The “Gorilla” of Virginia:
The Impact of John Singleton Mosby’s Guerilla Warfare on the Civil War
How did Mosby’s reinvention of guerilla warfare impact the Civil War?
Persuasive Essay
North Cooper
Bang! Bang! Bang! Smoke clustered like the torrents of a river as it exited the barrel. The soft, white snow of yesterday morning was stained with the impenetrable red of death, the source of which was the gaping holes of confounded hope that resided in boys' chests. John Singleton Mosby stood poised behind the wooden fencing, scattered before him, a field filled with the corpses of men put to rest by his revolvers.
From 1861 to 1865, the United States of America endured the bloodiest war of its history. For the first, and only time, the country was truly divided. The country was ablaze with war. From Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the panhandle of Florida, from Mississippi to Idaho and Montana. Nevertheless, within this vast battlefield, some men significantly impacted the war. One of those men is John Singleton Mosby, whose relatively small but highly effective Rangers terrorized the Union forces operating in Northern Virginia. Eschewing the traditional methods of the era, Mosby embraced newer tactics and invented his own to suit his fast-paced guerilla warfare. Ultimately, Mosby's guerilla warfare tactics were ahead of their time, allowing him to create an exceptional military record of his accomplishments and profoundly impacting the state of the war in Virginia and beyond.
Guerilla warfare is "armed resistance by paramilitary or irregular groups toward an occupying force” which was “a set of tactics employed by smaller forces against larger, better equipped, and better supplied forces" (Lopez). This warfare relies heavily on terrain, positioning, and, arguably the most important, the art of surprise. The first organized and well-documented accounts of guerilla warfare occurred during the Hannibal Era. The Numidians attacked the Roman legions in Italy. Clans of Germanic Warriors, at times, effectively pushed back these same legions during the Roman invasion of Germany and France (Dodge 368). In these instances, guerilla warfare took on the shape of poorly equipped and disorganized groups trying to fend off or slow down an advancing army, and for a long time, this was the primary way guerilla warfare was utilized. Constant assaults wreak havoc on the mental strength of troops and can lead men to desert out of paranoia. It also forces the enemy to reinforce their rear with more valuable troops and supplies. The downside to this fighting style was that the lack of a disciplinary structure made confusion on the battlefield a constant occurrence, and it was virtually impossible to rely on guerillas to make a coordinated attack or even make it to their designated positions. Consequently, many believed that guerilla warfare was incapable of being used to win a war.
Nonetheless, it was not until the Revolutionary War that guerilla warfare was used, in essence, to win a war. After the first major battles of the war, Lexington and Concord, the Continental Army realized they were better off ambushing with local militia than fighting the British invaders in the standard line formation of the time. Francis Marrion (aka the "Swamp Fox") was a leading figure in changing the tide of the war. The skirmishes of Francis Marion's rag-tag group of troops would set the stage for a transformation from line battles to tight-knit squadrons of men who moved quickly and effectively. As a Historic World Leader’s article explains, "Marion was the architect of the Second Regiment and laid the foundation of that excellent discipline and confidence in themselves," creating a system of discipline that has survived to modern times ("Francis Marion"). The effect of past guerilla warfare can be seen in today's conventional warfare, where the U.S. military utilizes small attacking forces to prevent detection and confusion on the battlefield, allowing for more specialization within particular squadrons.
John Mosby's military career began at the Battle of Bull Run, where he served as a foot soldier; however, he was quickly promoted for his excellent skill and leadership in combat. Jeb Stuart recognized his innate talent for reconnaissance and his extraordinary talent on horseback and had Mosby integrated into his cavalry regiment (Ramage 55). According to Jeffery Wert, while Mosby was with Stuart's calvary, "He participated in the summer and autumn campaigns of the Second Bull Run or Manassas in August, Antietam in September, Stuart's raid into Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in October and Fredricksburg, Virginia, in December." He was present at many of the significant battles of the time and played a crucial role in discovering the enemy positions (30).
Mosby had a significant effect on many battles in which he fought. At the Second Battle of Bull Run, Mosby's horse was injured, and a bullet grazed the top of his head, yet he fought on and received a promotion after the battle. At Antietam, Mosby scouted for Stuart and provided necessary details regarding the enemies positioning and movement, which helped the Confederates win a decisive battle (Ramage 55). When the Confederate Army advanced into Pennsylvania, Mosby followed suit under the command of Stuart, and together, the men performed various raids and scouting missions to aid the Confederates' advance into the heart of the North. At Fredericksburg, he performed essentially the same role. Mosby was highly effective and now had significant battle experience under his belt. He captured supplies, men, and intelligence that proved extremely valuable to the senior officers and again he received a promotion. However, Mosby wished for more freedom and the ability to apply his techniques and knowledge to the battlefield (Wert 30).
With this in mind, he created the 43rd Virginia Calvary Battalion in December 1863 under the Partisan Rangers Act of 1862. This act allowed guerilla cavalry units to be formed and partially merged into the Confederate Armies. Mosby crafted his fine-tuned killing machine of partisan rangers and "conducted nearly 30 raids in 1863-64 and were very successful at putting a thorn in the enemy's backside as well as scouting and foraging for the army." Most of these raids took place in Fauquier and Loudon counties, giving Mosby a profound advantage over his enemies. He could quickly enter and exit the battlefield, which proved critical at battles like that of Warrenton Junction, where Mosby could drag out a battle for days by striking and retreating into safety. This combat style drained the enemy and enabled Mosby to control the battle. In addition, the men captured thousands of horses, cattle, and Union soldiers on their many raids, but there is no feat of Mosby's as remarkable as the capture of Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton (Balestrieri).
Mosby managed to capture the general by sneaking past Union security and entering the Fairfax County Courthouse, where he awakened the sleeping general along with thirty of his men. By the end of 1864, Mosby and his men remained the only resistance to the Union forces in North Virginia. Despite the Union's best efforts to track down and obliterate the elusive Rangers, they never succeeded, even after arming 100 men with the new Spencer Repeating Rifles to track him down. Instead, Mosby captured the men at Kabletown on November 18th after an ambush. When the war ended, instead of surrendering, Mosby returned home to his family and put the war behind him ("John S. Mosby"). However, many still wonder: how did Mosby accomplish these daring acts, and how did he gain recognition over the various other partisan rangers? The answer lies in his revolutionary tactics.
As Trevor Dupuy argues, guerilla warfare utilizes "good intelligence, careful reconnaissance, mobility, and surprise…the aim is not to annihilate the more powerful enemy force but only…to isolate and digest." Mosby's tactics utilized four main concepts: speed, agility, discipline, and intimate connections with the local populous. By and large, the most essential and unique aspect of Mosby was his speed. Equipped with some of the fastest horses, Mosby and his Rangers could easily outmaneuver even the most skilled Union Cavalry. The Ranger's secret lay in how they utilized these horses, as every man had at least two horses to utilize, and men like Mosby possessed upward of a half-dozen horses at one time. Owing to the number of horses the men possessed, they could switch horses after every raid to ensure they always had a fresh and optimized horse (Balestrieri). As Jeffery Wert put it in his book Mosby's Rangers, "A small force moving with celerity and threatening many points on a line can neutralize a hundred times its own number"(34). By utilizing a small force, Mosby could quickly maneuver into a favorable position.
Mosby's agility allowed him to attack the rear and succeed in locating the weak points in an enemy's line, subsequently attacking that weakness with speed and cohesion to quickly eliminate the enemy or disrupt a supply line. With speed and agility, Mosby could perform his style of warfare: hit and run. Battles would often continue for days, ambushing an enemy unit and fleeing, luring them away from their supplies and reserves or towards a preset trap. Often, Mosby utilized the terrain during these ambushes, appearing at random to quickly strike the enemy units by using the surrounding landscape to conceal his position and movement. A critical component of these ambushes and traps was cohesion among the Rangers, which required discipline (Wert 34).
Discipline, another defining feature of Mosby's tactics, was entirely new to guerilla warfare. Although more frequently used in standard-issue militaries of the time, it was a new concept to guerilla warfare and one that Mosby greatly profited from during the war. Using a strict discipline system, he formed cohesion among his men and dissuaded disloyalty. He was strict, cutting anyone he believed was not capable of performing at his level and killing those who betrayed him or deserted his ranks. Henceforth, when it came time to fight, he knew he could trust and count on his men to carry out the mission successfully and according to his standards. This cohesion among his men elevated Mosby from traditional guerilla warfare tactics previously mentioned into uncharted territory (Wert 34).
As a result of the high standard and expectation set by Mosby, the men were received well by their fellow Virginians, and according to Theodore Dodge, "any Virginian would shelter and feed them." This effect aided the men in the aftermath of raids when it was necessary to hunker down or hide as they knew they could find food and shelter with the local populace (367–69). The locals also provided excellent scouting as to the enemy's whereabouts. Reconnaissance was just as critical to Mosby as the battle, for he relied on accurate intelligence to set up his ambushes and raids with diligence and precise timing. These tactics, coupled with the Rangers' intimate knowledge of the terrain, initiated a new phase in guerilla warfare tactics.
According to Jeffery Wert in his book Mosby's Rangers, "The terrain in this part of Virginia was conducive to guerilla warfare. Hundreds of square miles of forested mountains, woodlots and hills interspersed with fertile farmlands. A single sentry on horseback, stationed on a knoll, could scan miles of territory for enemy units." Mosby would often utilize the hilly terrain of Northern Virginia to stage ambushes, on occasion integrating artillery pieces as part of the attack. The hills also served as a perfect spot to scout the enemy armies' movement; Mosby's careful reconnaissance often allowed him to gain the upper hand before the battle even commenced. The intimate knowledge of the terrain he possessed also made movement leisurely. Whereas men of the Union Army, unfamiliar with the terrain, found passage rather tricky within the variable Virginia terrain. Ultimately, Mosby's warfare "was warfare predicated upon speed, mobility, and surprise attacks-the tactics of thrust before parry" (Wert 35). Consequently, he could find so much success on the battlefield through these tactics and this manner of combat.
Although, Mosby is remembered for the fact that "He cut out army trains, burned bridges, pounced on sleeping camps, waylaid scouting parties, wrecked trains and captured paymasters with funds... attacked calvary columns with a mere handful of men, and generally played havoc with the minor operations of our armies" there was so much more to his tactics than sheer brutality or "pirate-like" plundering (Dodge 368). Instead, Mosby ushered in a new era of high-speed warfare reliant on strict discipline and soldiers of high experience. Consequently, many of his battlefield successes in the Civil War sprang from his firm understanding of the principles that make up guerilla warfare and his unique tactics to create a more modern fighting style.
Bibliography
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