If anyone knows of a famous person whose birthday is worth mentioning,please let me know so I can post it on the homepage. If you have a photo of one of your ancestors and wish to honor themby having their photo posted on the homepage. Only one photo please. I will also post single photos of historical places. All submissions must be related to Southern History.
See the current photo on the homepage as an example.
Well, birthday of a famous person, no. But date of death, yes. Indeed, the one thing John Mosby and I share is the date of his death - May 30th, 1916 - and the date of my birth - May 30th, 1941.
Oakland Tribune – May 30th, 1916 COL. MOSBY, FAMED CONFEDERATE, DEAD
Washington, May 30 – Colonel John Mosby, 83, daring Confederate leader in the Civil War, died today at Garfield hospital. He had been critically ill since Sunday. As leader of Mosby’s guerrillas, the colonel made a place for himself in history during the conflict between north and south.
Colonel Mosby, the sponsor of “Mosby’s Men” and one of the last of the dashing figures of the Civil War, was admired both by North and South – although he had many enemies in both sections. He was the originator of the Mosby method of warfare; to use only picked men and to make each man seem a hundred. So dangerous was he to the North that he was declared an outlaw and denied the right of surrender at the end of the war.
Cavalrymen searched for Mosby in the Virginia mountains until General Grant, appealed to by Mosby’s wife, ordered the outlawry order canceled.
Colonel Mosby started life peaceable enough at the Mosby plantation at Edgemont, Powhatan county, Va., where he was born in 1833. He was graduated from the University of Virginia, a full-fledged lawyer at nineteen – in 1852.
Three years spent at his parents’ home palled on him, and he started the practice of law in 1856. Soon there after he married Miss Pauline Clarke, daughter of Judge Beverly J. Clarke, who had served as member of Congress and U.S. Minister to Guatemala.
When the Confederacy called for troops, Mosby enlisted with General J.E.B. Stuart’s First Virginia Cavalry. In Stuart and Mosby, the regiment furnished the South two of its famous officers.
Stuart, then Colonel, became cavalry leader for the South, and it was him that Mosby outlined the plan he had conceived for Mosby’s men.
In the winter of 1862-1863 the plan was completed and launched. Mosby, given a roving commission, circled to the rear of General Burnside, facing that of Lee along the Rappahannock river. His raid there was the first of many that took the heart out of Union men who felt the sting of his little band of wasp-like cavalrymen.
It was Mosby’s plan to hit quick and hard – always from behind, when he was cut off from all help with hostile troops between him and his people. He was captured once and wounded several times. When he was captured he was taken to Washington. It was a matter of regret and sent back to his army.
After the war – and after General Grant, by his magnanimous order had the order of outlawry against him lifted, Mosby started to practice law in Warrenton, Va. He startled the South when in 1872, he voted for Grant – a hated Republican – for president.
Virginians could not understand the motives of Colonel Mosby. Ostracized, he left Warrenton and went to Washington. He practiced law until he was made consul to Hong Kong.
On his return in 1895, he was put on the legal staff of the Southern Pacific in San Francisco. He resigned and took a place in the general land office, investigating land frauds.
In 1905 he entered the department of Justice as a special attorney. He was removed as “senile” by Attorney General Wickersham in 1910. coincident with his removal, he published a book on the cavalry maneuvers of the battle of Gettysburg that seemed so far from “senile” that it was adopted as a text book by the War College.
Since his removal from office, Colonel Mosby had made his home with his daughter, Mrs. Stuart Coleman, in Washington.
Colonel Mosby’s death, his physicians said, was due solely to old age. Until six months ago, when he went into a sudden decline, he was a familiar sight about the streets of the capitol.
He will be buried at his ancestral home at Warrenton, Va., probably Thursday, and such survivors of his noted command will be the pallbearers.
mark if you can send me a better one please do so.
Will get the info for both submissions posted as soon as I can and leave it for a day or so. I have the empty space on the homepage and have no idea how to fill it.
BTW will be gone to Ship Island fishing tomorrow early AM, weather permitting.
