By blood or ink."—Don Juan.
During the time I had been operating against the outposts of the Union army in Northern Virginia I kept up a regular correspondence with Stuart by means of couriers, and reported to him the result of every action. The base from where I operated was on its flank, and so I compelled it to present a double front. The prisoners taken were sometimes released on their paroles, but generally sent out under charge of a guard to the provost marshal at Culpepper Court House. The necessity of making the details for guard duty seriously diminished my effective strength. It would take nearly a week for them to go over and return, and I was often compelled to wait on that account before undertaking an expedition. The men, too, who would join me to go on a raid just to get a horse would generally quit as soon as it was over to return to their own regiments. When an enterprise had been accomplished, I was often left as forlorn as Montrose after fighting and winning a battle with the undisciplined Highland clans—they had all scattered and gone home with their plunder. I would have to give notice of my place and time of meeting several days in advance, in order to make sure of a sufficient number answering the call to effect any good work. The longer I remained in the country, successful raids became more difficult, as the enemy was all the time on the lookout, and kept every point closely guarded. I had promised Stuart, as an inducement to let me have some men, either to compel the enemy to contract their lines in Fairfax County or to reinforce them heavily. Having no fixed lines to guard or defined territory to hold, it was always my policy to elude the enemy when they came in search of me, and carry the war into their own camps.
This was the best way to keep them at home. To have fought my own command daily, on equal terms and in open combats against the thousands that could have been brought against it by the North, would soon have resulted in its entire annihilation. I endeavored to compensate for my limited resources by stratagems, surprises, and night attacks, in which the advantage was generally on my side, notwithstanding the superior numbers we assailed. For this reason, the complaint has often been made against me that I would not fight fair. So an old Austrian general complained that Bonaparte violated all military maxims and traditions by flying about from post to post in Italy, breaking up his cantonments and fighting battles in the winter time. The accusations that have been made against my mode of warfare are about as reasonable. In one sense the charge that I did not fight fair is true. I fought for success and not for display. There was no man in the Confederate army who had less of the spirit of knight-errantry in him, or took a more practical view of war than I did. The combat between Richard and Saladin by the Diamond of the Desert is a beautiful picture for the imagination to dwell on, but it isn't war, and was no model for me. The poets have invested the deeds of the Templars with the colors of romance; but if they were half as generous as they were said to have been, it was because their swords, and not their hearts, were dedicated to a cause.
I never admired and did not imitate the example of the commander who declined the advantage of the first fire. But, while I conducted war on the theory that the end of it is to secure peace by the destruction of the resources of the enemy, with as small a loss as possible to my own side, there is no authenticated act of mine which is not perfectly in accordance with approved military usage. Grant, Sheridan, and Stonewall Jackson had about the same ideas that I had on the subject of war. I will further add that I was directly under the orders of Stuart up to the time of his death, in May, 1864, and after that time, of Gen. Robert E. Lee, until the end of the war. With both of these two great Christian soldiers I had the most confidential relations. My military conduct received from them not only approbation, but many encomiums. In a letter received from Stuart about this, he said, "I heartily wish you great and increasing success in the glorious career on which you have entered."
In September, 1864, I visited Gen. Lee at his headquarters, near Petersburg. I had been badly wounded a week or so before by a bullet, which I still carry in me. When he saw me hobbling up to him on my crutches, he came to meet me, and said, as he extended his hand, "Colonel, I have never had but one fault to find with you—you are always getting wounded." I mention this circumstance to show that all I did had the sanction of the commander of the army of Northern Virginia, of which my own command—the Forty-third Battalion of Virginia Cavalry—was a part. I was independent simply in the sense that both Gen. Lee and Gen. Stuart had such confidence in me that they never undertook to trammel me with orders, but gave me full discretion to act as I chose. After the death of Stuart, Gen. Lee frequently wrote to me, although we were separated by a distance of over a hundred miles. All of his letters are in his own handwriting. What were called my depredations had caused another brigade of cavalry to be sent into Fairfax to protect Washington. The frequent incursions we had made down there created great alarm and an apprehension that they might be extended across the Potomac. The deliberations of the Senate were frequently disturbed by the cry that the Gauls were at the gate. One day I rode down on a scout in sight of the dome of the Capitol, when a wagon came along, going to Washington, which was driven by the wife of a Union man who had left his home in Virginia and taken refuge there. I stopped it, and, after some conversation with the driver, told her who I was. With a pair of scissors she had I cut off a lock of my hair and sent it to Mr. Lincoln, with a message that I was coming to get one of his soon. A few days after this, I saw in the Star that it had been delivered to him, and that the President enjoyed the joke.
After returning from my last expedition to Herndon Station, I had sent John Underwood down to search along the lines for a weak point where I might make a successful attack. This had now become very difficult to do. There had been so many real and false alarms that the pickets were always on the watch, and slept with their eyes open. The videttes were stationed so close together that it was impossible to pass them without being discovered; and a snowbird could not fly by without being fired at. They had so strengthened their lines that, where formerly there had been not over a dozen men, there were now a hundred. If there was a hole anywhere, I knew that John Underwood would find it. I had about that time received another recruit, who became famous in the annals of my command. His home was in Loudoun, and his name was William Hibbs. He was always called the "Major," although he never held a commission. He was a blacksmith by trade, over fifty years old, and had already fully discharged the duty he owed to the Southern Confederacy by sending his two sons into the army. But for my appearance in the vicinity, he would probably have lived and died unheard.
The fame of the exploits of my men, and the rich prizes they won, aroused his martial ambition; and he determined to quit the forge and become a warrior bold. The country soon echoed the notes of his fame, as the anvil had once rung with the strokes of his hammer. Around the triumvirate—Dick Moran, John Underwood, and Major Hibbs—recruits now gathered as iron filings cluster around a magnet. They were the germs from which my command grew and spread like a banyan tree. Beattie, who was always my faithful Achates, had been captured, but was soon afterward exchanged. Underwood, on his return from his scout, reported a body of about 100 cavalry at Chantilly, which was in supporting distance of several other bodies of about equal numbers. An attack on the post there would be extremely hazardous, on account of the proximity of the others. The chance of success was a poor one; but, as about fifty men had assembled to go with me, I did not like to disappoint them. Each man wanted a horse, as well as a leader to show him how to get one. They were all willing to risk a good deal, and so was I. We started off for Chantilly, down the Little River Turnpike, as the mud prevented our travelling any other route. The advantage of attacking at Chantilly was not only that we had a good road to travel on, but I knew it was the very last place they expected I would attack. They did not look for my approach in broad daylight along the pike, but thought I would come by some crooked path after dark through the pines.
I had never asked a commission of the Confederate government, but the warfare I had been conducting had attracted the attention of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who not only complimented me in general orders published to the army, but at his request the President of the Confederate States sent me a commission as captain, with authority to organize a company of cavalry. This was succeeded, in the course of two or three weeks, with a commission of major. Before the close of the war I became a full colonel, which was the highest rank I got. My first commission was accompanied by the following letter:—
Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia,
March 23, 1863.
Capt. J. S. Mosby, through Major-General Stuart.