Mosby’s latest nemesis emerged in the final days of 1863. About eighty members of Cole’s Cavalry1 led by bugler-turned-officer Captain Albert M. Hunter entered Mosby’s Confederacy on December 30 from their base camp nestled on the crags of Loudoun Heights, a few miles from Harpers Ferry. The Union troops hoped to deal a crippling blow to Mosby. Riding over forty miles through sleet and snow and passing through the country hamlets of Hillsboro and Waterford, they halted in Middleburg, where Hunter and his men camped for the evening. During the night, the Northerner experienced a night terror and premonition: “We were in a fight and that a large body of the enemy surrounded us and completely routed us and captured many.”2 Fighting off the ominous sign, Captain Hunter rose the following day, and his command rode to the heart of Mosby’s Confederacy: Rectortown.
Hunter was an officer in Cole’s Cavalry, or the 1st Regiment Potomac Home Brigade, named after its commander, a brave and seasoned warrior, twenty-nine-year-old Major Henry Cole. The regiment consisted of men from western Maryland; Loudoun County, Virginia; and Pennsylvania. They were “farmers’, planters’ sons, mainly in good circumstance, who owned good horses.”3 In a deeply divided state such as Maryland, many of them faced hateful discourse, derision, and even physical violence from their neighbors, but as one member of the unit declared, “I loved my country and flag better than my State or section.”4
Against a dull, gray sky, snow fell as Hunter’s men, braving freezing temperatures, cautiously entered an eerily empty Rectortown. Along the way, Mosby’s men intimidated their quarry through basic psychological warfare: they “rode around and were seen on every little hill and knoll,”5 watching the Federals like hawks. A Ranger rendezvous had been scheduled that day, but word got out: “Don’t go to Rectortown it is full [of] Yankees.”6 To the invading Union troops, a Ranger seemed to lurk behind every tree and hill. As Hunter scanned the largely deserted town, his men ran out a few Rangers who did not get the word as the troopers occupied Rectortown. Meanwhile, the recently minted commander of Mosby’s Company B, Captain Billy Smith, collected nearly three dozen Rangers and went after the Union troopers.
Outgunned and deep in hostile territory, Hunter started the long journey back to Loudoun Heights when he noticed “several blue-coated men riding along.” To gain an advantage, deceive their opponents, and approach within pistol range, against the current rules of war, Mosby’s men often wore Union uniforms. Hunter continued, “We had not gone a half of a mile when the rear guard notified me that a large force was coming up.”7
Smith ambushed Hunter at Five Points, a junction where five country lanes converge about four miles from Rectortown. Forming a line of battle, the Union troopers occupied a strong position and fired their carbines at the oncoming horsemen, but many of the cartridges were damp from the inclement weather and misfired. Smith rode in front of his troops and ordered his men to charge to gain “the bulge.”
Screaming as they charged into the Union flanks and rear, the Rangers unleashed a torrent of lead from their Colts. Smith’s second charge broke Hunter’s men. Hunter later remembered his premonition the night before, “dreaming a dream that was realized the next day.”8 The Rangers routed the Federals, “killing, wounding, and capturing 57.”9 In the melee, Hunter was unhorsed and lay wounded and bruised on the ground. Two Rangers with empty pistols stood over him and demanded his weapons. The Union officer pointed to his horse and told them his pistols were on the animal, which had bolted away.10 The Confederates directed him to join the other prisoners they rounded up. As the Rangers turned their backs to look for his horse, the Union captain hid behind a log and covered himself in leaves. He later reflected, “Here I was alone forty miles from camp on foot considerably hurt, and in an enemy’s country, and surrounded by the enemy. It was between 3 and 4 o’clock and in less than an hour turned awful cold.”11 A wet snow fell. Deep in enemy territory at sunset, a scene that would have “enraptured the artist or inspired a poet”12 unfolded as one Ranger described: “Not a cloud broke the blue sky above as the sun was setting in the west behind its fiery curtains. The mountains seem as one vast sheet of ice, and the reflection of the sun’s declining rays on the scene was indeed sublime.”13 But Hunter did not have time to appreciate the natural splendor. Miraculously, the cavalry captain was able to hide from roving bands of Rangers and made the forty-mile trek back to Loudoun Heights on foot in the frigid weather. Within days, he once again would come face-to-face with the Rangers.
Fresh off their victory against Hunter, Mosby sought to vanquish Cole and his cavalry once and for all. An opportunity to destroy their nemesis presented itself in the form of ninety-four-pound Frank Stringfellow. The twentysomething scout and favorite of Jeb Stuart claimed to have disguised himself as a Yankee colonel and had dinner with Union general John Sedgwick, and he later spied for the South undercover as a dental assistant in Alexandria, where he was closer to his beautiful fiancée, Emma Green. His narrow escapes and derring-do were legendary and sometimes sounded too good to be true, because they were. As Mosby remembered, “He was a brave soldier, but a great liar.”14 He was also an elite agent in the Confederate Secret Service.
Assigned to Mosby in the fall of 1863, Stringfellow scouted the area around Cole’s headquarters, near the base of Loudoun Heights, and identified a weakness in the encampment: “[Cole had] no supports but infantry, which was about a one-half mile off.”15 Based on the scout’s intelligence, Mosby gathered some one hundred men and planned a surprise attack on the freezing night of January 9, 1864, in Upperville.
Wrapped in blankets and bundled clothing to stave off the frigid conditions, the group rode toward the northeast to Round Hill and stopped at Ranger Henry Heaton’s commodious estate, Woodgrove. Suffering from frostbitten hands and feet, the men warmed themselves in front of a roaring fire and were fed warm food. Heaton typified many of Mosby’s men—wealthy and local, they brought an exceptional knowledge of the area, its customs, and safe houses.
The stars shone brightly through a blue-black sky, and a sharp, cold wind bit into the men’s faces and extremities. Rangers occasionally dismounted and stomped their frozen feet to ward off the enveloping frostbite. “No sound broke the stillness of night except the dull, heavy tramp of the horses as they trod the snowy path. Fields, roads, and shrubs were alike clothed in the white robes of winter, and it seemed almost a sacrilege against the beauty and holy stillness of the scene to stain those pure garments with the lifeblood of men, be he friend or foe,” recalled James Williamson.16
About two miles from the enemy camp, Stringfellow and his scouting party joined Mosby. A frontal assault up Harpers Ferry Road straight into Cole’s headquarters would have been a bloodbath. Instead, Stringfellow led the band north to the Potomac. They dismounted and led their horses in single file on foot through deep snow on a treacherous steep, narrow mountain trail following the river. The shrill whistle of a train sounded in the distance as the Rangers navigated the path and spotted Union campfires nearby.
About 200 yards from the sleeping, unsuspecting camp, Mosby paused and ordered Stringfellow and a few other men to stealthily capture Cole and his staff, located in a two-story house17 one hundred yards from the battalion’s bivouac area. Instead, “all of my plans were on the eve of consummation when suddenly the party sent with Stringfellow came dashing over the hill toward the camp, yelling and shooting. They made no attempt to secure Cole,”18 remembered Mosby. Above the din of battle, Mosby then urged his men to charge Captain Smith, and Lieutenant Thomas Turner shouted:
“Charge them, boys! Charge them!”19
Mistaking Stringfellow’s men for the enemy, the Rangers fired into the charging Confederates. Simultaneously, Mosby’s men fired into Cole’s tents. Several of Cole’s men sheepishly surrendered in their underwear and nightclothes. Others leaped into action, including Captain Hunter, who recalled, “Gunfire open[ed] my eyes, and in an instant a strange noise had me out of my bunk, also ordnance Sergeant O. A. Horner. I jumped out picked up my boots and stepping out of my tent pulled my boots on outside. Major Horner drew his on inside and had not got out before two or three bullets tore through our blankets on the bunk. Men were all around me, what to do. A carbine was fired just at my side with the words ‘get off you son of a bitch,’ and I recognized the voice of Charles A. Gilson, who had fired at a man on horseback who was unhitching my horse that was tied just behind my tent.”20
Cole had issued standing orders that if the Confederates attacked the battalion, his men were not to mount a horse so as to more clearly identify the enemy, and to “shoot every man on horseback.”21
Cole’s men directed deadly carbine fire at the mounted Rangers, seeking cover from the various houses and cabins in the encampment. After urging his men on, one of Cole’s officers took a devastating wound to his face, losing his left eye. Hunter described the chaotic nature of the melee: “dark objects moving, some by the flash from the discharge of carbines, that was rapid for a few minutes. I do not think the whole thing lasted more than fifteen minutes, and when quiet was restored, it seemed as if an earthquake or some terrible convulsion of nature had swept over us and tore everything all to pieces.”22
Crimson blood splattered the white snow. Bullets hit Ranger lieutenant “Fighting Tom” Thomas Turner, one of Mosby’s original fifteen. He turned to Walter Frankland and said, “I am shot.”23 Mortally wounded, Turner would die several days later. Mosby’s close friend and aide, Fountain Beattie, took a ball to the thigh.
A signal gun from Harpers Ferry discharged, indicating Union reinforcements were on the march toward the besieged camp. Faced with mounting casualties, Mosby ordered his men to retire. As the Rangers tried to evacuate their wounded, more went down, including Billy Smith, who tried to save young Charles Paxson after the latter was unhorsed by a hail of bullets. Alone and dying, Paxson stammered, “Are you going to leave me here on the field?”24
Smith rode up and tried to save Paxson, but a shot from a carbine ended Smith’s life. “The flash from the volley for a moment blinded me and a feeling of thankfulness that we had escaped possessed me, when suddenly [Smith] leaped upright from the saddle and fell on the right side of his horse, his left foot drawing the stirrup over the right side and both of his feet hung in the stirrups with his head on snow,”25 remembered William R. Chapman. The Ranger officer pulled Smith’s dangling body off the stirrups of his horse and placed his corpse in the snow. Mosby later stated in his report that Captain Smith and Lieutenant Turner were “two of the noblest and bravest officers of this army, who thus sealed a life of devotion and of sacrifice to the cause they loved.”26
Like mist, the Rangers dissolved into the darkness. Captain Hunter remembered, “A moment’s reflection brought us to our senses, and a search for the enemy but always gone.”27
The retreat to Woodgrove was filled with gloom; “sad and sullen silence pervaded our ranks and found expression in every countenance,”28 as Williamson ruefully remembered. Mosby called it “one of the worst fights.”29 His Rangers lost many men, eight killed and several wounded who, like Smith and Turner, possessed invaluable leadership and experience. The Rangers’ strength stemmed from the exceptional skill and bravery of the men, intangible qualities hard to replace. Williamson recalled Mosby’s demeanor: “Even the Major, though he usually appeared cold and unyielding, could not conceal his disappointment [tears ran down his face] and keen regret at the result of this enterprise. He knew and felt that he had suffered a loss which could not well be repaired.”30
At dawn, the Federals surveyed the carnage. “We found Captain Smith, Mosby’s dashing leader, dead in front of Captain Corner’s tent, another near and a track of blood from behind my tent toward the road and 100 yd. off we found a dead man. I suppose Charles A. Gilson shots did work for him. A number of our men were wounded. Also, several of Mosby’s men fell into our hands,” Hunter revealed. One of those men was the mortally wounded Ranger Charlie Paxson. In his dying breath, Paxson asked for a member of Cole’s command, Samuel McNair. Months earlier Paxson’s mother, an ardent Southerner, had cared for the wounded McNair in their family home after he sustained wounds in a raid. After nursing him back to health, Paxson’s mother brought McNair back to Cole with an understanding that if her son, who rode with Mosby, needed the same care he would receive it. Hunter remembered that “Paxton [sic] asked for McNair and stated that fact to him. He got all of the kind attention that could be given to him, but his wound was fatal, and in a short time, he died.”31 A promise had been fulfilled on that cold, bloody night in January 1864.