Mosby and his Rangers were ideally positioned to play a critical role in the attack on Washington, DC. They could impede the movement of Federal troops while also tying up as many of them as possible, further clearing the path to Washington. It would have made sense for Early and Mosby to work closely together, but that was not to be.
Cantankerous, “mean as a dog,” and an officer Robert E. Lee dubbed “my bad old man,” Early was difficult to work with, as Mosby found out firsthand.* Early failed to notify the partisan leader of his plans or order him to coordinate. Mosby found out about Early’s invasion of the North, and a potential attack on Washington, only after Mosby’s men accidentally ran into Early’s quartermaster in Middleburg, Virginia. Mosby felt snubbed by Early, and their resulting actions and inactions may have influenced the course of history.
Despite the lack of camaraderie and coordination between the two Confederates, Mosby, on his own initiative, prepared to launch a raid at Point of Rocks, Maryland. The goal of what became known as the Calico Raid was to cut the Northern line of communications by severing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and telegraph lines. The operation began on July 3 when 250 Rangers assembled at Upperville. Armed to the teeth and equipped with empty sacks for stuffing with Union loot, the Rangers rode a mile in the sweltering heat to Green Garden Mill, located next to Ranger Dolly Richards’ elegant family mansion,† to water their horses.
In the coming months, Richards would play an outsize leadership role in the battalion. The Confederate officer, exquisitely dressed, handsome, fearless, and only nineteen years old, possessed sagacity and coolness under pressure that belied his years.
After satiating the thirst of animal and man alike, the Rangers resumed their journey to Point of Rocks. The town, a key hub for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was also a connection to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) and a Union supply depot. Two hundred and fifty Northerners—infantry and two companies of Loudoun Rangers—guarded the town.
The Loudoun Rangers were an independent cavalry unit drawn from the Quaker and German populations and the largely staunch Unionist towns of Waterford and Lovettsville. On June 20, 1862, the Loudoun Rangers mustered two small cavalry companies, making them one of the few Union units raised in Confederate Virginia. The unit never numbered over 200 men and largely operated as a home guard along the Potomac River, protecting Union residents of upper Loudoun County. Led by Waterford miller Samuel Means, the Loudoun Rangers would be a nuisance to Mosby’s Rangers by occasionally raiding Mosby’s Confederacy.
Weeks earlier, Mosby’s men had easily captured Duffields Depot farther west on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line in a bloodless battle, never needing the artillery they brought that day. But on July 4, Mosby would need all the resources at his disposal to overcome his Union foes, including his artillery and his tactics for shocking the enemy.
Through the dust and oppressive heat, a team of horses dragged a twelve-pound Napoleon up the high ground on the Virginia side of the river. The hot, sweaty work would pay off, for from that vantage, Sam Chapman, who led the crew of artillerists, would overlook the entire field of battle.
The rest of Mosby’s Rangers began the tricky business of crossing the Potomac. Loudoun Ranger sharpshooters lay in wait, concealed in bushes on the bank and a strategically located island in the center of the river. A phalanx of Confederates dismounted and waded cautiously into the muddy waters, uncertain of their footing. Almost immediately, the Northerners began taking aim, attempting to pick off Mosby’s men.
“We floundered through the water shooting, yelling stumbling over the round river stones and getting ducked overhead, rising and sputtering and firing again, the boom of our artillery proclaimed the celebration was on,”1 remembered one of Mosby’s Rangers.
If any of Mosby’s Rangers considered turning around, their own artillery quickly dissuaded them. A round from Chapman’s gun fell short and exploded immediately behind the Rangers. Caught between the “devil and the deep sea,” the Rangers surged forward. At least one Ranger considered “the enemy the lesser of the two evils.”2
As the water grew deeper, the Southerners struggled. “The higher the water came up around them, the more exasperated they became,” Ranger Private John Munson recalled.
After one shot came “annoyingly near” the Rangers, Mosby rode up to one of his men who was armed with a carbine and asked, “Pitts, can you stop that Yankee over there from sucking eggs?”
“I’ll try,” responded Pitts, who had water up to his breast.
Raising his carbine, the far too modest Pitts aimed and fired, killing the Loudoun Ranger.3
From overhead, Sam Chapman’s Napoleon boomed. Led by Dolly Richards, Company A crossed from the island to the Maryland side and onto the towpath near the C&O, which ran parallel to the river on the northern side.
Raising the Napoleon’s trajectory, Chapman fired, and again, Union troops scattered. They scrambled across a small wooden bridge over the canal, tearing up the wooden floorboards as they crossed. The Federals then hunkered down in a small earthen redoubt perched on a small hill on the northern side of the C&O. Sheltered there from the artillery fire, they peppered Mosby’s command as his men forded the river from the island and worked their way up the riverbank to the canal.
But their gunfire was not enough to quell the spirit of the Southerners. Braving a hail of bullets, Lieutenant Harry “Deadly” Hatcher dashed across the bare support timbers on the bridge and seized the Union garrison’s flag on the other side of the canal. Meanwhile, Dolly Richards tore wooden planks from a nearby building. As the Napoleon belched to provide cover, Mosby’s Rangers used the planks to repair the bridge. Lewis Powell and others surged forward across the canal as artillery rounds arched overhead. In the face of the onslaught, the Loudoun Rangers fell back.
The Confederates pursued them and captured a few of their men and an officer. One of Mosby’s Rangers later remarked, “I have never understood why the taking of the Point of Rocks that day was such an easy job. When you recall that our only approach to them was over a narrow towpath and which we could ride only two abreast, that we were on the farther side of a rock-ribbed canal over which it was impossible for us to charge them, it is inscrutable that they did not get into that railroad tunnel and just shoot us down as fast as we showed ourselves. But the facts are that less than two hundred and fifty cavalry rode down on them in broad daylight, re-laid the flooring on the bridge before their eyes, crossed over it, and ran them as far as the eye could reach, without loss or injury to a single man or horse. This sounds like a fairy tale, but it is literally true.”4
With the Northerners out of the way, Mosby’s Rangers ransacked Point of Rocks; they severed telegraph lines and cut poles. Soon their empty sacks burst with dry goods, “bolts of cloth … [some] of the gaudiest prints, served as sashes which streamed from the shoulders of the wearers … boots and shoes, for both sexes, hung from the saddles and horse’s necks; and various kinds of tin-ware flashed back the sunlight.”5
The men remained mindful of the “girls they left behind” and gathered up hats, hoops, and flashy ribbons, looking like a “parade of Fantastics.” Eventually, a considerable wagon train loaded to the gills with booty rolled to the Fauquier hills, leading one Ranger to quip, “This was quite a novel attachment to Mosby’s men, their specialty being to attach themselves to the other fellow’s wagon train.”6
After the Rangers picked Point of Rocks clean, Mosby sent Henry Heaton, who had been one of Early’s aides, and Fountain Beattie to find Early and deliver a written message: “I will obey any order you send me.” On July 7, the two Rangers found Early in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Early made no mention of the raid and requested that Mosby support him by once again cutting the railroad and telegraph lines and reconnoitering toward Washington.7 Early made this a verbal request instead of a written order. Mosby chose not to comply, and this, combined with a lack of coordination between the commands, potentially impacted history.
Mosby’s men recrossed the Potomac before Union reinforcements arrived. Back in Virginia, the Ranger leader sent his best scrounger, Major Hibbs, to find forage for horses and detailed scouts to track any Northern troops venturing into Confederate territory. About 2 p.m. on July 5, hundreds of Loudoun Rangers and men from the 8th Illinois Cavalry poured into Point of Rocks and Maryland Heights outside Harpers Ferry. In all, a total of 2,800 reinforcements moved from Washington, DC’s defenses—one-third of its force.8
Mosby’s Rangers took cover on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where their leader hatched a plan to keep the Union troops tied down for as long as possible. Creating the illusion of vast numbers of Confederates, the Rangers rode around, creating clouds of dust and occasionally parading in front of the Federals. From time to time, they pretended that they intended to recross the river, engaging the Northerners in a series of skirmishes. As one Ranger remembered, “It was a kind of endless chain business by which regiment after regiment was paraded across the stage.… Of course, our commander had to refrain from overdoing the thing, and see to it that the program was duly varied, lest the fake should be discovered.”9
During the back-and-forth across the river, the scouts led by Lieutenant Harry Hatcher returned, and so did Major Hibbs. The major, with his “famous Corn Detail[,] secured the sinews of war and undoubtedly secured a still filled with alcohol. Though the men might go without rations, and perhaps fought all the more savagely when hungry, the horses had to be kept in prime condition, and whatever happened, fed.”10 As the horses grazed on Hibbs’ scrounged corn, Hatcher reported that a large force of 150 handpicked men, the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry and 13th New York, commanded by Major William H. Forbes, scion of a wealthy abolitionist family in Boston, was prowling the neighborhood and looking for the Rangers, having recently left Leesburg, heading south toward Aldie.
After dispatching men to ride shotgun to guard the four wagons of booty as they headed back to Fauquier County for safekeeping, Mosby had 175 men remaining in his command to deal with Forbes. Mosby ordered his men to mount up, and they rode south through Leesburg. Locals greeted the Rangers with a triumphant welcome. “The pretty girls of Leesburg lined the streets as we passed through the town and presented us trays laden with the most acceptable breakfasts,”11 recalled one of the Rangers.
Riding down several obscure country lanes, the Rangers traveled southeast from Leesburg and emerged behind Forbes, who had his horses grazing in a field by a farm across from the Mount Zion Church (near the present-day junction of Route 50 and Route 15). Strategically, on July 6, 1864, Mosby placed his men to block the Federals’ route of escape to their base camp at Falls Church, Virginia, and personally scouted the Union position. After finding Forbes half a mile west up the Little River Pike, he had his men stealthily move into position. They crept to within half a mile when a sharp-eyed Union picket spotted them and fired a signal gun.
Having lost the element of surprise, Mosby led his men into the open. At the same time, Forbes drew up his men in formation. “Their alignment was as perfect as if on dress parade.”12 The two commands faced each other across the field, several hundred yards apart.
Once again relying on his shock tactics, Mosby responded with a frontal attack, “a straight charge over an open road upon an enemy who was fully prepared for us,”13 recalled Ranger John Henry Alexander.
Sam Chapman yanked the lanyard on the Napoleon. The gun barked, and a shell sailed over the heads of the Union cavalrymen. It exploded too high to cause any damage; however, their horses, unfamiliar with exploding artillery shells, panicked.
Dolly Richards’ Company A charged on horseback in a sweeping gallop, firing their carbines. The Rangers let out blood-curdling yells and screams, a crucial part of their tactics to intimidate their opponents.
Mosby swept their line “like a hurricane.”14
One Union officer recalled seeing them “swooping down like Indians, yelling like fiends, discharging their pistols with fearful rapidity, and threatening to completely envelop our little band.”15
It was too much for the Northerners to bear. “Unable to stand the shock, they broke and ran some distance, but rallied and formed again behind a fence.”16
“Form in the woods,”17 yelled Forbes.
Mosby’s men crashed into the Californians and New Yorkers, and brutal hand-to-hand combat ensued. Rangers’ Colts, carbines, and sawed-off shotguns blasted the Bluejackets at point-blank range as Yankee sabers clanged, and other Federals fired their carbines, pistols, and revolvers. Californian private Nathan Fogg defended himself with a .44-caliber Colt Army while Sergeant Edward Tyrell, a native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, hacked with his saber.18 Fogg received a wound in the leg during the melee but escaped to safety.
Dashing between Mosby’s men, “Forbes occupied the center of the action” and tried to rally his men, barking, “Follow your leader!” Like a bloodhound, he tracked down Mosby in the whirling mass of bodies and horses. Blue and gray uniforms became so “interwoven” that the Californians used their Spencers as clubs, bludgeoning one of the Rangers “insensibly.”19 Standing on his stirrups with his saber drawn, Forbes thrust the sword at the Gray Ghost with his full weight and momentum. But Ranger Tom Richards took the blow intended for his commander, and the blade sliced through Richards’ meaty shoulder.
Still standing, Richards “snapped his pistol in the major’s face,”20 but it misfired.
Simultaneously, a bullet felled Forbes’ horse, bringing down its rider, pinning him to the ground, and forcing the Union major to yield.
With Forbes’ surrender, his men scattered. “Mosby pressed on and drove them in disorder.”21 The Federals galloped for their lives down Braddock Road toward the safety of their camp in Fairfax. An “exciting” adrenaline-charged horse race unfolded. One Ranger recalled, the Federals “poured into us Mr. Spencer’s unpalatable pills [bullets] the whole distance.”22 But Mosby, Private John Munson, and other Rangers nipped at their heels, catching several men as far as ten miles away, at Sudley Church. Munson remembered, “We found a man kneeling near the fence by the roadside, with his head bent forward touching the rail in front of him and his left hand clutching a gaping wound in his side.”23
Once again, the Rangers had defeated their adversary, killing or wounding eighty of Forbes’ men and capturing fifty-seven prisoners, including the major himself. But afterward, Mosby ensured that Forbes was well treated, so well, in fact, that the two men would become close friends after the war.24
* Noted for his prickly personality, Early rebuffed Mosby’s requests for direction and coordination multiple times. Mosby wanted to coordinate with Early. The Rangers in front of Early’s army as a recon force or used to disrupt Union response could have been a force multiplier. Mosby’s postwar letters indicate he hated Early.
† The Rangers would use Green Garden, a brick home built in the Greek Revival style owned by Dolly Richards’ family, as one of their safe houses during the war. The mansion contains a secret trapdoor and hiding space that still exist today.