selecting, in this manner, seven of them--one for each of the menhanged at Front Royal and another for a man named Willis who had beenhanged at Gaines' Cross Roads several weeks later. It was decided thatthey should be taken into the Shenandoah Valley and hanged beside theValley Pike, where their bodies could serve as an object lesson. Onthe way, one of them escaped. Four were hanged, and then, running outof rope, they prepared to shoot the other two. One of these got awayduring a delay caused by defective percussion caps on hisexecutioner's revolver.

  A sign was placed over the bodies, setting forth the reason for theirexecution, and Mosby also sent one of his men under a flag of truce toSheridan's headquarters, with a statement of what had been done andwhy, re-enforced with the intimation that he had more prisoners,including a number of officers, in case his messenger failed to returnsafely. Sheridan replied by disclaiming knowledge of the Front Royalhangings, agreeing that Mosby was justified in taking reprisals, andassuring the Confederate leader that hereafter his men would be givenproper treatment as prisoners of war. There was no repetition of thehangings.

  By this time the Shenandoah Valley campaign as such was over. The lastConfederate effort to clear Sheridan out of the Valley had failed atCedar Creek on October 19, and the victor was going methodically abouthis task of destroying the strategic and economic usefulness of thevalley. How well he succeeded in this was best expressed in Sheridan'sown claim that a crow flying over the region would have to carry hisown rations. The best Mosby could do was to launch small raidingparties to harass the work of destruction.

  By the beginning of December, the northern or Loudoun County end ofMosby's Confederacy was feeling the enemy scourge as keenly as thevalley, and the winter nights were lighted with the flames of burninghouses and barns. For about a week, while this was going on, Mosbyabandoned any attempt at organized action. His men, singly and insmall parties, darted in and out among the invaders, sniping andbushwhacking, attacking when they could and fleeing when they had to,and taking no prisoners. When it was over, the northern end of Mosby'sConfederacy was in ashes and most of the people had "refugeed out,"but Mosby's Rangers, as a fighting force, was still intact. OnDecember 17, for instance, while Mosby was in Richmond conferring withGeneral Lee, they went into the valley again in force, waylaying acolumn of cavalry on the march, killing and wounding about thirty andbringing off 168 prisoners and horses.

  When Mosby came back from Lee's headquarters, a full colonel now, hisbrother William was made a lieutenant-colonel, and Richards became amajor. The southern, or Fauquier County, end of Mosby's Confederacywas still more or less intact, though crowded with refugees. There waseven time, in spite of everything, for the wedding of theForty-Third's armorer, Jake Lavender, with John and Jimmy Edmonds'sister.

  While the wedding party was in progress, a report was brought
in tothe effect that Union cavalry were in the neighborhood of Salem, a fewmiles away. Mosby took one of his men, Tom Love, a relative of one ofthe Front Royal victims, and went to investigate, finding that theenemy had moved in the direction of Rectortown, where they weremaking camp for the night. Sending a resident of the neighborhood toalert Chapman and Richards for an attack at daybreak, Mosby and Loveset out to collect others of his command.

  By this time, it was dark, with a freezing rain covering everythingwith ice. Mosby and Love decided to stop at the farm of Ludwell Lakefor something to eat before going on; Love wanted to stay outside onguard, but Mosby told him to get off his horse and come inside. Asthey would have been in any house in the neighborhood, Mosby and hiscompanion were welcomed as honored guests and sat down with the familyto a hearty meal of spareribs.

  * *