New York Times - April 14th, 1865 Mosby Does Not Recognize Lee’s Surrender Col. Gambel, commanding the Union forces at Fairfax Station, has received a message from Mosby in which the latter says he does not care about Lee’s surrender, and that he is determined to fight so long as he has a man left.
Ah, I love it when someone asks a question in my (only) field of (limited) expertise. First, Mosby NEVER surrendered either himself or his command; he disbanded the 43rd Battalion. Secondly, we have only the word of the Yankee source that Mosby ever said such a thing though there are Southern sources who make the same claim such as Amanda "Tee" Edmunds.
Mosby continued to wage war after Appomattox because he had received no notification that he trusted regarding same. Remember, he was often the target of traps and artifices by the enemy in hopes of luring him into a situation where he could be captured or killed. When he received "official" notice from General Hancock of Lee's surrender, he arranged a truce until he could find out for himself if it were so. Yet, Lee never made contact with Mosby and ordered him to lay down his arms though Mosby is listed as one of the officers in later Union documentation of the officers under Lee in the AoNVa.
Of course, Mosby by the time he received Hancock's letter knew well enough what had happened but he was more than a little "put off" by the fact that though his command had been offered the same parole as Lee and the rest of the Army, he had been denied same and was declared an outlaw. General Augur stated that "under no circumstances would the guerrilla chief Mosby be paroled." Needless to say, this made any negotiations on his part immensely difficult. He had sent four of his men to meet with Hancock to arrange the truce and they were told that the Union army was prepared to go through "Mosby's Confederacy" (Loudoun and Fauquier counties) and burn it to the ground. Only Lincoln's assassination had prevented that from being done. However, since the truce was in force and Mosby was not waging war, the order had been rescinded. But when Mosby met a second time with General Chapman (he had told Chapman at their first meeting that he would not surrender but would disband and let his men choose their own path and, further, that he asked no favors for himself as he believed he had always fought according to the rules of war) and refused to surrender, Chapman told him that the burning orders would be carried out.
Therefore, John Mosby disbanded the 43rd to protect the people who had succored him throughout the time he fought in northern Virginia. He and a few men went South to Richmond to see if Johnston was still fighting with the intent of joining him, but when they found out that Johnston had surrendered and the war was truly over, Mosby disbanded what remained of those with him and went into a two and a half month period of outlawry until he was finally offered a parole in late June, 1865. Mosby knew that it was futile to continue to fight and that it would only result in the devastation of the civilians he had protected throughout the war without being of any benefit to Virginia or the South. Still, he was the last Confederate in arms although he did not wage war after disbanding because, as he told John Munson, to do so would be "highway robbery and murder" and they were soldiers, not outlaws.
Mosby never surrendered. He disbanded his battalion and two and a half months later, took a parole - but he never surrendered or put his hand to a paper saying that he personally surrendered or that he surrendered his command. It's a technicality, of course, because by signing an oath or parole, he in effect stopped fighting, but he never surrendered. In fact, after disbanding, he did not fight though he wore his pistols and when a parole was offered and then rescinded, he told the Yankees there that he would not submit to arrest but would kill any man who tried to take him. So you might say, he was still fighting until he actually signed the parole.
He was an absolutely amazing man and though he was castigated and shunned when he supported a reconciliation of the sections after the war and supported the Republicans, nonetheless, Mosby always acted for the best concerning the people of the South in general and Virginia in particular. He never gained anything personally until he was forced to accept a government position to keep his family from starving but as he grew older, he became disillusioned with the United States though he said so only tangentially. After all, he had children and grandchildren whom he had to protect. Had he come out openly against the U. S. Government and its increasing empire-building, he could have negatively affected their lives.
Remember, Mosby had always loved the United States and was an enemy of both secession and slavery. He went with the Confederacy because Virginia seceded. After the war, he preached conciliation and reconciliation and a consignment of all evils - real and imagined - to oblivion. Yet, in the end, he condemned Sheridan as a barbarian for his actions in the Shenandoah and in the last sentence of his memoirs published posthumously, claimed that if he could have saved the Confederacy, he would have done so. Obviously, as the shades of night drew near, his disappointment with the United States, the nation he had cherished before and after the War was marked.
Not sure just what your intention of posting this information to this thread happens to be. If it was J. W. Booth's birthday you should have posted it to a new thread with facts and sources. In fact some good sourced information on this man would be appreciated for our Confederate History Month Project.
I have several complaints about Booth, however. First, he was inexcusably tardy. By the time he determined to act, he did more harm than good because he gave the damned Yankees an excuse for the commission of further evils against the South. Even Grant - no believer in the "wickedness" of the South - stated that by the assassination "the South" had "rejected mercy for justice". Well, of course, it was Booth who delivered "justice" on a monstrous criminal, but winners never look at it that way.
Secondly, Booth's choices of co-conspirators was abysmal. Lewis Powell, a/k/a Paine should have been a good choice. He was intelligent and brave (an ex-Mosby's Ranger), but his behavior was very strange and it could be that Booth - no stranger to drugs and drink - introduced the young man from a very strict religious background to one or both of these and as a result, severely compromised his ability to perform. Azerodt was a fool and a coward and Booth should have known that. If his aim was to throw the government into chaos, then Johnson had to die as did Seward. Powell at least was a reasonable assassin even though he failed, but the other simply did not have the courage or the will to murder Johnson.
It seems that Booth chose at least some of his companions because he knew that they were weak and under his sway. He did not choose men who were strong enough to follow through on any undertaking of this nature. Furthermore, his planning was chaotic and makeshift. He didn't even know that he was going to murder Lincoln until that day when he learned that the President would be at the theater! If Lincoln had stayed home at the White House or gone to another play, Booth's "plans" would have been rendered null and void. That ain't the way to run a conspiracy.
After the Dahlgren-Kilpatrick raid on Richmond when it was discovered that there was a plan afoot to murder the Confederate government, that government should have moved swiftly to counter-strike. Instead, they acted shocked and saddened and believed the Yankee lies that the officers in charge of the raid were solely responsible. Of course, given the amount of troops at their disposal and the distractions caused by Custer's raid to give them cover, such a claim was on its face, nonsense. But the South chose not to act.
I swear that the Confederacy fell more as a result of an excess of chivalry and decency than from any particular lack on the part of their armies. Stonewall Jackson was right. The Confederates should have fought under the black flag when the first Yankee crossed the Potomac. Jackson said that they were attacking the homes and families of the South and deserved no better than any other barbarian and outlaw. The war would have ended quickly because the people of the Union did not have the stomach for that kind of a fight.
