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344 Gray Ghost Conclusion Conclusion When Mosby’s Civil War career is evaluated from the view of his Union opponents and in perspective of the history of guerrilla warfare, he emerges as one of the most successful guerrilla leaders in history. He accomplished the limited goals of irregular warfare in support of the regular Confederate army.With fewer than 400 men at any one time and a total of 1,570 enrolled by the end of the war, he suffered about 640 casualties and killed, wounded, or captured at least 2,900 of the enemy, more than 4 times his losses. The Union army dispatched more than seventy missions to capture or kill him or his men,and most of the expeditions had more than two hundred men. Blazer’s hunter-killer team was unusual in that they fought for nearly three months with the single mission of taking out Mosby and his men. Finally, the Union cavalry on the Washington, D.C., early-warning screen, including some who had fought Mosby’s guerrillas for nearly two years, determined that the only safe way to resist was to shift to tactics used by the army against Native Americans on the frontier and go on the defensive in a line of stockades.1 One of Mosby’s goals as an irregular was to neutralize as many of the enemy’s force as possible by keeping a continuous alarm and diverting men from the front to guard the rear. In quantifiable achievement, documented from the Union side, he succeeded. As has been demonstrated , during the battle of Gettysburg, he siphoned off 462 Union cavalry , 15 times his own strength. For the battle of New Market he drew eight hundred cavalry from Sigel’s army, four times his number. The Wagon Raid,his most strategic achievement,diverted 1,800 infantry from the battles of Third Winchester and Fisher’s Hill, 6 times his strength, and the same 1,800 infantry from Cedar Creek, 4.8 times his increased number by the time of that important battle. Sheridan had an additional thirty-six hundred in the rear during Fisher’s Hill and, during Cedar 345 Conclusion Creek, another forty-three hundred men. Mosby deserves some credit for these diversions as well, as they were unusually heavy partially because of Mosby’s threat. He and his men contributed to the heavy guarding of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, but this achievement is complicated and less quantifiable, as other Rebel partisans were active in the region and often regular Confederate cavalry forces were within striking distance. Nevertheless , it is clear that Mosby and his men contributed to the assignment of one regiment of infantry from theWashington defenses as train guards, assisted in causing the posting of a small force of Washington-based soldiers at Burke’s Station to guard woodcutters, and had a part in heavierthan -usual infantry and cavalry guarding of the railroad, with guards taken both from Washington and from the regular army at the front. Mosby’s attacks on sutlers in August 1863 forced the use of Union cavalry to convoy sutler wagon trains. As mentioned, Mosby claimed later that his greatest strategic accomplishment was his campaign against Sheridan and the Manassas Gap Railroad, which allegedly saved Richmond and added six months to the life of the Confederacy. But study from the Union side confirms the conclusion of historians Jeffry Wert and Dennis Frye that, except for diversions to the rear,Mosby had no strategic impact on Sheridan’s campaign.2 This places Mosby and his contribution in perspective—as the truest guerrilla in the Civil War, in command of a small force, his goal was not to single-handedly alter the campaign of the enemy army or save the Confederacy. Along with his resources and opportunities, Mosby’s aims were limited, and only within this configuration is it fair to judge him. Evaluated from the perspective of irregular warfare and from the vantage point of Sheridan, Mosby was highly successful. Sheridan biographer Roy Morris Jr.wrote that Mosby stung Sheridan like a wasp down his collar. Indeed, Mosby was a major embarrassment, and this took the edge off Sheridan’s celebration of victories over Early. Three sensational Mosby news stories ran during Sheridan’s command in the Valley—the headline-making Wagon Raid, the twin Greenback-Adamstown Raids, and Mosby’s wound on December 21, 1864. Sheridan wanted a taut operation , and he despised having mail lost, official dispatches captured, and payday...

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