(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

John Singleton Mosby

Powhatan County, Virginia, 1833 - 1916, Washington, D.C.

BiographyMosby, John Singleton (6 Dec. 1833-30 May 1916), Confederate partisan officer, was born in Powhatan County, Virginia, the son of Alfred D. Mosby and Virginia McLaurine, farmers. When John was five or six years old, his father moved the family to Albemarle County, where he prospered. John attended local schools before enrolling at the University of Virginia in 1850. In March 1853 Mosby shot and wounded a man. He was found guilty of "unlawful shooting" and spent nearly seven months in jail. Upon his release in December, he read law at the office of his prosecutor, William J. Robertson, and then opened a practice in Howardsville. In 1858 he moved to Bristoe with his bride, Pauline Clarke, daughter of a former congressman and diplomat from Kentucky. They had eight children.

When Virginia seceded in April 1861, Mosby volunteered as a private in Company D, First Virginia Cavalry. The regiment fought at First Manassas, and during the next year Mosby rose to the rank of lieutenant, serving briefly as the regiment's adjutant. In April 1862, when an officer whom Mosby disliked assumed command of the regiment, he resigned his commission. An excellent scout, Mosby unofficially joined the staff of J. E. B. Stuart, commander of the Confederate army cavalry. Throughout the summer and fall, Mosby performed valuable scouting and reconnaissance duties for Stuart.

On 31 December 1862 Mosby received permission from Stuart to conduct guerrilla operations behind Union lines in northern Virginia. Mosby began with a nucleus of nine men--soon increased to fifteen--that eventually evolved into the 43d Battalion of Virginia Cavalry. For the next twenty-eight months, operating from a base in the Virginia counties of Fauquier and Loudoun that became known as "Mosby's Confederacy," Mosby and his rangers rode forth in raids against enemy supply lines, railroad and wagon trains, outposts, and detachments. The command provided Robert E. Lee with valuable intelligence information, seized hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of federal material, and captured thousands of enemy troops. Mosby never surrendered, disbanding the battalion on 21 April 1865, twelve days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

Mosby began a legal practice in Warrenton after the war. He eventually became friends with President Ulysses S. Grant, joined the Republican party, and served in various government posts. He served as a consul in Hong Kong, a lawyer in the General Land Office, and an assistant attorney in the Department of Justice. Many southerners condemned him for his actions, but his reputation as a Confederate officer silenced much overt criticism. He wrote Stuart's Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign (1908) and The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby, published in 1917 after his death. Mosby died in Washington, D.C.

John Mosby was one of the finest guerrilla officers in American military history. Small and thin, he possessed a keen intellect and a fearless nature. He created the 43d Battalion, planned its operations, and disciplined its members. A restless man, he fought the war as if it were a personal conflict. Warfare suited him, and he emerged from it as a matchless partisan commander. Unlike some partisans, however, he did not engage in ruthless efforts against civilians. A pragmatist, Mosby accepted the defeat of the Confederacy and chose to heal wounds. He saw no conflict in accepting a Republican post.

Bibliography

Collections of Mosby letters and manuscripts are located at the University of Virginia; Duke University; the Virginia Historical Society; and the General Stuart-Colonel Mosby Museum, American Historical Foundation, Richmond. Several memoirs by members of his command have been published, the best being John Scott, Partisan Life with Col. John S. Mosby (1867), and James J. Williamson, Mosby's Rangers (1896; 2d ed. 1909). A popularly written but undocumented biography of Mosby is Virgil Carrington Jones, Ranger Mosby (1944). Kevin H. Siepel, Rebel: The Life and Times of John Singleton Mosby (1983), provides an excellent account of Mosby's postwar years. The most recent work on Mosby and the battalion is Jeffry D. Wert, Mosby's Rangers (1990), a scholarly study of the command's wartime operations.

Jeffry D. Wert

Back to the top

Citation:
Jeffry D. Wert. "Mosby, John Singleton";
http://www.anb.org/articles/06/06-00456.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Mon Aug 05 2013 17:10:35 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

Terms