Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby

19 Grant’s Partisan in Virginia

271 Grant’s Partisan in Virginia 19 Grant’s Partisan in Virginia Early in the mornings from houses on Main Street in Warrenton, people saw Mosby walking along on his way to work. Slowly putting one foot in front of the other, with stooped shoulders,faded coat, vest with two buttons missing, and white slouch hat pushed low on his forehead, he was the picture of a man who had known adventure but was now bored and frustrated.One could scarcely imagine that this clean-shaven,quiet lawyer was a former guerrilla chief.1 For seven years his gentle nature remained ascendant, but then in the spring of 1872 his need for conflict and a powerful mentor came roaring forth, and he supported Grant’s re-election. For the rest of his life, in conversations with close friends he would justify his action by arguing that he meant to assist the South by reconciling Southern whites with Grant and the North.In 1904 his best friend, Joseph Bryan, gently informed him that his reasoning was based on a false foundation—there was no way Southerners were going to reconcile with Grant in 1872. Pinned down, Mosby opened his heart: “Admitting that to be true,”he replied,“the question is, was there any apostasy in my attempting to achieve it?Was there anything wrong in Prometheus bringing down fire from Heaven for the benefit of men? . . . I may have attempted to attain the impossible.” Then he repeated: “Again I ask you. Was it wrong for Prometheus to bring fire from Heaven for the benefit of men: & even if he failed was it right for mankind to abuse him for the failure?” Lord Byron admired Prometheus as an independent champion of freedom who suffered for his heroic actions. Mosby was confessing that like a Greek god he had defied conventional restraints. Unable to 272 Gray Ghost explain his motives rationally he retreated into literature and justified himself in the morality of Greek mythology.2 Ironically, the years from 1865 to 1872 were the most prosperous of his life. Many of the people of “Mosby’s Confederacy” came to him for legal services,and he attended court in surrounding counties and handled a great deal of real estate and legal business for Baltimore merchants. By August 12, 1865, he had moved his family to Warrenton and opened a law office, and his reputation and fame propelled him into instant success .People requested his autograph and photo,and they recognized him on trains, in the streets, and wherever he went. When he entered a meeting all heads turned, and“Mosby, that is Colonel Mosby”buzzed around the room.In Washington,D.C.,a showman opened an exhibit in the Old Capitol Prison where he had been imprisoned and charged twenty-five cents admission. One of the features inside was a charcoal drawing of Mosby’s horse on the wall. A Mosby look-alike showed up in Philadelphia and Baltimore and received a royal welcome until the citizens discovered he was not the real Mosby.In Baltimore large crowds gathered to see the same impersonator’s photo in a gallery and later, when they discerned the ruse, laughed that they had been humbugged by a “counterfeit guerilla.”3 In 1866 Mosby earned an annual income of fifteen hundred dollars ,and the next year purchased a house and four-acre lot on Main Street for thirty-seven hundred dollars. Pauline bought fine furniture in Baltimore and by 1868 had spent over a thousand dollars furnishing the house. She selected beautiful paintings for the walls, and he filled the library with new books.In 1871 he earned six thousand dollars in a decade when the average laborer made about six hundred dollars per year. But making money never gave him any satisfaction.He grieved for the war,and when he met a fellow veteran the old memories would flood his mind, making him feel almost overwhelmed.“I often recur to the memory of the good old times we had in the Quaker settlement. I wish they could return,”he wrote Monteiro.4 For the first four years after the war he refrained from politics and then in the summer of 1869, when military rule under Congressional Reconstruction was about to end in Virginia, he came out exactly in the center of the political stand of the majority of whiteVirginians.The state Conservative Party (later the Democratic Party) that opposed Radical Republican Reconstruction nominated Gilbert C. Walker for governor...