Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

With a small body of men, he passed the rear of Sheridan’s army in the valley of Virginia, and after a brisk skirmish, captured and brought away General Duffie of the Federal Army. With less than one hundred men he made a forced march into the enemy’s lines at night, captured many prisoners, derailed a train, destroyed it, and secured as his prey two paymasters, who had in their possession one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars in United States currency. Refusing to take anything himself, he divided this money amongst his followers and each one with him on this expedition received twenty-one hundred dollars.

With three hundred men he rode to the rear of Sheridan’s army in the valley of Virginia and attacked in broad daylight a brigade of infantry and two hundred and fifty cavalrymen, guarding a wagon train. He burned one hundred wagons, captured two hundred and eight prisoners and brought away five hundred mules and horses and two hundred head of cattle.

When all these amazing things have been told they would make any one man great, but Mosby had to his credit dozens of other feats almost equally as remarkable.

Colonel Mosby was wounded several times, and in December, 1864, he was desperately injured and was compelled to take a long furlough.

In 1863 there came to Colonel Mosby’s command a young Virginian, A. E. Richards. Beginning as a private, by his soldierly qualities he rose to be major. Christened Adolphus Edward Richards, he became known among Mosby’s followers as “Dolly.” When he succeeded Mosby he was just twenty years of age, and no man in the Confederacy, twenty years old, accomplished more or exhibited a nobler courage or more remarkable skill and enterprise.

From December, 1864, until April, 1865, was one of the most strenuous periods of Mosby’s command. The Federal Army was then engaged around Richmond, and this left a hundred miles’ space for the operation of these aggressive cavaliers. For months, while Mosby was off, wounded, Major Richards not only took up but efficiently carried on his work. Two of the fights in which he commanded were used by Colonel George Taylor Denison, of Canada, in his work on “Modern Cavalry,” published in 1868, to illustrate the superiority of the revolver as a weapon for cavalry.

Just at this time, Colonel Harry Gilmor, who enjoyed a wide reputation as a partisan leader in Northern Virginia and Maryland, had been surprised and made prisoner. The Federals, encouraged by this success, undertook to capture Major Richards and scatter Mosby’s men.

General Merritt, then in charge of the Federal cavalry operating in “Mosby’s Confederacy,” sent the same detail which had caught Gilmor to hunt down Richards and his followers. The party comprising this force numbered two hundred and fifty men and was in charge of Major Thomas Gibson of the 14th Pennsylvania Cavalry. This officer, in the past, had shown that he was not only brave but resourceful, and his superiors hoped as well as expected that he would do great things on this expedition. If he could catch Major Richards and a part of his command, it meant peace in the Federal rear, and the release of many thousands of men for action at the front. Promotion was sure to follow success, and the Federal leader dreamed of becoming a brigadier and winning a renown that would make him famous.

Attracted by the adventurous nature of the expedition and also lured by the hope of success in the work, two of Merritt’s staff officers, Captain Martindale and Lieutenant Baker, volunteered to aid in this scout. This command crossed the Shenandoah River at night. A few miles away from the river, at Paris, in Fauquier County, the force was divided. Major Gibson took with him the men of his own regiment, which comprised one-half of the command, and placed the other half, from the 1st New York Cavalry, in charge of Captain Snow. These forces separated with the understanding that they would make wide circuits through the country, would gather prisoners and seize horses, and meet at Upperville at daylight, six miles from Paris. A couple of deserters from the 12th Virginia regiment acted as guides for the two detachments. Through the report of a spy, Captain Snow learned that Major Richards had come that night to his father’s house, near Upperville, and the captain felt it would be a great feather in his cap if he could make the leader of Mosby’s command a prisoner. This was what Major Gibson had been chiefly sent to do, and the Federal captain calculated if he could do this, he would win the applause and gratitude of his countrymen. They reached “Green Garden,” the Richards’ ancestral home, at one o’clock in the morning. Without warning or signal of any kind the Federal soldiers surrounded the house and the leader knocked for admittance at the front door. Hearing was very acute in those days where Mosby’s men slept, and the knock, although at first not very heavy, awoke Major Richards, Captain Walker and Private Hipkins, who were together spending the night under the hospitable roof. The moon was shining with brilliance; not a cloud obscured its brightness. The ground was covered with snow. When the Confederates looked through the blinds, they saw the yard filled with Federal soldiers. On other occasions, when the odds were not so great, Major Richards and some of his companions had shot their way out, but he dared not try this experiment this time, for it meant almost certain death. To meet such emergencies, the Richards family had provided a trap door in the floor of the family room. Major Richards had only time to seize his pistols and his field glasses, and his companions hastily caught up their arms, and all went scurrying down through the trap door into the space under the sills. This trap door was in the lower floor and covered with an oil carpet, over which a bed was rolled. The Federals remained silent for a few moments, knocked again with more fury, and upon forcing themselves into the house, the men in blue found Major Richards’ uniform, his boots with the spurs attached, his white hat with its black ostrich plume, and they chuckled and said to themselves, “We have caught him at last.” Forcing the father of Major Richards to furnish them candles they searched the house over and over again. They went from cellar to garret and from garret to cellar. One officer suggested that in order to make sure of their game they burn the house, but another, with nobler instincts and better impulses, protested so vigorously that this plan was abandoned. For two hours they scrutinized every portion of the house, the outbuildings, the stables, the cabins, but all in vain, and they finally concluded that by some strange sport of chance their victims had escaped; and they mounted their horses and rode away to Upperville.