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- Feb 23, 2013
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After chronicling the war in the Shenandoah Valley in his From Winchester to Cedar Creek: The Shenandoah Campaign of 1864 historian Jeffrey Wert next turned to one of the secondary players in that campaign, Col. John S. Mosby, and his 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion, later raised to regimental status in the waning days of the war and better known simply as Mosby's Rangers. This 1990 work, published by Simon & Schuster, was the first in many years to detail the remarkable career of Mosby and the success of his venture as a partisan or guerrilla leader working largely behind enemy lines. This 384-page work nicely sets forth the genesis, organization, structure, and activities of this unit, in which over 1900 men eventually served, though never in groups larger than 200-300 men, and often in much smaller formations their leader preferred in order to maintain necessary stealth, speed, and surprise.
Of course, in any work such as this, the primary focus is on the leader himself, John Singleton Mosby, although several of his principal lieutenants receive proper attention as well. I had often read bits or snippets of the history of Mosby and his men, but a major strength of Wert's book lies in sorting the often colorful episodes out, placing them in proper sequence and context with more mundane activities and the course of the war itself. Mosby began his activities as a raider in January, 1863, with a handful of cavalrymen "borrowed" from his friend and mentor Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, plus a growing number of volunteers, many from the area of Northern Virginia in which they operated. Mosby had previously impressed Stuart during the Peninsula Campaign as one of his most reliable scouts, and one who had helped a great deal during his famous Ride Around McClellan on the virginia Peninsula. Throughout Mosby's career and until Stuart's death in May, 1864, the Cavalier remained a firm supporter of the raider and his activities; interestingly, following Stuart's death Mosby took it upon himself to report directly to army commander Robert E. Lee, who was another of his admirers.
Wert carefully details the growth of Mosby's Raiders from a few borrowed troopers to a full regiment of eight companies and at each creation of another new formation introduces its captain; first-, second-, and third-lieutenants; and first sergeant, many of whom had previously served with distinction in the ranks or with other units. One of the most interesting of these was Sergeant James "Big Yankee" Ames, who was a deserter from the First Maine Cavalry who said he left following the Emancipation Proclamation because in his mind the war for the Union had become a war for the Negro. Ames quickly gained Mosby's trust and served faithfully until his death in action in late 1864. The Chapman brothers, Samuel and William, were two of Mosby's company commanders, William rising to lieutenant colonel leading his own battalion, while former battery commander Sam officered the mountain howitizers that occasionally served as the Rangers' artillery. William "Billy" Smith and Adolphus "Dolly" Richards were two more of Mosby's trusted company commanders who were often entrusted with separate commands, leading their own expeditions.
Author Wert also details the way in which partisan bands such as Mosby's operated, often remaining behind enemy lines for indefinite lengths of time and quartering in small groups in the "safe houses" of civilians sympathetic to their cause. This often led, however, to great hardship for their benefactors, as Federal patrols regularly made "sweeps" of the countryside gathering up Rangers whenever possible, and when this yielded few results they often took the citizenry instead who often found themselves confined to Washington's Old Capitol Prison for varying lengths. In early 1863 it seemed this system of partisan warfare offered another option for the struggling Confederacy, but by the following year, for various reasons it fell out-of-favor with the Richmond authorities and in Virginia only the bands led by Mosby and that of John McNeill in western Virginia continued to be sanctioned. Mosby himself remained in favor throughout any controversy, rising continually in rank from lieutenant to colonel; with each promotion his battalion also grew, eventually to the status of a full regiment.
The author has relied for the most part on standard sources but has done I think an outstanding job of weaving together the various strands of information into a seamless whole. However, I was amused to see that he acknowledged the help of someone who had to be a collector or reenactor "for introducing me to the workings of a .44 caliber Army Colt revolver" which he describes in detail in the text, unfortunately including "greasing the head of each bullet to reduce sparks..." while loading, a step unknown to period shooters. Happily, he does much better when describing the terrain of Northern Virginia that made up Mosby's Confederacy, assisted by the endpaper map of the ever-reliable Rafael Palacios; sixteen pages of photos and other illustrations also enliven the text. For any reader wishing a look at this darker side of the war, one often fought in the shadows, Wert's book would be a fine place to begin - highly recommended!
James N.
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