With your permission I'll be making you a full member of SHAPE in the next day or so. I'll be giving you access to the members pages. You will also be allowed to get free lookups if needed.
As a person doomed to live far from God's Country whether Virginia (which I adore) or Mississippi (which has been given more than its fair share of beauty, methinks! ), I too, bid you welcome.
I have a very large collection of books on the assassination, some of which are very esoteric. Indeed, my interest in John Singleton Mosby was reawakened after many years of lying dormant because of a chance mention in a new biography regarding Mosby's possible involvement with Booth. So naturally, I became very interested in the matter. Have you read Charles Higham's "Murdering Mr. Lincoln"?
No I have not read "Murdering Mr. Lincoln" what I did to Lincoln was a public service, not murder.
As for Mosby....
After the war, Mosby became an active Republican. Mosby went on to become a campaign manager in Virginia for President Grant. Mosby's friendship with Grant, and his work with those whom many Southerners considered the enemy, made Mosby a highly controversial figure in Virginia. He received death threats, his boyhood home was burned down, and at least one attempt was made to assassinate him. The danger contributed to the President's appointing him as U.S. consul to Hong Kong (1878–1885). Mosby then served as a lawyer in San Francisco with the Southern Pacific Railroad.
You have opened a can of worms with me about Mosby. His post war actions were not what has been stated and his reasons have never been looked at with any objectivity. However, I will at least say a few things here:
1st, Mosby was an active conservative Democrat in Virginia after the war. He fought against the carpetbagger/radical/freedmen local and state governments. Indeed, he took on former Col. William Boyd who had been appointed Sheriff of Fauquier County (Mosby's residence) by the military authorities and vanquished him and those who protected him in the occupying forces.
2nd, in 1872, the Democrats ran a "fusion" candidate, Horace Greeley. Greeley had campaigned to have Mosby hanged after the war. Furthermore, as Mosby rightly pointed out, Greeley was one of those who molded the viewpoint of Northerners against the people of the South for years.
On the other hand, Grant had been steadfast after the war in protecting former Confederate officers against demands by Johnson and Stanton that he revoke their parole so that they could be tried and hanged. One of those soldiers was Mosby who had been denied a parole at war's end and spent two and a half months as a hunted outlaw. Grant had given Mosby a parole at the request of Robert E. Lee and had refused to revoke that parole. He also had given Pauline Mosby a document which ended the constant arrests Mosby suffered after the war as efforts were made to try him as a murderer. Mosby OWED Grant a great deal and he was never one to forget a kindness or a debt of gratitude no matter how inconvenient though years might pass.
So given the choice between Greeley - whom Mosby despised as a prevaricator and an enemy of the South - and Grant, who had been steadfast in protecting Confederate soldiers, Mosby chose Grant. He stated that he preferred Grant against whom the South had fought for four years to Greeley whom it had fought for forty. He did "stump" for Grant in 1872, but he was not his "campaign manager". Furthermore, Mosby had a lot of help from those soldiers in Virginia whom Grant had helped. Virginia went for Grant and Grant tried to reward Mosby with a high position. Mosby refused saying that it would then appear that he had acted out of self interest. Grant was astonished and it was the beginning of an affectionate friendship between the two men which lasted until Grant's death. But there was nothing that Mosby did that he did for any reason other than to get Virginia back in the Union in order to end the occupation and the corrupt reconstruction governments.
3rd, Mosby had never been a Democrat. He was a Whig and a Unionist Democrat before the War. He rejected secession and would probably have fought for the Union had Virginia not seceded so his politics after the War were hardly a matter of self interest but a continuation of his earlier political philosophy - again, very different from the scalawag who did what he did out of self interest. Mosby despised the Democrats. He believed them responsible for the War between their pro-slavery rhetoric (yes, that did happen, alas) and the fact that the split that occurred in that party allowed Lincoln to be elected (true). In 1876, he saw that party nominate the Governor of New York which had the most corrupt political machine extant - Tammany Hall - in its largest city. Governor Tilden appointed judges who were easily bribed by "Boss" Tweed and never moved against these criminals. Mosby, who was a completely honest and ethically pure man, found Tilden's corruption an abomination. Oh, he admitted to the faults in the Republican Party and Grant's administration, but at least Grant himself was honest if undiscerning in his choice of appointees! So, of course, Mosby went with Hayes, an honest man and a known reformer who had promised not to run for a second term if elected.
Naturally, that was the last straw for many in the South though some of the most prestigious Southern politicians (like newly elected governor of South Carolina Wayde Hampton) used Mosby to get concessions from Grant - and then castigated both Mosby and Grant after their favors were bestowed! Who is the dishonorable one in those circumstances! Certainly not Mosby!
John Mosby's post war actions were based upon his personal moral ethic rather than any self-interest. He may have made mistakes, but they were never of the kind that could be considered dishonorable. He loved Virginia and the South and all that he did was done in order to restore the Union for the good of the South at least as he saw that good. While lesser men made fortunes either betraying the South or leading movements that often served to marginalize and lessen the South's influence in the making of policy, John Mosby ended his life in dire poverty because he refused to do either. Who then, is the real Southern hero? I think that the answer is obvious.
), I too, bid you welcome.
