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58 Gray Ghost 5 Capturing a Yankee General in Bed Lincoln and the War Department were extremely sensitive about the defense of Washington,D.C.The army had enclosed the city in thirty-seven miles of forts and connecting earthworks mounting the most powerful cannon made. For a field of fire the trees and brush were cleared, leaving a one-mile strip of bare ground, tree stumps, and brush piles separating the capital and Alexandria from the no-man’s-land beyond. Corps commanders of the Army of the Potomac, meeting as a board of defense, recommended, in addition to artillery,twenty-five thousand infantry for the forts and three thousand cavalry for the early warning line across Fairfax County twenty miles from Washington. If the main army was not in covering distance, fifty thousand men were required in the defenses .When Mosby began his raids in January 1863,with the two armies facing each other on the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, there were more than sixty thousand men inside the Washington defenses, and on the screen were thirty-three hundred cavalry and fifty-two hundred infantry .The system was designed to protect against strong incursions,and Mosby recognized its vulnerability: “A small force moving with celerity and threatening many points on a line can neutralize a hundred times its own number.The line must be stronger at every point than the attacking force, else it is broken.”1 When Stuart’s cavalry raided into Fairfax County on the Dumfries Raid, December 26–31, 1862, Mosby asked Stuart to leave him behind a few days with nine men. Stuart approved, and Mosby lodged the men in the area of Middleburg,twenty miles west of the cavalry screen. He knew this was a trial, and he had to succeed to win approval of a longer-range 59 Capturing a Yankee General in Bed assignment. He recruited a guide from Fairfax County, a man familiar with every road and footpath behind the Union picket line. John Underwood was the best guide Mosby ever had—“a second Kit Carson,” Mosby called him. He was twenty-five years old, short and stocky, with a tuft of white hair waving on top of his head. He was intelligent and alert and had ever-moving eyes. He scouted for Mosby almost a year—his only military experience—and was killed late in 1863 by a Confederate deserter.Guided by Underwood, in two nights Mosby and his squad surprised three outposts from the rear, capturing twenty Union cavalrymen and twenty horses. In Middleburg he had the prisoners sign paroles (promises to remove themselves from the war until exchanged) and divided the horses and accoutrements with Underwood and the men.Then he and the nine men returned to Stuart.2 Delighted, Stuart detailed Mosby fifteen men of the 1st Virginia Cavalry for the winter. There was no problem obtaining volunteers, but many in the camp laughed at Mosby, calling him “The Don Quixote of the War,” about to be captured chasing windmills. He knew, however, that he was on the verge of destiny; he went to Richmond and posed in a captain’s uniform for what became his favorite wartime photo of himself .Since his demotion in April 1862,he had been known as a lieutenant or captain, and now he used the title, without commission. On January 24, 1863, he and his men set out from Stuart’s camp near Fredericksburg and returned to the Middleburg area. He dismissed them to find lodging in homes and to meet the morning of January 26 at Mount Zion Church one mile east of Aldie for their first raid.3 On schedule, Underwood guided them about twelve miles to the picket post at Chantilly Church in Fairfax County. Arriving at 4:00 P.M. they captured two videttes without firing a shot and surprised their ten dismounted companions, with their horses unbridled for feeding. All surrendered but one, and when he mounted and started to ride away, Mosby shot him through the arm and in the side, wounding him too seriously to move. The raiders took the other eleven and the horses to Middleburg, where Mosby divided the spoils among the men and paroled the prisoners. He asked them to tell their commander, Col. Percy Wyndham, to arm his pickets with Colt revolvers; their obsolete carbines were not worth capturing.4 Wyndham was commander of the cavalry brigade in the center of the screen,with headquarters in Fairfax Court House,and...

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