John Mosby, Union Hero

John Singleton Mosby, the Confederacy's Gray Ghost, was a daring marauder, commanding partisans who roamed Northern Virginia, harassing Union troops, sabataging telegraph lines, railroads, and bridges, and even occasionally capturing Union officers. The highlight of Mosby's career was when he woke up 2^nd Vermont Brigade Commander Edwin Stoughton out of his bed in the middle of the night by slapping him on the butt, and then took him prisoner.

That was the highlight of Mosby's career? He removed a commander the men hated, a commander who was more interested in his love life than commanding the Vermont troops in the war. Stoughton was vain, profane, and mean. His men complained about everything he did, and they were glad when he was captured.

When Colonel Blunt was in charge of the 2^nd Vermont, morale and discipline were high. When Stoughton assumed command, things fell apart. Howard Coffin, in "Nine Months to Gettysburg", describes increased incidents of fighting, drinking, and pilfering from neighboring farms after Stoughton replaced Colonel Blunt.

When John Mosby did the Vermont troops the favor of removing Stoughton, he was replaced by General George Stannard. Stannard was the exact opposite of Stoughton. He immediately began drilling the troops on military tactics. The troops respected Stannard. Rather than residing in comfort in the next town, Stannard lived with his men at their encampment.

One has to wonder, what would have happened at Gettysburg, had Mosby not captured Stoughton? The Confederates made it all the way to the Angle. The Union line was almost broken. Vermont's 13^th, 14^th and 16^th regiments were there to fight them back, using tactics they had practiced under Stannard's guidance during the months in northern Virginia in the spring. Would they have been able to execute the same manuevers under Stoughton? Would they have been as effective on the very front line, under Stoughton? Would they even have gotten to Gettysburg in time to join the battle under Stoughton? Stannard drilled the troops hard, back in Virginia. Then he marched them as fast as he could, under horrible weather conditions, through Northern Virginia and into Pennsylvania. Would Stoughton have been able to push them as hard and gotten them to respond as well, to give it all they had, day after day?

My answer to those questions is no. I think the outcome of Pickett's Charge might have been a lot different if our troops had been commanded by Stoughton instead of Stannard. Mosby certainly made a daring capture in March of 1863 when he took Stoughton prisoner in the middle of the night, and probably changed the course of the war. But not in the Confederate's favor.

I used a bunch of different resources in my research on the Vermont 16^th Regiment. Vermonters are really lucky to have so many internet resources devoted to their Civil War history.

Vermont in the Civil War (http://vermontcivilwar.org/index.php) is an amazing internet site. It has the rosters of all the regiments, the town each soldier was credited to, and each soldier's history in the regiment. The Vermont Historical Society (http://vermonthistory.org/research/research-resources-online/civil-war-transcriptions) has transcribed quite a few letters from Civil War soldiers and made thema available for reading on the internet.

Howard Coffin's book "Nine Months to Gettysburg" is the most readable and interesting book I've ever read on the Civil War. Of course, it's even better that it's about Vermonters, but Coffin is an excellent writer who includes lots of anecdotes and quotes about real people. He describes the camps, the marches, the places and people that lived in the areas our troops tveled through, and finally the action at Gettysburg, in a way that you as a reader can visualize them so clearly in your mind. When I read Coffin's description of the part the 16^th Vermont played in repulsing Pickett's Charge, my heart absolutely pounded with every turn of the page. I can't say enough about how excellent this book is and how highly I recommend it.

Another strong recommendation – visit Gettysburg. When you're there, spend the extra money to take a guided bus tour. We went there in April of 2012, and I thought the bus tour was pretty expensive, but it was worth every penny. The tour guides do a fabulous job of describing the action at the different sites. At one point, at Little Round Top, I had to walk away from the group because I just couldn't deal with hearing about the wholesale death and destruction. It is a very, very intense experience. They spend a lot of time at the Angle, the Copse of Trees and the High Water Mark, which are basically all at the same place. When they describe the intense fighting that took place there, they talk about the Union forces holding back Pickett's Charge, preventing the Confederates from breaking throught Union lines by the skin of their teeth, but they don't tell you that it was the 16^th Vermont, with troops from the Upper Valley, who were there at that very spot.

At Gettysburg, the tour guides and the displays in the visitor's center mention the "fishhook defensive line" a lot. At the time, I didn't understand it, but during the course of doing the research for this blog, I do understand it now, thanks in large part to the maps I got from Wikipedia. If you go, I hope reading this blog helps you understand the presentations there. I'm not sure if you should read "Nine Months to Gettysburg" before or after you go. Probably before you go.

After learning so much about our Upper Valley soldiers at Gettysburg, I want to go back there, and revisit the Angle, the Copse of Trees and the High Water Mark. My husband, the Old Redneck, is dyslexic, so I have been reading "Nine Months to Gettysburg" out loud to him, and it works very well as a read aloud. I have tried reading multiple other Civil War books to him, and never finished them because they were impossible to get through. Last week, we decided to visit our daughter in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and at the same time go to the 150^th Anniversary Reenactment at Gettysburg. If by any chance you're going, I'll be the woman in shorts and hiking boots with the guy that looks like a redneck Santa. I can't spend any money this week because all of our available funds will be going for this trip, but I'm going to look at the Listen Centers and Good Buy Store for a t-shirt that says "Vermont".

Now for the "rest of the story". A few statistics from "Vermont in the Civil War". There were three companies in the 16^th Vermont that had soldiers from the Upper Valley. Company A had 19 soldiers from Royalton, 1 from Barnard, and one from Norwich, out of 95 altogether. 51 of Company A's soldiers were mustered out at the end of their 9 month hitch, with no ill effects. 14 reenlisted. 18 were wounded at Gettysburg, including 4 from South Royalton. I researched these 4 on Ancestry.com and they all lived to be old. Company A lost 5 soldiers from disease, and 3 were discharged with disabilities. There were 4 soldiers killed in Gettysburg, including Philip Howard, age 19, from Royalton.

Company G was made up of all Upper Valley soldiers, with men from Barnard, Sharon, Hartford, Bridgewater and Pomfret, for a total of 111. 69 were mustered out no worse for wear. 21 members of Company G reenlisted. 5 died of disease, 5 were discharged with disabilities and 5 were wounded at Gettysburg. There were 2 soldiers killed in action.

Company H was mostly made up of Upper Valley soldiers, with a few from Reading. There were soldiers in Company H from Barnard, Hartland, Norwich, Sharon, Windsor, and Royalton, for a total of 87. Company H had 49 soldiers who were mustered out after an uneventful hitch. 17 men reenlisted. 3 men died of disease, 6 were wonded in action and 7 were discharged with a disability. 2 men were killed in action. Company H had two men desert. A couple of the men from this company who reenlisted became career army men. One of them joined the Frontier Cavalry.

There were 26 men from Norwich in Company K. 21 of them mustered out in fine shape. Company K lost 1 Norwich man due to disease, and two were discharged with disabilities. 1 was wounded at Gettysburg and 2 reenlisted.

In "Nine Months to Gettysburg" there are quite a few comments to the effect that more of the guys from hill towns died of disease than the boys that lived in towns along the lakes or rivers. As I was compiling these statistics I paid attention to this, and it does seem to be true. The guys themselves thought it was because the men that lived near water could tolerate the damp and fog better. Howard Coffin thought it was because hill town families were more isolated and therefor the guys hadn't been been exposed to as many illnesses as the men from bigger more centralized towns, and thus hadn't built up as many immunities. I wonder if the guys from the lake and river towns hadn't been fed a little better and were healthier to begin with.

After Gettysburg, General Stannard continued as a Union commander. He fought in many battles until he finally was wounded badly enough to lose his arm. After the war, he became the doorkeeper of the United States House of Representatives. He died in Washington DC in 1886.

At the end of the War, John Mosby was a wanted man. He never surrendered because he

never commanded regular troops. He remained in hiding until he received a pardon from General Grant. Mosby and Grant became friends, and Mosby even became a Republican, to the disgust of his fellow Southerners. As a result of this, he received several death threats. When Grant ran for President, Mosby was his campaign manager. In 1878, Rutherford Hayes appointed him to the US Hong Kong consulate. Later, Mosby worked for the Department of the Interior and became Assistant Attorney General.

What about Charles Aiken? He was the man whose name I found, who led me to the 16^th Vermont. Aiken was from Barnard and had been married for four years when he enlisted as a nine month recruit. Charles Aiken left Vermont and traveled on a troop train through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York City and Maryland. He lived briefly in Washington DC and then spent a winter in Virginia with his regiment doing picket duty in the enemy territory of Northern Virginia. His commander was captured in a midnight raid. At the very end of his nine month hitch, Charles fought in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, at Gettysburg. He returned to Brattleboro, Vermont, and was mustered out of the 16^th Vermont on August 10, of 1863, and reenlisted on December 4, 1863, and that very well might be another story.