Merry Christmas Everyone!

“Col John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost”

It always warms my heart to read a reference to Mosby the Gray Ghost.
he and Robert Lee’s sons brought Chivalry, brilliance and humor to cavalry operations in Virginia.

“Mosby’s most famous raid occurred in March of 1863, inside Union lines at Fairfax County Courthouse, when he captured Brigadier General Edwin H. Stoughton.

“They cut the telegraph wires and captured the operator as well as most of the guards in the area. They attempted to grab the cavalry colonel but learned that he had been called to Washington.

But the general was there — and he was woken by Mosby spanking his back.

“There was no time for ceremony, so I drew up the bedclothes, pulled up the general’s shirt, and gave him a spank on his bare back, and told him to get up,” Mosby later wrote.
As the general tried to understand what was going on, Mosby asked him, “Do you know Mosby, General?”

The General replied, “Yes! Have you got the rascal?”

“No,” said Mosby. “He’s got you!”

Union Brig. Gen. Edwin Stoughton was captured by Confederate forces before his commission could be voted on by the Senate.

Stoughton was captured with three other officers, a number of enlisted men, and at least 55 horses. When President Abraham Lincoln was told of the event, he supposedly said that he could always make a new brigadier general in five minutes, “but those horses cost $125 apiece!”

One of the properties I considered when moving to Virginia bordered one of the star forts where Mosby watched the Potomac.
That property was out of my price range, but I loved visiting that fort.