Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby

4 Scouting behind Enemy Lines

36 Gray Ghost 4 Scouting behind Enemy Lines Mosby distinctly remembered the first time he saw Jeb Stuart; he had never before seen such a gallant man. He thought Stuart looked like a Greek god or a hero from a romantic novel come to life. It was at Bunker Hill in the Shenandoah Valley at sunset on July 9, 1861, and Jones’s company was arriving from Richmond to join Stuart’s 1st Virginia Cavalry regiment screening the army of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. The column topped a rise, and Mosby looked down on Stuart’s camp in a little canyon between two slight ridges. He noticed that, instead of the holiday atmosphere of camps he had seen before, here everything was neat, orderly , and businesslike. The tents were in even rows, with the horses haltered to picket ropes and a flag waving over headquarters. Before the tents about forty-five men were standing in a straight line, and walking back and forth in front was Lieutenant Colonel Stuart, speaking in a clear and powerful voice—these were the relief guards and he was giving final instructions before they went on picket for the night.1 Stuart was twenty-eight years old, ten months older than Mosby; and, although they were both from non-aristocratic backgrounds in the Virginia Piedmont, they were worlds apart. Stuart had graduated from West Point and fought Indians and now was in charge of Confederate cavalry in the Valley. Above average in height, he was broad-shouldered and athletic, weighing 180 pounds, with auburn hair, a full beard, and blue-gray eyes that sparkled with good humor. He wore high cavalry boots and a Union cavalry blouse and foraging cap, with linen havelock. Mosby had never seen anyone move so gracefully nor anyone so comfortable with being in charge. An aura of romance surrounded him; he 37 Scouting behind Enemy Lines was a romantic cavalier in the truest eighteenth-century meaning of the term, a brave fighter so gentle that on the western frontier he collected tiny flowers and feathers of small birds and pressed them into a scrapbook with clippings of cheerful, optimistic poems. Stuart was so unique that he “seemed able to defy all natural laws,” Mosby concluded. “I did not approach him, and little thought that I would ever rise from the ranks to intimacy with him.”2 Two days later, Mosby participated in his first scouting expedition. Jones led fifty men a few miles north, toward the Union camp at Martinsburg.Soon they happened upon a small foraging party of Union cavalry, who fled into a cornfield. Jones led the main body forward on the road and sent a squad of five, including Mosby, galloping through the woods to intercept them.The squad caught two Union men and forced them to surrender.“Since then,”Mosby wrote,“I have witnessed the capture of thousands,but have never felt the same joy as I did over these first two prisoners.” They sent the captives back with one man, and Mosby and the others went on to the Union picket line.“We scoured about the woods & fields fully two hours in full view of their tents & they didn’t dare to come out & attack us,” Mosby informed Pauline. Riding out on his own the next day, he learned what a help the local civilians could be—a family gave him “a great treat,” two gallons of buttermilk.3 They had been on duty only ten days when they participated in Stuart’s successful screening of Johnston’s withdrawal from the Valley and reinforcement of the main Confederate army under Gen.Pierre G.T. Beauregard for the battle of First Bull Run.On the evening of July 20,the night before the battle, Jones’s company camped on the southern bank of Bull Run, near Ball’s Ford, almost two miles downstream from the Stone Bridge where the Warrenton Turnpike crossed the creek. Mosby lay down in the broom sedge under a pine tree, looked up at the stars, and said to Beattie: “Well, ‘Font,’ old boy, this, perhaps, will be our last night on earth.” The next morning they awoke to picket firing on the Confederate left at Sudley Springs,about four miles upstream.The battle with the Union army of Gen.Irvin McDowell was beginning.After breakfast , Stuart sent the company on a reconnaissance across Bull Run. Ordering the men into column of fours, Jones assigned Mosby as the first man in the first...