A History of the American People

Jackson was not the only superb commander on the Confederate side. Colonel John Singelton
Mosby (1833-1916), who worked behind the Unionist lines, also had the killer instinct. Like
many Southern officers, he was a wonderful cavalryman, but he had solid sense too. General
Richard Taylor, son of President Taylor, who wrote the best book about the war from inside the
Southern high ranks, summed it up: Living on horseback, fearless and dashing, the men of the South afforded the best possible material for cavalry. They had every quality but discipline.' Mosby would have none of that nonsense and was the first cavalryman to throw away his saber as useless and pack two pistols instead. He hated the Richmond set-up-'Although a revolutionary government, none was ever so much under the domination of red tape as Richmond'-and that was one reason he chose the sabotage role, remote from the order-chattering telegraph. The damage he did to the Unionist lines of communication was formidable and he was hated accordingly. On Grant's orders, any of his men who were captured were shot. In the autumn of 1864, for instance, General George Custer executed six of them: he shot three, hanged two, and a seventeen-year- old boy, who had borrowed a horse to join Mosby, was dragged through the streets by two men on horses and shot before the eyes of his mother, who begged Custer to treat the boy as a prisoner-of-war. This treatment stopped immediately Mosby began to hang his prisoners in retaliation. Mosby wasslender, gaunt and active in figure ... his feet are small and cased in cavalry boots
with brass spurs, and the revolvers in his belt are worn with an air of "business." He had piercing
eyes, a flashing smile, and laughed often but was always in deadly earnest when fighting. He was
the stuff of which Hollywood movies are made and indeed might have figured in one since he
lived long enough to see Birth of a Nation. He became a myth-figure in the North: he was
supposed to have been in the theater when Lincoln was shot, masterminding it, and to have
planned all the big railroad robberies, long after the war. But he was the true-life hero of one of
the best Civil War stories. During a night-raid he caught General Edwin H. Stoughton naked in
bed with a floozie and woke him up roughly. Do you know who I am, sir?' roared the general. Mosby:Do you know Mosby, General?' Stoughton: Yes! Have you got the -- rascal?' Mosby: No, but he has got you!'
Jackson and Mosby were the only two Confederate generals who were consistently successful.
Jackson's death made it inevitable that Lee would assume the highest command, though it is only
fair to Lee to point out that he was finally appointed commander-in-chief of the Southern forces
only in February 1865, just two months before he was forced to surrender them at Appomattox.
Lee occupies a special place in American history because he was the South's answer to the
North's Lincoln: the leader whose personal probity and virtuous inspiration sanctified their cause.
Like Lincoln, though in a less eccentric and angular manner, Lee looked the part. He radiated
beauty and grace. Though nearly six feet, he had tiny feet and there was something feminine in
his sweetness and benignity. His fellow-cadets at West Point called him the Marble Model.' With his fine beard, tinged first with gray, then white, he became a Homeric patriarch in his fifties. He came from the old Virginian aristocracy and married into it. His father was Henry Lee III, Revolutionary War general, Congressman and governor of Virginia. His wife, Anne Carter, was great-granddaughter ofKing' Carter, who owned 300,000 acres and 1,000 slaves. That was
the theory, anyway. In fact Lee's father was also Light Horse Harry,' a dishonest land-speculator and bankrupt, who defrauded among others George Washington. President Washington dismissed his claim to be head of the United States Army with the brisk, euphemistic,Lacks
economy.' Henry was jailed twice and when Robert was six fled to the Caribbean, never to
return. Robert's mother was left a penurious widow with many children and the family’s