The Gray Ghost: The Man the Union Couldn’t Stop

On a cold night in March 1863, a small group of Confederate riders slipped through Union lines without making a sound. Within minutes, they were inside a federal camp, past sentries who never saw them, and standing over a sleeping Union general who should have been impossible to reach. No shots were fired. No alarms sounded.
Then, just as silently, the raiders vanished into the dark with their prisoner and 30 captured men. Union Army had no idea how it happened. The leader of that raid was Colonel John Singleton Mosby. He commanded no formal battalion and held no fixed territory. His men appeared without warning, destroyed supply lines, abducted officers, and then disappeared into the Virginia countryside as if they were never there.
He fought a kind of war that regular armies considered dishonorable, yet the same Union commanders who hunted him later respected him more than many of their own. He abandoned conventional military methods and was obsessed without winning his enemy.
This is the story of the man they called the Gray Ghost and why he became the most effective and enigmatic guerrilla leader of the Civil War. He fought to preserve slavery, although he never owned slaves, and later agreed with emancipation, supporting Republicans, even becoming one. Who was John S. Mosby? What was his unique application of warfare? How did he not earn the wrath of the Union after the war? Hello, I’m Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. John Singleton Mosby, known as the Great Ghost during the Civil War,
was born on December 6, 1833, in Powhatan County, Virginia. His parents were Virginia McLaurin and Alfred D. Mosby. A small, frail child who preferred Greek literature to sports, Mosby was bullied but always fought back and, by his own admission, always lost. In 1850, at age 16, he entered the University of Virginia and excelled at English, the classics, and debate.
He was also an accomplished, if reckless, horseman. Although he claimed self-defense, at 19 he was convicted of the non-fatal shooting of a medical student, George Turpin, a man with a bad reputation. Mosby was sentenced to a year in jail and, deciding that justice had not served him and being expelled from college, he began reading law while incarcerated.
His prosecutor, William Robertson, helped tutor him in law. Governor Joseph Johnson pardoned Mosby on December 23, 1853, and he began studying law at the University of Virginia. On December 30, 1856, he married Pauline Clark, the daughter of a prominent Kentucky lawyer and a woman as spirited and intelligent as her husband.
By the time of the presidential election of 1860, Mosby and his young family were living in Bristol, Virginia. Mosby disliked the idea of secession and voted for the Unionist Democratic candidate Stephen A. Douglas. Months earlier, Mosby had joined the Washington Mounted Rifles with the Union in mind. With the secession of Virginia in April 1861, however, the rifles were called into Confederate service.
Private Mosby left his law practice and looked to his company commander, West Pointer William E. Grumble Jones, for leadership and military insight. Once the rifles were in Richmond and incorporated into the 1st Virginia Cavalry, Mosby found his new permanent hero, J. E. B. Stewart.
Mosby served in the 1st Virginia Cavalry in 1861, and his talents were quickly spotted by Cavalry General Stewart, who designated Mosby for intelligence work. He was not perceived as a natural soldier at first, being small, standing only 5 feet 8 inches tall, and weighing around 130 pounds and studious. But he was mentally astute and could solve complex problems on short notice.

Mosby’s fortunes were aided by the Partisan Ranger Act, which was passed by the Confederate Congress on April 21, 1862, a full year before Mosby’s independent command exploded onto the scene. In 1862, Stuart appointed him as a scout and intelligence operative and he was promoted to lieutenant, then captain, and allowed to recruit his own men. Their ability to conduct long-range reconnaissance missions behind unit lines provided Stewart with intelligence enabling major cavalry operations. In January 1863, Mosby received authority from General Robert E.
Lee to create an independent partisan unit, which soon became popularly known as Mosby’s Rangers. In June 1863, Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon agreed with Lee and permitted Mosby to form and recruit soldiers for Company A, 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry Partisan Rangers. Men flocked to join the new unit, and the battalion expanded steadily to the size of a regiment with approximately 1,900 men serving in the command during its existence. Mosby was accordingly promoted to full colonel. From 1863 to 1865,
he quickly became the most effective and most respected Confederate partisan commander,a man of great resources and a master of irregular warfare known for quick raids, vanishing acts, deep penetration reconnaissance, psychological warfare, and disrupting lines of communication. His primary opponent was Union General Philip Sheridan, and they hunted each other.
Mosby’s group specialized in communications and supply line destruction, Union officer abductions, railroad sabotage, ambushes on Union patrols using his Rangers in small, fast-moving detachments, never relying upon a fixed base of operations. Union generals grew obsessed with catching him. Sheridan was given the primary responsibility, but none succeeded.
His men lived off the land and visited farms, but they always paid for the food they took. Even if the people were Union sympathizers, he honored that code. He forbade theft and vandalism. A harming a civilian was expressly forbidden. His quick promotions were largely due to his uncanny ability to slip behind Union lines, gather intel, and get out clean.
Mosby and his men boarded in homes of residence throughout Loudoun and far queer counties. Mosby’s Confederacy, as the area and citizenry were known, made it possible for Mosby to wage successful guerrilla warfare. Ranger Alexander Hunter later observed that Mosby was not beloved by his men but was instead feared and revered as a force of nature.
Mosby regarded traditional military order as impractical to his purposes. Having lost an adjutancy to politicking early in the war, Mosby appointed his officers based upon integrity and a code of honor. This made him very different from his fellow Confederate raider William C. Quantrill and see our video on him. of Sequon Trill and see our video on him.
His most notable action was perhaps on March 9, 1863 when he led the Fairfax raid against a Union force and captured Union Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton in bed, plus 30 additional men, with weapons and many horses. Then the Grey Ghost withdrew, all without firing a shot or alerting other Union troops in the area. When President Abraham Lincoln learned of the raid, he said, I can make brigadier generals, but I can’t make horses.
Mosby had made an impression, but he also now had a bounty on his head, like Quantrell. His ability to hit hard, vanish into forests, farms, and sympathetic towns, yet rarely firing weapons or killing anyone, tempered much of the hatred. He was a master of nighttime movement and terrain exploitation, able to apply psychological pressure as Union troops never knew when or where he would strike.
Another distinction that set Mosby apart from regular cavalry on both sides was that his men preferred not to carry sabers but rather revolvers and rifles. They brought no wagon or baggage train, operating as the best example of light cavalry. Mosby’s Rangers forced the Union to divert thousands of troops to guard areas previously considered safe and produced credible, measurable military benefits with minimal manpower or resources.
After the Fairfax raid, the Union generals admitted that he was the best with his operating style, carrying minimal baggage, maximizing his unit’s speed, being able to disrupt forces ten times his size. Mosby was so successful in disruption of supply lines, attrition of Union couriers, and disappearance in the disguise of civilians, that Lt. Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant wrote Major Gen. Philip Sheridan, stating, ìThe families of most of Mosbyís men are known and can be collected. I think they should be taken and kept at Fort McHenry or some secure place as hostages for good conduct of Mosby and his men.
When any of them are caught with nothing to designate what they are, hang them without trial.” On June 17, 1863, Robert E. League began to move his army north into Pennsylvania, using Stuart’s cavalry to screen his right flank. Upon discovering that Union General Joseph Hooker’s army was headed to Fairfax and Loudoun counties, Mosby infiltrated the Union camp near Aldi, capturing two of Hooker’s staff officers.
Also captured by Mosby was a crucial letter indicating that General Hooker had no notion of Lee’s plans and no intention of crossing the Potomac River. Thus far, Stuart’s screen was working. By late 1863 to early 1864, the Confederate high command, especially Robert E. Lee, wanted the partisan Ranger system abolished because most Ranger units were unreliable, refused discipline, and undermined the regular army.
Ranger units were considered outlaws by the Union and even some Confederate leaders. Many were indistinguishable from bandits, especially Quantrill’s raiders, who were perceived as doing more harm than good where the civilian populations were concerned.
When most partisan units collapsed into disorder, devolved into banditry, looting, or undisciplined chaos, Mosby ran a tight, disciplined, highly effective fightingforce. Mosby’s Rangers delivered results so effective that Confederate leaders abolished every other partisan command except his. His operations shaped Confederate thinking about how partisan forces should be organized, how they should be supplied or not, how discipline could be maintained in irregular units, how raiders should operate independently while still supporting the main army, and how psychological disruption could substitute for battlefield victories.

By 1864, the Mosby model was the only successful partisan template the Confederacy had. Mosby was to be the sole exception, and Lee personally made sure Mosby’s command was exempt from their appeal in February 1864. Mosby’s command was exempt from their appeal in February 1864. In August 1864, Confederate General Jubal A. Early withdrew his forces from the Valley of Virginia as Union General Philip H. Sheridan’s forces arrived.
He followed Early from Winchester to Cedar Creek, but Sheridan allowed his wagons to stretch out in a vulnerable line. Mosby exploited this vulnerability and attacked in the Berryville Wagon Raid of August 13, 1864 and captured 200 men, burned or looted around 40 wagons, and acquired 420 mules, 200 cattle, and 36 horses. However, Mosby was badly wounded.
After this raid, Union General George Armstrong Custer burned five civilian houses in reprisal, but six of Mosby’s men were captured out of uniform on September 22, 1864. Union General Alfred A. Torbert ordered the execution of the six captured men the next day. They were treated as spies after capture in Front Royal, Virginia.
A seventh man captured, according to Mosby’s subsequent letter to Sheridan by a Colonel Powell on a plundering expedition into Rappahannock, was reported by Mosby to have suffered a similar fate. Mosby always blamed Custer for the deaths. William Thomas Overby was one of the men selected for execution on the hill in Front Royal.
His captors offered to spare him if he revealed Mosby’s location, but he refused. According to reports at the time, his last words were, My last comments are sweetened by the reflection that for every man you murder this day, Mosby will take a tenfold vengeance. After the executions, a Union soldier penned a piece of paper to one of the bodies that read, Mosby will take a tenfold vengeance.
” After the executions, a Union soldier penned a piece of paper to one of the bodies that read, This shall be the fate of all Mosby’s men. Mosby asked permission from Robert E. Lee to deal likewise with the enemy, and Lee gave his permission and in November Mosby had seven Union prisoners of war executed.
On December 21, 1864, Mosby was ambushed and again wounded near Rector Town by Union cavalry who had no idea of his identity. However, news had spread that Mosby had been killed, but without verification, and this was printed in the New York Herald, much to Sheridan’s delight. His joy was short-lived, however, when Mosby was proven to be alive, in fact, but the war was almost over. Mosby’s rangers never formally surrendered.
They just disbanded as the war wound down and the fighting was pointless. He issued his farewell order disbanding the unit on April 21, 1865. The men saluted, and they still had extremely high morale. Mosby never had a desertion during the war. Mosby himself was tired after having been wounded seven times during the long war.
After the war, President Grant pardoned Mosby at Lynchburg on June 17, 1868, and he resumed his law practice in Warrington on September 16, 1865. He was interrogated as to his abilities at intelligence gathering, his unpredictability, and his innate ability to gather a massive local civilian support network. They were impressed with his friendly and humble demeanor and combat methodology, support network.
They were impressed with his friendly and humble demeanor and combat methodology, although, unlike conventional forces, he never had the ability to hold territory for the Confederacy. But as he told his former enemies, that was not my job. His interrogators were also impressed with his razor-sharp intellect, dry, cutting wit, and his stubborn and fearless resistance to authority that he didn’t respect.
He loved outsmarting opponents more than outgunning them, not feeling the casualties were required to accomplish his objectives. They were amazed at his ability to disappear into civilian populations like smoke. Lincoln called him the most effective and dangerous Confederate. Some of his quotes were,
“…war loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle,” and “…I was a guerrilla. I never fought a fair fight if I could avoid it.” His enemies recognized that he was an undisputed genius of irregular warfare and one of the most enigmatic figures in American military history. Mosby also explained that loud-pitched battles often brought more enemy troops,so speed, stealth, and silence were his allies.

He was also, above all else, a strategist and master tactician first, never a showman seeking glory. They also learned that he was not a lost cause romantic as he later defended President Grant and Reconstruction, and the two men became good friends. Mosby admitted the Confederacy fought to preserve slavery, although he disagreed with it personally.
Unlike many post-war Confederates who rewrote history, Mosby didn’t play that game. He stated plainly, quote, I’ve always understood that we fought for slavery. If I had thought we were fighting for anything else, I’d have gone home, end quote. Mosby was apparently conflicted on the issue, believing it was a state’s right issue and a personal choice, not the federal government’s.
He also said that personal views didn’t matter because the Confederacy’s cause was unquestionably the preservation of slavery, and despite his personal opinion, he chose loyalty to Virginia over ideology. He aggressively called out Confederates who pretended slavery wasn’t the cause of the war. His stance was, quote, tell the truth even if it hurts your side, end quote.
Mosby mocked former Confederates who invented noble motives afterward, and, as a result, he made many enemies. Mosby mocked former Confederates who invented noble motives afterward, and, as a result, he made many enemies. Mosby reminded his interrogators that some Union states had slaves until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, with Delaware having the highest number of registered slave owners as slaves were property.
They were also amazed at his ability to operate independently right up to the end of the war, still raiding when most of the Confederacy was rubble. Mosby was something of an enigma to his fellow Southerners, as he was later a Republican who was despised by former Confederates for siding with Grant. The former Union generals respected him for many reasons, as John S.
Mosby was a disciplined partisan commander who targeted military objectives and followed the laws of war, unlike William C. Quantrell, who was an irregular guerrilla leader whose operations often devolved into murder, looting, and terror against civilians. As far as his former enemies were concerned, Mosby fought a war.
Quantrell waged a vendetta. Mosby survived multiple assassination attempts by former Confederates who considered him a traitor and Robert E. Lee even came to his defense. In May 1872, Mosby visited President Grant at the White House, urging him to restore rights to former Confederates. Mosby agreed to personally endorse Grant in return.
Both men honored the terms of the visit. Mosby then gladly served under President Grant, who, of course, became a friend, and Mosby publicly praised Grant’s integrity. Mosby was pragmatic, loyal to the Union after 1865, and fiercely honest about the Confederacy’s motives, and remained proud of his service as a guerrilla leader.
His post-war career was almost as legendary as he lectured, wrote memoirs, practiced law, and was the U.S. Consul to Hong Kong from 1878 to 1885. He worked as an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad in San Francisco and from 1904 until 1910 worked as Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Justice Department as a land fraud investigator. Mosby remained unapologetically himself to the end, never denying his war record and defending his position to fight for the Confederacy even though he never owned slaves and did not agree with the institution of slavery.
He wrote Mosby’s War Reminiscences in 1887 and Stuart’s Cavalry Campaigns published in 1908, as well as his own memoirs of John Singleton Mosby, which was incomplete and published posthumously in 1917. Mosby only attended one reunion of his rangers, in Alexandria, Virginia, in January 1895. Colonel John S. Mosby died on May 30, 1916, in Washington, D.C., on Memorial Day.
He was buried in Warrington Cemetery on June 1, 1916, remembered as a steely-eyed warrior from the Age of Romance. His funeral was attended by both former Union and Confederate veterans alike, paying their respects to a man who fought a terrible war, but in the most honorable of ways. Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History.
If you liked what you saw, please click like, share, and subscribe. And if you would like to assist with the ever-increasing cost of production, please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon page. © transcript Emily Beynon