1864: Six of Mosby’s Rangers

It was on this date in 1864* that an infamous Union war crime took place in Front Royal, Virginia.

Union forces in the Old Dominion were bedeviled by John Singleton Mosby, whose bold and legendary guerrilla tactics are commemorated in Herman Melville’s “The Scout Toward Aldie”:

All spake of him, but few had seen Except the maimed ones or the low; Yet rumor made him every thing– A farmer–woodman–refugee– The man who crossed the field but now; A spell about his life did cling — Who to the ground shall Mosby bring?

In 1864, the “Gray Ghost” haunted the Shenandoah Valley, and his spooky brand of warfare eventually goaded the Union into crossing the streams.

Allegedly raging from the murder by Mosby’s troops of a surrendering northern cavalryman, the blues rounded up six captured Mosby men — actually only five, plus one 17-year-old civilian who had opportunistically joined the fray — and summarily executed them.

David Jones, Lucien Love and Thomas Anderson were shot. So was the aforementioned civilian, Henry Rhodes, under the eyes of his shrieking mother......

Yes. Georgia family still recall the “Union” army of stragglers and bummers who burned their homes to the ground, and then shermie met up with Joe Wheeler and the Confederat Home Guard. The formerly disgraced CSA General Iverson captured Maj. Gen. Stoneman and held him and some 700 cavalry prisoner until exchanged in October 1864. Mountain people of VA in 1865 were slaughtered by Stoneman’s Raid, who should have been held forever.
But Iverson redeemed himself from the mis-command of the 20th NC Infantry Brigade, some 900 plus men,the first day of Gettysburg, mowed down in two volleys from a hidden unit of Henry Baxter’s veterans- and buried where they lay in rows in what has become to be called Iverson’s Pits. No doubt Iverson suffered a nervous breakdown of a loss from his 1350 man unit.

As for Mosby- his command was an official unit of the CSA and were partisan rangers- not guerillas as the union would have them. Thus the hangings of these men was a war crime of one Custer- who later got his just ending at the hands of Native American guerillas whom he had been slaughtering. Justice.

Mosby’s command was the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion created in 1862 under the Partisan Ranger Act, and one of two units that continued through 1864 of all other units whose authority was revoked. The 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion never surrendered, but disbanded and dissolved into the countryside on April 21, 1865, after trying to negotiate with Gen. Hancock in Clarke County, VA. At age 31 Mosby lived another 50 years, serving as Grant’s VA campaign manager, and later became US Consul to Hong Kong under Rutherford B. Hayes. Memoirs recall of Mosby visiting the Patton family on their ranch outside Los Angeles, and going for long horse rides with the future General George S. Patton. Two men who called reality as testamonial- sadly lacking these days.

“Next you’ll try to justify Sherman making unrestricted warfare against a defenseless civilian population.”

Many northerners here will go to their graves spitting out that the defenseless civilians deserved it for being in rebellion.
There was even one who said that the former Confederate States should never have been readmitted to the Union. I think he was a Never Trumper that was purged back in 2015-16.

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