The Memoirs of Colonel John S Mosby eBook John S Mosby
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"No other figure of the Civil War became during his lifetime such a storybook legend as Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the audacious and resourceful Confederate soldier who, operating in sight of the Capitol dome with a handful of undisciplined guerrillas, performed prodigies in breaking up Union communications and capturing or putting to flight detachments of Union troops that were often far larger than his own."--Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore
"Since the close of the war, I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally, and somewhat intimately. . . .There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate detachment, in the rear of an opposing army and so near the border of hostilities, as long as he did without losing his entire command."--Ulysses S. Grant
John Singleton Mosby (1833-1916) studied at the University of Virginia and was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1854. Upon the secession of Virginia he entered the Confederate military service and subsequently formed an independent cavalry unit which operated behind Union lines in a region that came to be known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” After the war, Mosby held several U.S. Government posts, including a consulship in Hong Kong.
"John Singleton Mosby ranks up there with the very best of those who served his country during war and I suspect that had he served with the North during the War Between The States his legacy today would be even more enhanced.
His Partisan Rangers gave the Federal Army in Virginia more than they had anticipated or could handle and they sustained their brilliant raids throughout the war. They were so good at their small unit hit and run tactics that at the war's end there was some question as to whether they would be pardoned. They were and his skill as a Ranger, his daring, and his loyalty to his cause and to those who served under him earned him the respect of many of his contemporaries, North and South alike...well, most of them anyway. George Custer probably didn't like him too much but read Mosby's book and see why.
Having visited and walked some of the sites of his raids and fights in Virginia I greatly enjoyed having his book with me. Getting back to the place is one thing while getting back to the time is another. MOSBY'S MEMOIRS offered those rare, brief glimpses into the mind and times of a true Special Operations soldier." - Reviewer
The Memoirs of Colonel John S Mosby eBook John S Mosby
Great book about the Civil War era. It detailed a lot of information about that time and was very interesting to me. I have read a lot of material about that era and this gave me a new perspective and an insight into those times. John Mosby (the Gray Ghost) was truly a remarkable character. Times have changed and this book gave me a glimpse into the education of the time. The Vocabulary and the references challenged me because the words and references we don't generally use today. I thought it was a great book... You should read it if you are interested in that era... we should know out history.Product details
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The Memoirs of Colonel John S Mosby eBook John S Mosby Reviews
I purchased the format of this book and, as with many other reviewers, was disappointed with the Ebook format. The text was replete with typos, symbols and complete omissions. In many cases, footnotes were inserted into the text with no indication that they were not part of the narrative. The absence of ANY maps made it difficult for the reader to appreciate the description of troop movements. This was particularly frustrating when trying to understand the discussion about Stuart's movements in the Gettysburg campaign. I would have been lost without my West Point Atlas of the Civil War. That being said, Mosby's story was exciting and very informative. Until I read this book, I had little appreciation of his many and varied contributions to the Confederacy and the ANV. I was a little surprised, and disappointed, to read the allegations that Lee's aides, Marshall, Long and Taylor, falsified reports and letters to protect Lee and disparage Stuart. The book is a "must read" for Civil War buffs. I'd investigate the paper formats before buying. The may be better edited, and contain maps
This is an interesting but disjointed book, written by Colonel John S. Mosby, the notorious "Gray Ghost," whose unrelenting guerilla campaign in northern Virginia during the Civil War so vexed the Union army that the area became known as "Mosby's Confederacy."
The book is, to say the least, a bit of patchwork. Mosby begins with details of his early life in Virginia and the course which led him to side with the Confederacy in 1861, as well as his initial service as a private soldier in the early part of the war. It then shifts to a historical overview of the war's opening years. From there it becomes a long and very involved defense of Jeb Stuart, who Mosby insists was set up as a scapegoat for Lee's failure at Gettysburg. It then shifts once more to the "memoir" format and discusses the organization and operations of his guerilla band in Northern Virginia and elsewhere during the last two years of the war. Some of this is handled through reminiscences, much more through letters, newspaper articles and fragments of official dispatches; elsewise it is dug out of the archives Mosby perused after the war. It winds up with two brief chapters about his memories of Lee and, postwar, of Grant, both very interesting (the one about Lee seems to have been used in Shaara's "The Killer Angels").
Mosby is a fascinating specimen, one of those men who was clearly born for cavalry fighting and partisan warfare even though he had no training in it. He showed a flash of his later form as a young man when he sought out and shot a bully who had threatened his life, but other than this "affair of honor" there is nothing in his pre-war makeup that indicated the brilliant partisan fighter he would become. In this sense he is reminiscent of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader who became one of the greatest cavalrymen of all time, but Mosby was of a somewhat different mettle. He had neither Forrest's raw savagery nor the taste for cruelty that marked William Quantrill. He conducted operations with enormous daring and skill, and was almost always successful in his raids, though he was several times shot and once briefly captured. Grant, Sheridan and more or less every Union commander he faced regarded him as an infernal nuisance, which is a very high compliment to his ability. He took enormous delight, and pride, in vexing the Yankees at every turn, but he had a spirit of mischief, mingled with chivalry, which seemed to separate him from many of his fellows. He used informants and scouts to probe for weaknesses in the Northern supply lines, then struck out of nowhere, stealing everything he could carry and burning what he couldn't. His casualties were always light, and the damage he inflicted always heavy. One of his more amusing anecdotes is of meeting Grant after the war and having his old nemesis tell him that he, Mosby, only narrowly missed blowing up the very train Grant took East to assume command in 1864. To this day, the U.S. Army Rangers regard Mosby as one of their own, and use his example to inspire their men.
That is Mosby the fighter. As a writer, he I must say he was very badly in need of a better editor, both at the time he wrote this work (1917) and the time it was published in this volume (2017). For starters, he did not seem to know what kind of book he wanted to write a history of the Virginia campaigns of the Civil War, a defense of Jeb Stuart, or a memoir. He opted on all three, which makes the book a bit of a mess. More seriously, the formatting and editing of this book is very, very bad. Because of failures to close quotes or to use block paragraphs or different typefaces and so forth, it is often impossible to tell when Mosby is narrating, when he is quoting someone else, or when the editor has stepped in. (In several places one paragraph has accidentally been inserted into another!) This made the book harder to follow and could have been avoided with some simple proofreading.
Having said that, I found "Memoirs" to be interesting for Mosby's unconventional view of Stuart's role in the Gettysburg campaign, his plainly ambivalent feelings about Lee, his postwar relationship with Grant, and his sense of humor and obvious intelligence. He frequently quotes or refers to the Greek classics, Shakespeare, Roman and Napoleonic history, etc., and in the main comes off as the classic citizen-soldier who fought hard but without hate. If he expresses no remorse for the men he killed and had killed, his courage showed that he was willing to put himself at equal risk, and the fact that several of his former prisoners became lifelong friends of his shows in what regard he was held by his enemies. What's more, he accepted defeat with much grace and re- assimilated himself into the Union, where he waged a peaceful fight to help many of his former comrades while also battling many of his former superiors in the newspapers. It wasn't easy to make criticisms of Lee or correspond with Grant in the postwar South, but then again, Mosby was never one to take an easy path. It's difficult to call a man who took up arms so effectively against the U.S. an "American hero" but I truly think that in his own way, the Gray Ghost was just exactly that.
In addition to providing insights on one of the most effective Confederate special operations and guerrilla efforts, Col. John S. Mosby's memoirs reveal some surprising beliefs possessed by a hardcore Southern partisan. As a reader would expect, Mosby gives worthwhile details about specific fights he was involved in as well as the tactics he employed. He also relates personal anecdotes about key Confederates he fought for, most notably Army of Northern Virginia cavalry commander Gen. J.E.B. Stuart and Gen. Robert E. Lee. The most unexpected aspects of his memoirs are the regrets he has about slavery which he illustrates with some bad memories from his childhood; one unpleasant memory concerned how a black friend and playmate was humiliated by white children who "sold" him in a pretend slave auction. Mosby is also highly critical of demagogue pushers of secession in the antebellum South. Equally interesting is his account of his reconciliation to former Union Army enemies.
Great book about the Civil War era. It detailed a lot of information about that time and was very interesting to me. I have read a lot of material about that era and this gave me a new perspective and an insight into those times. John Mosby (the Gray Ghost) was truly a remarkable character. Times have changed and this book gave me a glimpse into the education of the time. The Vocabulary and the references challenged me because the words and references we don't generally use today. I thought it was a great book... You should read it if you are interested in that era... we should know out history.
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