Mosby

When the Civil War ended in 1865, Unionists ranked John S. Mosby among the most reviled of all Confederates. As colonel of the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, a partisan unit better known as Mosby’s Rangers, he led daring raids that frustrated Union forces in northern Virginia and grabbed headlines throughout the North. Among Confederates, however, Mosby was a hero, poised to claim the mantle as one of the Lost Cause’s great leaders. Remarkably, only a few years later, he boldly rejected the South’s postwar path. Instead, Mosby aligned himself with the Republican Party and its vision of national reconciliation. Far from his Virginia home, he carved out a new life that carried him from Hong Kong and California to the windswept Great Plains in service to the reunited nation’s republican ideals.

In this insightful new biography, award-winning Civil War historian Caroline E. Janney traces the rise and fall of John S. Mosby as a Confederate hero. Driven by an unwavering commitment to his own convictions, Mosby gave up precious years with his family and his place of honor in the South’s pantheon. But he also found his work dedicated to repairing the union to be a powerful antidote to the animosities that drove Southern politics and society. Despite rejecting the rebel cause, today Mosby is best remembered as a guerrilla warlord. In life, however, as Janney reveals, Mosby embraced a new vision of the United States, ready to shed old divisions and stake its place in the twentieth century as a leader among nations. Ultimately, she demonstrates how Mosby’s contested legacy illustrates the nation’s ongoing struggle over how to remember the Civil War.