Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby

15 Sheridan’s Mosby Hunt

216 Gray Ghost 15 Sheridan’s Mosby Hunt Sheridan and other commanders hunting Mosby were limited in that the Union had already used and shrank back from an extreme counterguerrilla policy. In attempting to stop the bloody border war in Kansas and Missouri, the army had gone to the heart of the matter and taken the war to the civilians in the most extreme counterinsurgency program of the war. Reacting to Confederate William C. Quantrill’s bloody raid on Lawrence, Kansas, Union general Thomas Ewing on August 25, 1863, issued Orders no. 11 removing about twenty thousand residents from four counties in Missouri and turning their homes into a burned wasteland. Soon it became obvious that this policy of depopulation and devastation accomplished nothing.The violence continued,and people in the North considered the measures outrageous and uncivilized . Halleck defended the order as legal but suspended its execution, directing that such measures should be used again“only in case of overruling necessity.”1 Extremists recommended such methods against Mosby.Col.Horace B. Sargent, 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, guarding Meade’s right flank near Warrenton on September 2, 1863, suggested that civilians supporting Mosby be relocated and their land laid waste: “Attila, King of the Huns, adopted the only method that can exterminate these citizen soldiers.” Unionist citizens in Fairfax Court House reacted to Stoughton’s capture by demanding that Confederates be removed from inside Union lines.At Sheridan’s headquarters in Winchester on January 8, 1865, New York reporter Charles Farrell declared, “There is but one remedy where people have determined upon such diabolism, and that is to smoke them out and drive them with fire and sword until not a vestige of them or their places remain to blot the fair face of the earth.”2 Union army commanders issued harsh orders, but officers in the 217 Sheridan’s Mosby Hunt field refused to enforce them. General Pope, in command in Virginia in the summer of 1862, directed that guerrillas were to be shot, residents within five miles of a raid were to pay damages, and all disloyal males were to be arrested and required to take the loyalty oath and give security for good behavior.Pope’s orders were ignored.The next year,when Mosby went into operation, one method of retaliation was to arrest the adult males supporting him. They were soon released, and Mosby’s warfare continued.3 When Meade was using the O&A as his supply line after the Gettysburg campaign, Herman Haupt, director of Military Railroads, requested that he prevent raids against the railroad by threatening civilians .Accordingly,on July 30, 1863,Meade ordered that citizens along the track who aided guerrillas were to be arrested and confined or expelled from Union lines; residents within ten miles of the track were to pay for repairs;and if the attacks did not cease,all inhabitants would be removed and their property confiscated. Mosby continued, and Heintzelman directed Lowell to remove residents on the north side of the railroad from Alexandria to Manassas Junction and burn the houses of guerrilla supporters . Lowell had a few males arrested but stopped when he observed that prison authorities quickly released them. He burned two mills and the house of a thief and sent a message to Mosby notifying him that he would not burn the boardinghouses of Mosby’s men. It required emotional restraint, but Lowell considered Mosby an honorable foe and refused to create a situation of bloody retaliation.4 In Warrenton in the winter of 1863-64, Union commanders accused citizens of spying for Mosby, enabling him to penetrate Union picket lines and attack posts from the rear. Therefore, to separate the people from“the guerrillas who infest the country about,”on November 17, 1863, David M. Gregg completely sealed the town from the outside world. Citizens were not allowed to pass in either direction for any reason , not even to make necessary trips to grist mills outside of town. On January 8,1864, Gregg realized that he had made a mistake and canceled the order; some of the people were almost starving, and Mosby’s attacks were unabating.5 After Wyndham’s failed attempts to ambush Mosby by using decoys ,others used the same tactic.On May 6,1863, Gen.Robert H.Milroy in Winchester sent four hundred infantry and thirty 1st New York Cavalry to ambush Mosby in a stand of trees on the road north of Upperville. The cavalry succeeded in luring about fifteen Rangers into the...