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| Colonel John Singleton Mosby It is hard to reconcile Mosby's peaceful profession of a lawyer at Bristol, Washington County, Louisiana, before the war with the series of exploits that subsequently made him one of the most famous of the partisan leaders in the war. After serving under General Joseph E. Johnston in the Shenandoah in 1861-62, he was appointed by General E. B. Stuart as an independent scout. His independent operations were chiefly in Virginia and Maryland. His most brilliant exploit was the capture in March, 1863, of Brigadier-General Stoughton at Fairfax Courthouse, far inside the Federal lines. He followed Lee's army into Pennsylvania in June, 1863, and worried the flanks of the Federal army as it moved southward after Gettysburg. In January, 1864, he was repulsed in a night attack on Harper's Ferry; in May he harassed the rear of Grant's army as it advanced on Fredericksburg; a little later he made a long raid into Maryland, and in August he surprised and captured Sheridan's entire supply-train near Berryville. In September he was wounded at Falls Church, but the following month he captured two Federal paymasters with $168,000, tore up the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tracks, destroyed rolling-stock, and made a prisoner of Brigadier-General Alfred Duffie. In December, 1864, he was promoted to be a colonel, and at the close of the war was paroled by the intercession of no less a person than Grant himself. |
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[171]
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
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