Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby

10 Seddon’s Partisans

131 Seddon’s Partisans 10 Seddon’s Partisans Secretary of War Seddon was in frail health and looked much older than forty-eight. The doctors said he had chronic neuralgia, and some people said that he would never survive the workload of a cabinet position. His wife Sally stayed at home on the plantation in Goochland County, and he lived quietly in the Spottswood Hotel.He wore a skullcap,had a prominent nose and straggling hair, and was so thin it was said that one could hear his bones rattle when he descended the hotel stairs. John B. Jones, the war clerk who saw him every day, wrote in his diary, “Mr. Secretary Seddon,who usually wears a sallow and cadaverous look,which,coupled with his emaciation, makes him resemble an exhumed corpse after a month’s interment, looks to-day like a galvanized corpse which had been buried two months. The circles round his eyes are absolutely black!”1 There were too many dull reports to read and too many lengthy meetings with President Davis. But Seddon was a disciple of John C. Calhoun and an ardent secessionist.He rarely laughed and meant it when he quipped that the South would provide hospitable graves for all the Yankee invaders“six feet to each”with“a few inches more to their leader.” After the war he destroyed his papers to keep them out of the hands of the Radical Republicans. He did not read all of the reports from the farflung Confederate armies, but with much pleasure he read every one from partisans John H. McNeill and Mosby. Their successes in guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines filled his heart with good feelings and gave him hope that the Southern people still had the will to fight and establish a nation. Two of the highlights of his life were visits in his office with each man.2 McNeill came first, in early March 1863, calling to propose a raid on the B&O trestle on the Cheat River in West Virginia. McNeill was a successful cattle farmer,a native of Moorefield,WestVirginia.One month 132 Gray Ghost older than Seddon, he was six feet tall, with blue eyes and a huge gray beard that reached almost to his waist, and he wore a black hat with a black plume. His partisan rangers never increased beyond one company, and his highest rank was captain, but with sixty or eighty men he was effective at surprising enemy camps and capturing prisoners several times his own number. Seddon considered him “a very brave and enterprising partisan officer,” and his proposal appealed because it involved only six hundred men, a relatively small number for the raid. Seddon may have been the only official in the Confederate high command who understood the value of stealth in guerrilla operations.He agreed with McNeill that “a sudden and unexpected dash of a small force” was less likely to attract opposition and more likely to succeed. Seddon recommended the plan to McNeill’s superiors in the regular army,but they expanded it into an unsuccessful expedition of over six thousand men.3 Seddon, McNeill, and Mosby had no previous military experience, but all three had an appreciation for stealth in guerrilla warfare. It was not so with the West Pointers in command. When the Confederate Senate debated the Partisan Ranger Act, Kentucky senator Henry C. Burnett stated that guerrilla tactics were superior to what was taught at West Point and the president needed authority to begin a people’s war,in spite of the West Point generals. The grassroots movement for guerrilla war championed by journalists came from outside the military establishment. Encouraging Congress to move, the Richmond Enquirer declared, “‘A People in Arms’ cannot be conquered.”4 It was not public knowledge, but two West Point commanders in the Confederate army had opposed the movement before the act passed. On March 5, 1862, Joseph Johnston complained that someone was passing out handbills in his camps and advertising in the newspapers for partisan recruits,and he disapproved because such bands would encourage desertions and cause discontent and mutiny in the ranks.On April 2, Gen. Henry Heth disbanded two Virginia State Ranger units in his district of western Virginia, condemning them as robbers and plunderers and the system as a loophole to avoid duty.5 Before the law passed, Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin turned down requests to raise guerrilla companies by pointing out that they were not part of...