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I once heard a Federal officer say he was not surprised that Mosby's men rode such fine horses, as they had both armies to pick from. The cavalry was armed with pistols alone, of which each man carried at least two. Their superiority over all other arms for this branch of the service was frequently demonstrated. It is a weapon that can be used with one hand, leaving the other to guide the horse.
The best Mosby could do was to launch small raiding parties to harass the work of destruction. By the beginning of December, the northern or Loudoun County end of Mosby's Confederacy was feeling the enemy scourge as keenly as the valley, and the winter nights were lighted with the flames of burning houses and barns.
They had been taken into Front Royal, and there, at the personal order of General George A. Custer, and under circumstances of extreme brutality, they had all been hanged. Rhodes' mother, who lived in Front Royal, had been forced to witness the hanging of her son. To put it conservatively, there was considerable excitement in Mosby's Confederacy when the news of this atrocity was received.
Weber, gallant as ever, waved his hand to the ladies as he rode away, calling back in a cheery voice that he would come again, "when this cruel war is over." Resuming our journey, a little apprehensive of encountering some of Mosby's men, we were fortunate enough to meet ten troopers of the First Michigan going across the country to join the division.
From that time on, he was on his own, and there was no longer any danger of his being recalled to the regular Army. He was responsible only to Jeb Stuart until the general's death at Yellow Tavern a year later; thereafter, he took orders from no source below General Lee and the Secretary of War. Even before this regularization of status, Mosby's force was beginning to look like a regular outfit.
On the contrary, the army quartermaster kept an agent in Mosby's Confederacy, to purchase from the Rangers their surplus stock and arms. His standing price for a horse was forty dollars in gold. But each Ranger retained two or more of the best for his own use. In this way they were always splendidly mounted.
These men were well armed and well mounted, were all fearless and all good shots, the revolver being their especial arm, as it was of Mosby's men in the civil war.
It was a humiliating defeat for them, and, on the other side, it was hailed as the beginning of the end of the Mosby nuisance. A few days later, while raiding to the east of Bull Run Mountain, Mosby was wounded again, and was taken to Lynchburg. He was joined by his wife, who remained with him at Lynchburg and at Mosby's Confederacy until the end of the war.
As a result of these two practices, Union combat reports throughout the war consistently credited Mosby with from three to five times his actual strength. In time, the entire economy of Mosby's Confederacy came to be geared to Mosby's operations, just as the inhabitants of seventeenth century Tortugas or Port Royal depended for their livelihood on the loot of the buccaneers.
I had not directed any special operations against these partisans while the campaign was active, but as Mosby's men had lately killed, within my lines, my chief quartermaster, Colonel Tolles, and Medical Inspector Ohlenchlager, I concluded to devote particular attention to these "irregulars" during the lull that now occurred; so on the 28th of November, I directed General Merritt to march to the Loudoun Valley and operate against Mosby, taking care to clear the country of forage and subsistence, so as to prevent the guerrillas from being harbored there in the future their destruction or capture being well-nigh impossible, on account of their intimate knowledge of the mountain region.
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