Books in Brief: Ranger Mosby

Ranger Mosby, by Virgil Carrington Jones (EPM Publications, 348 pp., $12.95)

EPM Publications, based in McLean, Virginia, here rescues from obscurity the standard work on John Singleton Mosby, leader of the Confederacy’s most effective and notorious guerrilla band. Originally published in 1944, Ranger Mosby traces the man’s life and his creation of the 43rd Battalion, which, though it numbered less than a thousand men, hounded the Army of the Potomac until the end of the war, and helped stave off the fall of Richmond. Mounted, and usually armed only with revolvers, Mosby’s raiders cut lines of communication, robbed supply trains, and destroyed railroads—and then blended back into the northern-Virginia countryside. After the war, the feisty Mosby, a lawyer by trade, became nearly as successful as he had been on the battlefield. He allied himself with his old enemy, General (now President) Grant, and preached against the dangers of sectionalism. And he refought the old battles, while deriding the humbug of nostalgia. In 1894 he called General Jubal Early “that old fraud . . . who assumes to be a sort of administrator of the Confederate Army. . . . The fact is that old Early himself was the first man after the war who deserted our people. As soon as he heard of Lee’s surrender, he took to his heels and ran away to Canada instead of doing as I did—staying with our people—taking all the chances—and helping them to recover self-government.” Ranger Mosby, written using a lot of old-timers’ reminiscences, sheds much light on one of the Civil War’s more enigmatic figures.

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Ranger Mosby, by Virgil Carrington Jones (EPM Publications, 348 pp., $12.95)

EPM Publications, based in McLean, Virginia, here rescues from obscurity the standard work on John Singleton Mosby, leader of the Confederacy’s most effective and notorious guerrilla band. Originally published in 1944, Ranger Mosby traces the man’s life and his creation of the 43rd Battalion, which, though it numbered less than a thousand men, hounded the Army of the Potomac until the end of the war, and helped stave off the fall of Richmond. Mounted, and usually armed only with revolvers, Mosby’s raiders cut lines of communication, robbed supply trains, and destroyed railroads—and then blended back into the northern-Virginia countryside. After the war, the feisty Mosby, a lawyer by trade, became nearly as successful as he had been on the battlefield. He allied himself with his old enemy, General (now President) Grant, and preached against the dangers of sectionalism. And he refought the old battles, while deriding the humbug of nostalgia. In 1894 he called General Jubal Early “that old fraud . . . who assumes to be a sort of administrator of the Confederate Army. . . . The fact is that old Early himself was the first man after the war who deserted our people. As soon as he heard of Lee’s surrender, he took to his heels and ran away to Canada instead of doing as I did—staying with our people—taking all the chances—and helping them to recover self-government.” Ranger Mosby, written using a lot of old-timers’ reminiscences, sheds much light on one of the Civil War’s more enigmatic figures.