Take Sides with the Truth: The Postwar Letters of John Singleton Mosby to Samuel F. Chapman

Conclusion

155 Conclusion It is not known if there were more letters from John Mosby to Sam Chapman following the one of April 10, 1916. Seven weeks later, on May 30, Mosby died in Garfield Hospital, Washington, D.C. He was eighty-two years, six months old. The cause of death has been attributed to several different maladies, from an enlarged and inflamed prostate, to a toxicity of the urinary tract, to a general debility. The old veteran probably suffered from them all, however his certificate of death, only recently located after having been “missing” for years, gives the official cause of death as a malignant neoplasm (growth) of the liver.1 It is ironic that he survived so many injurious blows— wounded at least three times by bullets, one of which he carried for the rest of his life; injured several times by falling mounts and tree limbs; victim of a skull fracture from being kicked by a horse that left him minus an eye—only to die at an advanced age in a hospital room. The dealing that was going on—and off—between the artist Otto Walter Beck and John Mosby mentioned in several letters would eventually be completed, and at least partly in the manner envisioned originally. In the end there would be a triptych consisting of Colonel Mosby, Dr. William L. Dunn, and Lt. Charles Edward Grogan in the center panel; Lt. Fountain Beattie, Lt. Frank Henry Rahm, and Lt. John Singleton Russell in the left panel; Dr. James Girard Wiltshire and Maj. Adolphus Edward “Dolly” Richards in the right panel. Notably missing were Capt. Samuel Forrer Chapman, Lt. Col. William Henry Chapman, Pvt. and Color Bearer Robert Stockton Terry, and Lt. William Benjamin “Ben” Palmer. William Chapman had transferred to San Francisco and could not come to New York to sit. According to Colonel Mosby’s letter of April 16, 1915, Sam Chapman and Stockton 156 Take Sides with the Truth Terry were to leave the following night for New York to sit for the artist , so the result of their scheduled trip is a mystery. Otto Walter Beck was born near Dayton, Ohio, on March 11, 1864. His imagination kindled by the stories he heard of the war from old veterans at the local soldier’s home, he became determined to make a series of paintings as a memorial to these men. The result was the life-sized paintings of veterans, both North and South, grouped according to regiments. In addition to the Mosby groups, he painted the “Old Guard of New York” and the New York Volunteer Infantry, the Duryee Zouaves (The Fighting Fifth). It is unknown where the Mosby Triptych was initially placed, but eventually it found a home at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. On May 22, 1999, Beck’s works were sold at auction in Washington, D.C. Each panel of the Mosby Triptych was sold individually. As for his Memoirs, Colonel Mosby did not live to see it in print. However, the work was edited and publication secured by his brotherin -law Charles Wells Russell in 1917, the year after Mosby’s death. On the day of Mosby’s funeral, June 1, 1916, in Warrenton, twenty -seven members of his old command were there serving as bodyguard and pallbearers; Sam Chapman, standing tall, with neatly trimmed white beard, mustache, and full head of hair, was counted. As his old commander and friend was laid beneath the cool Virginia soil, was it possible that Sam remembered a line from one of Mosby’s letters, when the Colonel was making plans to travel from California to Virginia to see him: “I would prefer to reach there in the daytime or early in the night,” he had confided, “as I have a horror of being waked up at night”?2 In late September 1918, the rapidly diminishing group of “Mosby ’s Men” united in Front Royal on the fifty-fourth anniversary of the brutal execution there of six of their command by Union cavalry. They had been led that fateful day, so long ago, by Capt. Sam Chapman, and now he was there again, once more to pay homage to them and to meet for the last time those with whom he had ridden. Eight months later, on May 21, 1919, Sam Chapman passed away, just nine days prior to the three-year anniversary of Mosby’s death. 1. Certificate of Death, District of Columbia Department of Health, Vital...