Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

As Harper's Ferry was the nearest telegraph station this dispatch must have been forwarded by a cavalry escort to Sheridan, who was 50 miles up the Valley at Cedar Creek. Early was three miles further south in line of battle at Fisher's Hill. Grant's instructions were—‘Bear in mind—the object is to drive the enemy south; and to do this you want to keep him always in sight.’ The real objective point at which Grant aimed was Lee's lines of supply. Their destruction meant the fall of Richmond. Of the same date (16th) as Grant's dispatch above quoted is one from Sheridan to Halleck, at Washington, saying: ‘Nothing from General Grant later than 12th.’ At 7:30 A. M. on the 13th, Sheridan had written Grant—‘I was unable to get south of Early, but will push him up the Valley’—and at 10 P. M. the same day he sent Grant another dispatch, saying: ‘Mosby attacked the rear of my train this morning en route here from Harper's Ferry and burned six wagons.’ This dispatch was not received until the 16th, and no doubt was the cause of the one sent by Grant of that date, which Sheridan did not receive until the 17th. He had been waiting at Cedar Creek for his supply trains. After hearing of the attack on the train at Berryville there is a sudden change in the confident tone of his dispatches and he had evidently become demoralized. Although on the 12th he had declared his intention to push Early up the Valley, yet on the 14th he says to Halleck—‘I have taken up for the present the line of Cedar Run, but will at my leisure take position at Winchester. This line cannot be held, nor can I supply my command beyond that point with the ten days rations with which I started. I expected to get far enough up the Valley to accomplish my objects and then quickly return.’ But Grant's instructions did not contemplate his return. Although Grant had ordered him to drive the enemy south and to keep in sight of him, he quietly retreated on the night of the 16th, and did not stop until he got to Halltown near Harper's Ferry, where he had taken command two weeks before. The Times of January 27th, 1895, published a review by me of the Shenandoah campaign. The following is an extract:

‘During the time that Sheridan was in the Shenandoah Valley, [267] this (my) partisan corps was the only Confederate force that operated in his rear, or in Northern Virginia east of the Blue Ridge., Sheridan affected to call us guerillas, but never defined what he meant by the term.’

Sheridan to Grant: Berryville, Va., August 17, 1864—（9 P. M.）

* * * ‘Mosby has annoyed me and captured a few wagons. We hung one and shot six of his men yesterday.’

Two days before this I had sent three hundred of his men prisoners to Richmond.

Again, August 19th, Sheridan to Grant:

‘Guerrillas give me great annoyance, but I am quietly disposing of numbers of them.’

Everybody will understand what ‘quietly disposing’ of a man means, especially when read in the light of his former dispatches. (The last dispatch suggests the quiet operations of Jack the Ripper.)

Again, Halltown, August 22d, Sheridan to Grant: ‘We have disposed of quite a number of Mosby's men.’

“Disposed of” is not the usual language in which military reports state the casualties of war.

On September 11th, Sheridan again tells General Grant:

We have exterminated three officers and twenty-seven men of Mosby's gang in the last twelve days.

“We have exterminated” is the language of the Master of Stair, when he announced the massacre of Glencoe. Not one-third of my command was from that section of Virginia. A great many were Marylanders. Even if it had been an unorganized body of citizens defending their homes, they would only have been doing what Governor Curtin and General Couch urged the Pennsylvania people to do when threatened with invasion.

This appeal to Pennsylvanians to turn bushwhackers is signed by a graduate of West Point and an officer of the regular army, who once commanded a corps in the Army of the Potomac. I was a soldier of a great military power; in the Forum of Nations I was Sheridan's equal. I had every right of war that he had. The Southern Confederacy, like the Empires of Alexander and Charlemagne, has passed away, but that does not change the fact that it once existed. From this it appears that Sheridan had begun hanging my men before he received Grant's dispatch of the 16th. At Berryville on the 17th, he said that he had hung one and shot six, the day before. But he did not receive Grant's dispatch of the 16th, until 6:30 A. M. of the 17th, so the murders could not have been committed in compliance with Grant's orders. The government has published all the reports and correspondence, both Union and Confederate, in the Shenandoah campaign. There is not in them a single imputation on the conduct of any of my men except that statement in Merritt's report about the killing of McMasters in the fight at Front Royal, subsequent to this time (September 23d), which I shall again refer to. According to Sheridan, he had begun hanging prisoners on August 16th, and the only reason he gives for it is ‘Mosby has annoyed me.’ To that charge I plead guilty. Instead of our going in disguise, as the newspapers said, mine was the best uniformed body of men in the Confederate army. Every officer wore the insignia of his rank. Sheridan speaks of having ‘exterminated’ three of my officers; but how could he distinguish officers from privates if they were not in uniform? Now there can be no doubt that Grant's order was suggested by Sheridan's dispatch, which he had just received—‘Mosby attacked the rear of my train this morning en route from Harper's Ferry, and burned six wagons.’ It deceived Grant both as to the magnitude of the disaster and the strength of the attacking force. Then why should he trouble Grant about the loss of only six wagons? The impression that it conveyed was that a few professed non-combatants, living at their homes in the Valley, in the guise of peace, had caught six wagons without a train guard, and burned them.

If Sheridan had told the whole truth about the destruction of the convoy Grant would not have sent him such an order, because he would have known that a band of marauders could not have performed such a feat. It is a coincidence that the order is of the same date as the dispatch from General Lee announcing the Berryville raid to the Confederate War Department: [269]

This telegram was published the next day and was seen by General Grant, as newspapers were regularly exchanged between the lines. It informed him of the status of my command. It was the first public official notice of me by General Lee since General Grant came to Virginia. The Berryville raid was the first I ever reported to him by telegraph. The dispatch was sent by John Manson out to Gordonsville, and from there wired to headquarters. The news was sent in haste because I knew General Lee's anxiety about the movement up the Valley, and that it would relieve him to hear that a blow had been struck. His dispatch to the War Department shows the importance he attached to it. He saw the effect it would have on Sheridan. It is a mystery Sheridan does not explain why he stopped talking about hanging my men. It was not because their manners had improved, or that they had ceased to annoy him. He gives no reason why there should be a difference between the treatment of my men and other Confederates. There was no regimental officer in the Confederate army that was in as close relations with the commander-in-chief as I was. The records showed that I reported directly to him and received instructions directly from him. He commanded his army through corps commanders; my battalion was the only exception. Although operating in the Valley, my command was independent of Early's army. Early was in front of Sheridan—I was behind him.

I have quoted Sheridan's dispatches (August 17th to September 11th) about his hanging my men as guerrillas. After that he is silent on the subject. If he ever hung anybody he kept it a secret. I never heard of it until I read it in the war records. I am sure nobody else ever did; the war correspondents never mentioned it. When I retaliated for the massacre of my men at Front Royal, I wrote him a letter telling him what I had done, and published it in the newspapers. [270] I have before me as I write the editorial of Richard M. Smith, of the Richmond Sentinel, commenting upon it. If he hung any citizen of the Valley, their families and friends would have known it, and we would have heard of it. The only justification of punishment is to act as a deterrent; if it is secret it can have no such effect, and is criminal revenge. Now, during the time when Sheridan reports this carnival of crime, not over half a dozen of my men were taken prisoners; these were captured by a Captain Blazer (who was soon after annihilated by Richards) and sent to a Northern prison. Their names are given in Scott's Partisan Life, page 290. If Sheridan hung them there was a resurrection, for they returned home after the war, and I know some of them are living now. He also speaks of ‘exterminating’ three of my officers. Now, during that time I lost but one officer—Lieutenant Frank Fox. Captain Sam Chapman routed the 6th New York cavalry near Berryville; Fox was severely wounded and left at a farm house. Afterward Torbert came along with his cavalry corps, put him in an ambulance, and sent him to Harper's Ferry, where he died of his wound. He was not hung. Sheridan was not as black as he painted himself. The object of retaliation is not revenge. Hall on International Law says:

‘Reprisal, or the punishment of one man for the acts of another, is a measure in itself so repugnant to justice, and when hasty or excessive is so apt to increase rather than abate the irregularities of a war, that belligerents are universally considered to be bound not to resort to reprisals except under the pressure of absolute necessity, and then not by way of revenge, but only in cases and to the extent by which an enemy may be deterred from a repetition of his offence.’

If I had not retaliated, the war in the Valley would have degenerated into a massacre. We were called guerillas and bushwhackers. These should not be opprobious epithets, since the exploits of ‘the embattled farmers’ at Concord and Lexington have been sung in Emerson's immortal ode. Now, while bushwhacking is perfectly legitimate war, and it is as fair to shoot from a bush as behind a stockade or an earthwork, no men in the Confederate army less deserve these epithets than mine, if by them is meant a body of men who fought under cover and practiced tactics and stratagems not permitted by the rules of regular war. Sheridan certainly makes no such charge against us. A bushwhacker shoots under shelter with a long range gun; the Northern cavalry knew by experience that my [271] men always fought in a mounted charge, with pistols. The fact that we were called rebels gave the enemy no rights as combatants that we did not equally enjoy. As belligerents we stood on the same plane. One side could not demand what it did not concede to the other. Massachusetts furnishes high authority in favor of the rights of men who fight in a cause that has grown from an insurrection into an international conflict. In his Bunker Hill address, Mr. Webster said: ‘The battle of Bunker Hill was attended with the most important effects beyond its immediate results as a military engagement. It created at once a state of open, public war. There could now be no longer a question of proceeding against individuals as guilty of treason and rebellion. That fearful crisis was past.’ If Bunker Hill could elevate a local tumult and a skirmish to the dignity of public war, and clothe the defeated party with all the rights of belligerents, then what was the effect of the victories of Jackson and Lee? The government of the United States was born in a rebellion and promoted rebellions all over the world until it had one of its own. In 1851 the Austrian Minister, the Chevalier Hulseman, complained in a diplomatic note that the instructions of the American government to its agent in Europe were offensive to the Imperial Cabinet because it applied an honorary title to the Hungarian chief, Kossuth. Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, said in reply: ‘In respect to the honorary epithet bestowed in Mr. Mann's instructions on the late chief of the revolutionary government of Hungary, Mr. Hulseman will bear in mind the government of the United States cannot justly be expected, in a confidential communication to its own agent, to withhold from an individual an epithet of distinction of which a great part of the world thinks him worthy, merely on the ground that his own government regards him as a rebel. At an early stage of the American revolution, while Washington was considered by the English government as a rebel chief, he was regarded on the continent of Europe as an illustrious hero.’ When Webster wrote that, the Hungarian revolution had been crushed and Kossuth was an exile.

General Grant had come from the west and taken command of the army cantoned in Culpeper south of the Rappahannock. He moved toward Richmond, crossed James river, and was in front of Lee at Petersburg. My battalion remained in northern Virginia to threaten Washington and the border. It operated along the Potomac in the Shenandoah Valley, and did not come in contact with the portion of the army immediately under the command of General Grant. He [272] knew us only by report. No doubt, in imagination, he confounded us with the Western bands of outlaws, whose inhuman deeds the Confederate government disowned; and that he shared the general belief of the North that I was a leader of banditti—a chief of brigands—a Fra Diavolo ‘on yonder rock reclining.’ Any absurd story will finally gain credence if often repeated. Victor Hugo said that if it were published a number of times that he had robbed Notre Dame of one of its towers, he would have to leave Paris. A majority would accept it as true—a few might question his ability ‘to walk off with a church tower.’ Grant's dispatch bears internal evidence, and read between the lines shows the delusion he was under in regard to my men. He says—‘the families of Mosby's men are known and can be collected’—which implies that their homes were all in Sheridan's lines, when in fact they were scattered all over the South, and some States in the North. Sheridan made no attempt to execute the order, because it was impossible. I wish he had; it would have been the most effective way of destroying his army. He would have dispersed it over a half dozen States, catching and corraling women and children. That would certainly have been an advantage to us; the Shenandoah Valley would have been cleared of his army. Only one of my men hung at Front Royal was from the Valley—one was from Georgia. Grant evidently thought that these Children of the Mist lived in a territory a few miles square. But Sheridan knew better. Grant's dispatch reflects the idea that prevailed at the North and survives to-day, of the character of myself and my men. The beings painted by war correspondents as Mosby's men were as purely ideal creations as Blue-Beard and Jack-the-Giant-Killer. Yet the tales told about them made a lasting impression just as the kissing of pilgrims has worn away stones. They were as pure inventions as the fictions of Titus Oates. We all dislike to see our images broken and to part with cherished illusions. It is probable that the gods of mythology, and the legendary heroes of antiquity had a common-place origin. I still love to read Gulliver and the Arabian Nights, and once thought it was impiety to even doubt they were true. A reporter once asked my opinion of Weyler. I answered that I had never read anything worse about Weyler than I had read about myself, and that if Weyler wouldn't believe what he had heard about me, I wouldn't believe what I had heard about him. Weyler, in reply to American criticisms, said that he learned the art of war in the Shenandoah Valley. He didn't learn it from me. But General Grant admits in his memoirs the [273] erroneous impression he once had of me; of course it equally applies to my men. Some may say the change was due to politics. But his conduct at the surrender when he voluntarily offered us the same parole he had given General Lee, after Stanton had proclaimed me an outlaw, shows that the change came about before the close of the war. The friendship that afterward grew up between us should be viewed with indulgence by Southern people, as it was certainly disinterested on his part, and hurt no Southern man.

The orders of a superior are no defence to a criminal charge. It is a well settled principle of law that a principal is not responsible for the Malicious act of his agent; the agent incurs a personal liability. So I acquit Sheridan of all responsibility for the deed at Front Royal. I doubt whether he ever heard of it before he got my letter. If General Lee had ordered me to murder my prisoners, I would not have obeyed him; I would have obeyed a higher law, the most sacred of all laws because it is written on the human heart—the great law of nature — the law of humanity. I am sure that Major Richards would not have obeyed an order of mine to do a cruel act; if he had he would have been none the less a criminal because he was ordered. Colonel Peters was ordered with his regiment to set fire to Chambersburg; he refused, and was never called to account for it. He was right. Merritt says that Lieutenant McMasters was captured, robbed and shot; none of the other reports mention him. The truth is, McMasters was never a prisoner. He attempted to cut off the retreat of my men when attacked by a division of cavalry. He cut himself off and got killed. My men shot him and rode over him; they had no time to rob him if they had wished to do so; Merritt's whole division was behind and McMasters was in front of them. While Torbert's, Merritt's and Lowell's reports betray the consciousness of a crime committed by some one, they do not disclose who did it. Even admitting that McMasters offered to surrender when killed, there is a vast difference between refusing quarter in the excitement and brevis furor of a cavalry combat and killing in cold blood and under official sanction when the combat is over. Hall, from whom I have quoted, says: ‘A belligerent, therefore, may only kill those enemies whom he is permitted to attack while a combat is actually in progress; he may not, as a general rule, refuse quarter.’ True, but McMasters was killed during the progress of the combat. He may have intended to surrender, but it does not necessarily follow that my men knew it. They had no time to take prisoners or parley. They were surrounded by thousands, and their [274] only way of escape was to break through the ranks that enclosed them. McMasters got in the way; they shot him and rode on. It was not their business to ask him what he wanted to do. Such things are the ordinary incidents of war. But there is a wide distinction between acts done in the fury of combat, even if they might have been avoided, and acts of deliberate cruelty done when the passions have cooled. It will be observed that Torbert, Merritt and Lowell, in their reports, contradict each other (1) in regard to the number killed. As they remained on the field, it is strange that there should be so much discrepancy between them. (2) They say nothing about the wounded. This is significant. The usual proportion of wounded to killed is three or four to one. Nobody ever heard of 18 men killed in a fight and none wounded, except in a Sitting Bull massacre. (3) They make no mention of prisoners. On our side the loss was six captured; none were killed or wounded in the fight. I never knew of a cavalry combat, where the bodies came in collision as they did here, in which no prisoners were taken. As the prisoners were murdered, they wouldn't acknowledge that they took any.

Now, I do not believe that Sheridan ever communicated to his generals, to be executed, Grant's order of August 16th, for the reason that he knew I could hang 500 of his men where he could hang one of mine. He didn't want to play a game at which I could beat him. As I have said, none of my men were hung before September 23; if Sheridan hung any prisoners before then, they were Early's men; but I don't believe he hung any. Torbert was chief of cavalry; Merritt commanded a division under him; Custer and Lowell commanded brigades in Merritt's division. They would not have waited until September 23d to begin executing an order of August 16th. Torbert's, Merritt's and Lovell's reports speak of the Front Royal skirmish. Torbert says they killed 2 officers and 9 men, which shows on its face that my men were in uniform; Merritt says they killed 18; Lowell says they killed 13. Custer's brigade was not engaged in the fight, and of course he made no mention of it. But that is no evidence that he had nothing to do with the hanging—he was on the ground. As none of the reports speak of the hanging, they would equally prove the innocence of Torbert, Merritt and Lowell—in fact, of everybody. They were all ashamed of it as a blot on the fame of Sheridan's army. It is no concern of mine whether only one or all of the generals present participated in the crime; they may all have been in pari delicto. They can settle that question among themselves. The people of Front Royal considered [275] Custer the most conspicuous actor in the tragedy, and I so stated in my letter to Sheridan. Custer never denied it.

There is a report of Captain Blazer's, who commanded a picked corps that Sheridan had detailed to catch us, in which he speaks of being about Front Royal two days after this affair, and says: ‘In another affair below Front Royal, I left eight of his (Mosby's) murderers to keep company with some that [were] left by General Custer.’ Blazer's language is obscure; but, interpreted, means that he had killed eight of my men to keep company with those Custer had hung and shot at Front Royal. The eight men of mine he reports that he had killed were as pure phantoms as those which Sheridan says he had hung; but it is clear that Blazer gave Custer all the glory for what was done at Front Royal. Custer had a grudge against us. A few weeks before, a detachment of my command got on the trail of a party of Custer's men burning dwelling-houses near Berryville. My men overtook them at Colonel Morgan's; his house was in flames. I had given orders to my men to bring me no prisoners caught in the act of house-burning. The order was superfluous; I could not have restrained them if I had wanted to; neither could General Lee. My report says:

‘Such was the indignation of some of our men at witnessing some of the finest residences in that portion of the State enveloped in flames, that no quarter was shown, and about 25 of them were shot to death for their villainy. About 30 horses were brought off, but no prisoners.’

General Lee's approval is endorsed on the report. Any one can see it in the war records. Custer had ordered the houses to be burned in retaliation for some of his men having been killed in a fight with my men. The New York Times of August 25th, 1865, has a letter describing the affair. It says:

‘He (General Custer) issued an order directing Colonel Alger (Custer published Alger as a deserter a few days afterward), of the 5th Michigan, to destroy four houses belonging to well known secessionists in retaliation for the men killed, captured and wounded on Thursday night. This order was promptly carried into effect by a detachment of fifty men under Captain Drake, and Lieutenants Allen, Lounsberry and Bivvins, who were particularly charged to inform all citizens with the cause for destroying the property. The expedition was accompanied by Dr. Sinclair and the work was effectually done, but unfortunately not without serious loss of life. Captain Drake [276] leaving the main part of the command under Lieutenant Allen in line near one house which had been fired, took a few men and proceeded to fire another house about 100 rods distant. While thus engaged about 200 rebels suddenly emerged from a ravine and made a furious charge upon the force under Lieutenant Allen before due preparation could be made to receive them. The men, overwhelmed by numbers, broke and fled in confusion. As only one horse at a time could go through this narrow passage it was impossible for all the men to escape in that way. The enemy were upon them, and no mercy being shown, a majority of the men ran along a fence running at right angles with the road, hoping to find another passage, but finding none and reaching a corner, surrendered as a last resort. Several squads were cornered in this way, and in every instance the men who surrendered were killed after they had surrendered, or were left for dead.’

Instead of 200 there were not over fifty of my men there. Custer burned no more houses that day.

Burning dwelling houses was a violation of General Grant's orders. At my request, when he was President, he gave an appointment to the officer who commanded my men that day. A Washington dispatch appeared in a Boston paper criticising him for making it, and referring to this affair. I called on the correspondent and found out that a certain official had inspired it. I asked him to send a dispatch to his paper from me. He was willing. I then dictated the following: ‘Colonel Mosby says the men killed by his men were caught burning dwelling houses in the Shenandoah Valley, and were shot in the act by his orders. He says if he is ever caught in Boston burning houses he will expect to be treated in the same way.’ The dispatch was published. I then called to see General Grant and told him about the official. He wrote his name on a card but said nothing. Before the day was done the official was a private citizen. Grant moved as promptly upon him as he did on Buckner's works at Donelson.

Sheridan's cavalry knew by experience about as much about the character and composition of my command as I did. There were then serving in the Shenandoah Valley a great many who had in 1863 been captured by us and exchanged. So Torbert—Merritt— Custer—and Lowell couldn't plead ignorance. Major Russell, A. A. G., of the cavalry corps, had been captured by one of my men, Bush Underwood, in July, 1863. We had a few minutes conversation before he was sent off to Richmond. General Wells commanded [277] a cavalry brigade. We had captured him and a large portion of his regiment—the 1st Vermont cavalry—and their commanding general —Stoughton. He wrote me a very cordial letter when I was nominated by Hayes as consul at Hong Kong, and said that he had informed Senator Edmunds of the manner he and his men had been treated by us, and asked him to vote for my confirmation. I received cards of invitation to his daughter's wedding a few days ago. We had many collisions with Colonel Lowell's regiment, 2d Massachusetts. On 22d February, 1864, in a fight in Fairfax, we had taken seventy prisoners from it; on July 6, 1864, in a fight in Loudoun, had captured about sixty—including the commanding officer, Major Forbes. Colonel Lowell knew that his men who were prisoners, were hostages for his treatment of mine. Chancellor Kent says in regard to retaliation: ‘Cruelty to prisoners and barbarous destruction of private property will provoke the enemy to severe retaliation upon the innocent. Retaliation to be just, ought to be confined to to the guilty, who may have committed some enormous violation of public law. [It was not pretended that the seven men of my command had committed any crime.] While he (Marten) admits that the life of an innocent man can not be taken, unless in extraordinary cases, he declares that cases will sometimes occur when the established usages of war are violated, and there are no other means of restricting the enemy from further excesses. Vattel speaks of retaliation as a sad extremity, and it is frequently threatened without being put in execution, probably without the intention to do it, and in hopes that fear will operate to restrain the enemy.’ I made no threat; the enemy would have regarded it as mere brutum fulmen if I had. When Napoleon wanted to disperse a mob in Paris, he first fired grape-shot, and then blank cartridges. It should be borne in mind that the act for which I retaliated was not done by an irresponsible private, but either by one or several generals. In 1886, I was invited by the G. A. R. in Boston to deliver an address before them. I accepted; my theme was Stuart's cavalry. Major Forbes, whose father, John M. Forbes, was one of the merchant princes of Boston, gave me a dinner at Parker's. James Russell Lowell, the uncle of Colonel Lowell, sat next on my right. Next to Mr. Forbes, on his left, sat Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Here was an object lesson any one could understand.

This has been written in justice to a great soldier who was my friend, as well as to the men who were actors with me in the great drama along the Shenandoah, and especially to the seven whose [278] names are inscribed on the monument at Front Royal. The granite shaft perpetuates the fame of a glorious band—‘a remnant of our Spartan dead.’ About the affair in which they were sacrificed to the bloody moloch of revenge, I feel now as I have always felt. A Highlander is not asked or expected to forgive or forget Glencoe and Culloden. It will always be a proud satisfaction to me that, in the presence of their executioners, these martyrs did not imitate the despairing cry of the gladiator in the arena—Caesar, morituri salutamus‘—Caesar, we who are about to die, salute thee’—but, with heroic confidence, foretold that they would have an avenger. The prophecy was fulfilled. Those who committed the great crime have not escaped the Nemesis, who adjusts the unbalanced scale of human wrongs.

Called the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss.

The Front Royal tragedy occurred on September 23d, 1864. At that time we (lid not know that Mosby's Rangers, embracing only eight companies of cavalry, had attracted, or rather distracted, the attention of General Grant, who was at that time commanding general of the United States armies. But the official records, now published, indicate that he stopped ‘marching on Richmond’ long enough to send explicit instructions to General Sheridan in regard to his campaign against ‘Mosby's men.’ Among the first of these orders was the following:

This order was received by General Sheridan at 6:30 A. M. on the 17th. Up to that time Sheridan never claimed to have executed any prisoners captured from our command; but it is a significant fact that on the night of the same day he received Grant's order, he replied in the following message:

This reported execution of our men was purely visionary. It never existed except in the imagination, and it was never heard of except in this dispatch. If he executed any prisoners at that time they were not members of Mosby's command. But the correspondence shows that he was answering General Grant's message containing the order for the hanging of our men; and we can only conjecture his motive for reporting that he had already commenced the hanging. On the next day, August 18th, he received additional instructions from General Grant as follows:

‘If you can possibly spare a division of cavalry send them through Loudoun county to destroy and carry off the crops, animals, wagons, and all men under fifty years of age capable of bearing arms. In this way you will get many of Mosby's men.’

And we find still another letter under date of November 9, 1664, as follows:

General Sheridan, in conducting his part of this correspondence, sent to General Grant three letters dated respectively, August 19th, August 22d and September 11th, purporting to give his progress in ‘exterminating’ Mosby's men, and one under date of September 29th, in regard to the devastation of the country. The letter reads as follows:

We remember well this ‘drive’ that was made for Mosby's men. The two divisions of Federal cavalry were spread out and swept through our section like a drag net. Every foot of the territory known as ‘Mosby's Confederacy’ was covered. The work of destruction continued day and night. I watched it from a point on the Blue Ridge mountains, where I was bivouacking for the night, on my way to the Valley of Virginia with a few of our men. As far as the eye could see the whole country east of the mountains was lit up by the destroying flames, and the glare was reflected from the sky above. It was a sublime sight to the eye, but a sickening one to the heart. Our one battalion of cavalry was powerless to prevent these two divisions of the enemy from executing their orders.

But Sheridan had been ordered not only to hang our men and devastate our country, but to carry off our families and imprison them in Fort McHenry. He did not execute the order to imprison, and the records are silent as to the reason for this omission. It was not because they were not within his reach, for there was scarcely a family in all that section that did not have some member in Mosby's command. Our lieutenant-colonel had married in Fauquier, and many of the other officers, as well as men, had families within the condemned territory. Had Sheridan directed General Merritt and Custer to arrest them on that burning raid, the order could have [281] been easily executed. It would have been the most severe and cruel blow of all—its paralyzing effect could only be fully realized by those of us whose loved ones were still sheltered by the old homesteads in Loudoun and Fauquier.

But General Grant was essentially a soldier and a great leader. Like General Forrest, of the South, he knew that ‘war meant fighting, and fighting meant killing.’ He was anxious to end the struggle as soon as possible. He had undertaken to capture Richmond and realized the magnitude of the enterprise. He was urging Sheridan to finish up the Valley campaign, so that his troops could be transferred to aid in reducing the Confederate capital. He realized what an obstruction Mosby's men were to the execution of his plans. Under the immediate leadership of their gallant commander, they had destroyed Sheridan's line of communication and compelled him to fall back from his advanced position. The Manassas Gap Railroad could neither be repaired or operated so long as we held our position in Loudoun and Fauquier counties. So the orders went forth for the extermination of ‘Mosby's gang.’ Our men were to be hung, our country devastated by fire, and our families imprisoned.

That General Grant was mis-informed as to the character of our command there can be no doubt. He so states in his published memoirs. General Sheridan had characterized us by the most debasing terms in the military vocabulary. He was fond of referring to us as ‘guerrillas,’ and the like. When we killed two of his staff officers in a fair cavalry fight on the Valley Turnpike in open day, in reporting to General Grant, he said: ‘Guerrillas are annoying me very much. I know of no way to exterminate them except to burn out the whole country and let the people go North or South.’ General Grant only received his information of Mosby's command through others, and no doubt principally through General Sheridan during this period. But after the war he had the opportunity of knowing personally our honored commander, and became his staunch friend. He had already discovered that the command so often reported to him as ‘guerrillas’ was in fact a part of the regularly organized Confederate army, receiving orders from and in many instances reporting directly to General Lee himself. In the hour of victory, General Grant proved himself as magnanimous to Mosby and his men as he was to Lee and his veterans. No sentiment that I uttered in my speech at Front Royal seemed to meet with more approval than that there was no surviving member of Mosby's command who would not gladly place a wreath upon Grant's tomb. [282]

My conclusion that General Custer had not directed the execution of our men at Front Royal has also been the subject of much discussion. But to-day I am more convinced than ever of its correctness. General Torbert was commanding all the cavalry under Sheridan. On September 21, 1864, he had gone up the Luray Valley under orders to cross over to the main valley and attack Early's rear or flank, After a skirmish with an inferior force of Confederate cavalry, he retreated, very much to Sheridan's disgust. He returned through Front Royal on September 23d. His command consisted of two divisions, embracing five brigades. The first division commanded by General Wesley Merritt was in front, marching in the following order: Reserve brigade, Colonel Chas. R. Lowell, Jr., commanding; First brigade, General Custer commanding; Second brigade, General Devin commanding. Captain Chapman, with about eighty of Mosby's men, charged Lowell's advanced guard of one hundred and fifty cavalry. The remainder of the brigade closed in on Chapman's men and captured six of them, but not until one of Lowell's best officers and several of his men had been killed. Our men were executed after they surrendered. None of the reports of the engagement state this fact. It would seem, as Colonel Mosby has since said, that they were ashamed of it. But Colonel Lowell, the brigade commander, reported that he made the fight and ‘killed’ the men. General Merritt, the division commander, reported that Lowell's men fought the skirmish and ‘killed’ the men, and General Torbert reported that Merritt's division had ‘killed’ the men.

We had always thought that General Custer had directed the execution. We had gotten this impression from the citizens of Front Royal. Custer's brigade was marching next to Lowell's, and had arrived before the execution. General Custer was a conspicuous figure, in his velvet uniform, with long golden curls. The citizens of Front Royal had learned to recognize him. Seeing him in their streets at the time, it is not surprising that they should have reported him in command. But it would have violated all military rules for one brigade commander to have taken the prisoners from another brigade commander and ordered their execution, especially when the division commander was in reach.

But, that I might be sure of my conclusion, I have written to Major-General Thomas L. Rosser for a statement. Generals Custer and Rosser were friends before the war, and although they fought on opposite sides, their personal regard for each other was never disturbed. Their friendship was greatly strengthened by their intimacy [283] after the war had ended. The following is General Rosser's answer:

This statement of General Rosser, supported as it is by the official record, seems to me to be conclusive, and the future historian must exonerate General Custer from the responsibility of the Front Royal tragedy.