Portrait Monthly Volume: May 1st, 1864 Romance of the War—Adventures with Mosby's Guerrillas. A correspondent with the Army of the Potomac, dating from Warrenton, October 22d, 1863, says:
“Last Sunday, October 16, I rode from Alexandria to Bull Run. It was my misfortune to meet with Mosby, and my good fortune not to be captured. I was gaily galloping along the turnpike thinking of this very individual, little imagining him to be the very devil that would soon appear. As I mounted my horse I observed on the newly whitewashed wall of the building, a notice written in great scrambling letters, similar to what a boy would compare the autograph of Jack Shephard, written upon the parlor wall of a plundered mansion. The writer `begged to inform the people of Alexandria' that he had this day `dined in the Marshall House.' On the same line with this date, `September 30, 1863,' was plainly written, `Major Mosby.'”
“Wondering very much if this bandit had been here, and if he had slept in the room on the same landing where Ellsworth was killed, I failed to notice an excited cavalryman, who was hastily telling me that the individual who now troubled my mind so much might trouble me for my purse, my watch—nay, more—myself. I paid less attention to this information than did Lochiel to the forewarnings of the plaided and bonneted seer. Soon I came to a company of the 2d New Jersey cavalry, and was quietly passing, when twenty-five men in gray homespun sprang from the bush, shot a sergeant through the thigh, and captured Captain Gallagher, after shooting his horse. They effected their escape. The men were not drilled, but one or two had pistols, and I think they should have rescued their captain. They did not. Two or three trains turned back, and I was almost persuaded that it would be impossible to get through to Fairfax. I started, however, and galloped through in a short time.
Mosby has a den in the forest. He captured a man in the 106th Pennsylvania the last time the Second Corps crossed the Rappahannock. The man wandered off into the woods about one hundred and fifty yards, when a little man stepped adroitly from behind the cover of a huge oak, presented a revolver at the soldier's head, and intimated for him to keep quiet. All this time the Second Corps was slowly filing along the road within sight of Mosby and his prisoner. He led him by secret and unknown paths to a lair in the mountains, where were other prisoners, sutlers' wagons, and other engaged in the same nefarious calling.
Every one living in this portion of Virginia would die to serve this man. They are his lookouts, his pickets, his videttes. Nothing passes their doors but is seen by them, and information sent to Mosby. He gives them a share of the plunder. A few miles from Anandale, on the road leading to Fairfax, stands a comfortable-looking frame building, with the usual Southern outbuildings. It is but a little over two months since one of our soldiers stood at the front door of this house and shot Mosby. Every one thought the wound fatal. A friend took him to Upperville, where he was carefully nursed by Mrs. Mosby, and now he is waylaying people on the same road. He can never be captured by cavalry. All last winter Stahl's cavalry were busily engaged hunting him. We could attend to a brigade of Stuart's cavalry much easier than he. His haunt is about Upperville. One hundred good men marched there after night and stationed around the building would be sure to take him. In the daytime his friends in the different farmhouses are alert and watchful; he is warned, and immediately flies to some place inaccessible to cavalry.”
Canonizing a man appears to signify making a big gun of him.
