Read How Col. John Mosby Whipped the Vermont Cavalry at Miskel's Farm

Excerpts from

Rebel: The Life and Times of John Singleton Mosby
by Kevin H. Siepel

The Action at Miskel's Farm - April 1863

At sunrise on April 1, Dick Moran, who had stayed with friends on the pike, came running pell-mell down the farm road, yelling in his foghorn voice: “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming! Mount! Mount!” Mosby dashed from the farmhouse, buckling on his arms as he came, and sleepy men began tumbling from the hayloft and porches just in time to see 150 blue-clad troopers cantering down the long road from the turnpike, sabers unsheathed. They appeared to know exactly what they were there for.

The way to the pike was now blocked, deep streams lay on two sides of the farm, and nearly all the horses were without saddles or bridles. Mosby, not knowing whether anyone would listen, shouted to the men that they were to stand and fight, adding that they were to hold their fire for the moment and concentrate on getting as many horses bridled as possible. They were outnumbered by more than two to one, and trapped by the First Vermont Cavalry, under Capt. Henry C. Flint.

“As Capt. Flint dashed forward at the head of his squadron,” wrote Mosby in later years, “their sabres flashing in the rays of the morning sun, I felt like my final hour had come. . . . In every sense, things looked rather blue for us.” Flint, confident of his game, divided the command, sending half around to the Confederates’ rear, while half formed on their front. The soldiers in front, once through the farm gate, took care to lock it behind them, cutting off all escape to the pike. Troops on the Maryland side of the river began to cheer wildly at the lopsided affair they were about to witness. Flint took his time disposing his men. Mosby’s party, only half of which was ready for a fight, continued feverishly to bridle horses in the barnyard.

“When I saw [him] divide his command,” commented Mosby, “I knew that my chances had improved at least fifty percent. When he got to within fifty yards of the gate of the barnyard, I opened the gate and advanced, pistol in hand, on foot to meet him, and at the same time called to the men that had already got mounted to follow me.”

The men may have been new, but the effect was magical. “They responded with one of those demoniac yells,” he continued, “which those who once heard never forgot and dashed forward. . . ‘as reapers descend to the harvest of death.’” Harry Hatcher, one of Mosby's “regulars,” leaped from a horse and threw Mosby up in his place. Suddenly a full-fledged rebel charge was on. “Unlike my adversaries,” Mosby said, “I was trammelled with no tradition that required me to use an obsolete weapon.” The revolvers proved devastating at close range. Flint was one of the first

men killed, and the Federal troopers, armed largely with thin steel, started to fall back. A moment more and they wheeled, scrambling for the outer gate, which was, of course, locked. In the words of General Stahel: “They got wedged together, and a fearful state of confusion followed, while Mosby’s men followed them up and poured into the crowd a severe fire. . . . In comparison to the number engaged, our loss was very heavy.” Young Sam Chapman, a divinity student when he had answered Virginia’s call to arms, had quickly emptied his two pistols. Saber in hand now, he was up in his stirrups and, as Mosby put it, “dealing [blows] right and left with . . . theological fervor.” Other men, reins clenched in their teeth, were firing with both hands into the densely packed Yankees. When the gate finally fell, a great chase ensued. “I got pretty close to one,” wrote Mosby, “who, seeing that he was bound to be shot or caught, jumped off his horse and sat down on the roadside. As I passed him he called out to me, ‘You have played us a nice April fool, boys!’”

Mosby in Old Age

Modernity, at least certain aspects of it, he despised. “Buzz wagons” (automobiles) were anathema to him, and he expressed equal impatience with postcards and the turkey trot. Occasionally he put great energy into fighting modern trends. The best example of this was his long-time agitation against college football, a crusade that peaked for him in 1909 when a University of Virginia student named Christian was killed in a game against Georgetown.

Eppa Hunton, who, Mosby thought, was in a position to do something about football at the university, bore the weight of his tirade. Mosby accused the university of actually having murdered Christian by allowing such a “barbarous amusement” to go on. Football, said the ex-guerrilla chief, seemed no longer to be a student recreation but had become a profession. The sport developed, he said, “brutal instincts,” and should be “no part of the curriculum of the university.” He claimed to be astonished that professors had actually been part of the “vulgar crowd” cheering over “the mangled body of Christian.”

“One of the most disgusting features of the exhibition,” he told Hunton,

was a priest—a disciple of Loyola—acting as director of the contest. It can't be much comfort to Christian's family that this Father said a Mass for the repose of his victim’s soul. . . .

The main object of education should be to gain the empire of mind over matter. . . . The faculty of the university seem to have discarded the Baconian philosophy and to be trying to revert to a primitive state—putting muscle and prize fighters on top. But, say the defenders of such sport, it develops the manhood of youth. I deny it unless by manhood they mean mere physical strength. My sense of manhood is a sense of honor and courage; such qualities may exist in a weak body. . . . I can see no progress—rather retrogression—in a boy’s going to a university to develop his muscle.

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