Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby

21 Stuart and Gettysburg

300 Gray Ghost 21 Stuart and Gettysburg One of the quickest paths to dishonor in the South in the late nineteenth century was to disparage the memory of Robert E. Lee, the idol of the Lost Cause.“You know Genl. Lee is worshiped as a divinity in Virginia,” Mosby said. Reconciling defeat, Lost Cause advocates postulated that, even though Confederate soldiers were overwhelmed by greater numbers and resources, the South had Lee as a symbol of the superiority of Southern civilization. He was a Christian gentleman and a military genius ,and,since he never made a mistake,he could not have lost the battle of Gettysburg; someone else had to be blamed. First they placed most of the taint on Longstreet, but when they shifted to Stuart, Mosby declared war on what he called “the fashionable cult” behind the Lee myth. He counterattacked so ferociously that it frightened the Stuart family and for years they would not pronounce Jeb’s name in his presence.1 Mosby’s defense of Stuart gave him needed conflict during the years of quiet in his employment after Hong Kong, when he worked as attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He had been relieved of duty as consul on April 28, 1885, and, before departing Hong Kong on July 29, had written to Grant requesting work in the legal department of some corporation. He had no money saved and still had three children under the age of twenty-one. Grant was dying of throat cancer, but the day before he died wrote to his friend Leland Stanford,president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, asking him to employ Mosby. As soon as his ship docked in San Francisco,a messenger met him with a letter from Stanford offering him a position.Mosby accepted and for over fifteen years worked in San Francisco, still separated from his children except for visits to the East coast. By the time William McKinley appointed him to the Department of Interior, August 3, 1901, he was sixty-seven years old, and Ada was thirty.2 301 Stuart and Gettysburg From Hong Kong to San Francisco,Mosby went from reformer into the bosom of “the Octopus” of Frank Norris’s novel, the most cruel and corrupt monopoly in America.The Southern Pacific Railroad controlled the transportation systems and the governments on the West Coast; and Collis P. Huntington, president after 1890 and Mosby’s special protector, was “as ruthless as a crocodile.” Under laissez faire, Congress gave the railroads a free hand; and when Southern Pacific lawyers appeared before the Supreme Court it was like a men’s club reunion. Several of the justices had been corporate lawyers themselves and like Mosby they believed that as long as corporations did not steal from the public treasury they could spend their private money to corrupt elected officials all they wanted.3 The records of the Southern Pacific were burned in the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, but obviously Mosby’s duty was light, and he had much free time. His office was in the Law Department at company headquarters in San Francisco, and he made business trips to Mexico, El Paso, Los Angeles, and other locations. Eventually he longed for more of a challenge and decided to support William McKinley for president in 1896 and return to the consular service. He became one of Republican candidate William McKinley’s “gold bugs” in favor of the gold standard and opposed to bimetallism and free silver.“I am for gold & civilization vs: Silver & barbarism,” he wrote privately. As he had for Hayes, he published an essay championing this key issue, and it made a splash in the news and was reprinted as a campaign broadside. In the essay he wrote that while traveling on business in Mexico he had noticed that silver coins had driven gold out of circulation, and the same would occur in the United States if bimetallism were adopted.And even worse,the free coinage of silver advocated by McKinley’s opponent William Jennings Bryan would threaten civilization. If the voters elected Bryan he would lead the nation straight to Avernus, the sulphurous lake at the entrance of the underworld in ancient literature. The essay and other writings made him visible enough in the campaign that a pro–Republican political cartoon portrayed McKinley and Mosby, united as symbols of honesty and integrity , warmly clasping hands—not across the bloody chasm of Civil War—but with Rebel Mosby standing firmly on...