Biography of Col. John Singleton Mosby:Part 1: Early Years and Young Adulthood
John Singleton Mosby was born December 6, 1833, in Powhatan County, Virginia, at the home of his maternal grandparents, the Rev. and Mrs. McLaurine.
His parents, Virginia McLaurine Mosby and Alfred Daniel Mosby, lived in Nelson County until John was six, when they moved to adjoining Albemarle County, just outside of Charlottesville, near Jefferson's Monticello.
The small-statured, slightly built Mosby was sickly as a chlid but showed enormous pluck and stamina, occasionally getting into tussles with local boys. His boyhood hero was the fabled Revolutionary War guerrilla fighter Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox". Few friends and family would have predicted that young John would grow up to be the Marion of his generation.He was educated in a local village school and soon proved to be clever student, showing particular interest in the Classics and a proficiency in Greek. He enrolled at the University of Virginia on October 3, 1850.
In an altercation with George Turpin, a fellow student with a reputation as a bully, Mosby shot Turpin in the jaw and was expelled from the University as a result and sent to Charlottesville jail to the consternation of his parents. During his incarceration, he befriended the Commonwealth's Attorney who was prosecuting him, borrowing his copies of Blackstones' Commentaries and avowing his intent to read law.
After entreaties from friends, family and the local community, he was pardoned by Virginia Gov. Joseph Johnson, on his 20th birthday. The Governor's pardon came after 300 citizens attested to his good character and several local physicians wrote to declare that "Mosby was constitutionally consumptive, that he was in a precarious state of health, and that imprisonment for a year would incur the risk of his life"
After his release, Mosby became law clerk to Robertson, the Commonwealth's Attorney who had handled his prosecution, and studied for the Bar.
After passing the Bar, he set up his own small practice in nearby Howardsville. There, in the spring of 1856, he met Miss Pauline Clarke, daughter of former Kentucky Congressman and recent gubernatorial candidate Beverly Leonidas Clarke. She was visiting relatives in Howardsville. She was unlike any other girl he had met. Not only was she charming and witty, she took an active interest in politics and current events, and was an avid reader, able to hold her own in literary discussions with the young Mosby. He was entranced.
After a year's courtship, including his coming to Kentucky to meet her family, they were married in a hotel in Nashville on December 30, 1857. Future president and then-Senator Andrew Johnson attended the wedding. The young couple set up housekeeping initially in Howardsville, but son thereafter moved to her Bristol, on the Tennessee / Virginia border. The move was beneficial for two reasons: unlike Howardsville, Bristol had a dearth of attorneys and business prospects were therefore much better for the young lawyer. Furthermore, it was more convenient for visiting Pauline's family in Kentucky.
They settled in to young married life in Bristol, living on the Virginia side of the town. John's law practice began to grow as did the Mosby family. Their first child, a daughter named May, was born on May 10, 1859.
Mosby had always kept relatively quiet on political issues. However, when tensions began to mount on the secession issue he was a staunch unionist. He deplored efforts to divide America and supported Illinois Democrat Stephen Douglas for President in 1860, strongly backing his policy of "popular sovereignty", which would have allowed the new territories in the west to choose for themselves whether to be slave or free. It was an unusual choice in some ways. As a former Henry Clay Whig, he might have been expected to back the Constitutional Unionist candidate, John Bell. However, despite the fact that Bell carried Virginia, Mosby regarded him as having no chance at election, and backed Douglas instead.
However, he was not unsympathetic to the other pro-compromise, pro-Union political faction of the day, the Constitutional Union Party, the remainder of the old Henry Clay Whigs who had been left behind when the radicals formed the Republican Party.
In Bristol, while he was walking past a Constitutional Union rally, the crowd entreated him to give a speech. Mosby gave what was probably the shortest political speech of his career. Gaining the podium, he stated, "Gentlemen, I have no desire to call the just to repentance, but only the sinners," and with that, left the stage.
His support of Douglas could also be attributed to his disgust at the breakaway group of Democrats, led by South Carolina's firebrand pro-slaver Yancey, who walked out of the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston in protest over Douglas' nomination, held their own rump convention in Baltimore and nominated John Breckinridge, knowing that their dividing the Democrats would ultimately lead to the election of Lincoln and the dissolution of the Union.
Mosby believed that Douglas' compromise position of popular sovereignty was be the only way of holding the Union together. He also had mixed feelings about slavery, stemming back to an incident where he had brought his childhood best friend, the son of a family servant to school with him, and his fellow students taunted his friend, conducting a mock slave auction.
It marked the beginning of a trend. In politics, as in war, Mosby was secure enough in his convictions to be unafraid of standing alone. He was the only Douglas vote in all of Bristol and one of very few in the county as a whole.
In Bristol, he became close friends with the J.A. Sperry, editor of the Bristol Courier. Mosby criticized Sperry for writing a pro-secession editorial, saying that secession would lead to war, border disputes and perhaps hundreds of years of bloodshed. Sperry asked him which side he would fight for if the nation divided and Mosby said, "I shall fight for the Union, Sir, - for the Union, of course, and you?" His friend said he would fight for the South. Mosby then retorted, "Very well, I shall meet you at Philippi,"*
But it was not to be. Virginia initially rejected secession. However, after Fort Sumter when Virginians were asked to take up arms against their bretheren, the tide of public opinion turned and Virginia seceded.
When the time came to choose side and join the army, unionist John Mosby, with a heavy heart, did the only thing possible for a Virginia Gentleman to do: he enlisted in the service of his mother state, in the local cavalry company, the Washington Mounted Rifles.
Mosby decided to surprise his friend Sperry and went to show him his uniform. According to Sperry's memoirs, he exclaimed, "Why, Mosby! This isn't Philippi, nor is that a Federal uniform!"
Sperry reports that Mosby's reply as follows: "'No more of that,' said he, with a twinkle of the eye. 'When I talked that way, Virginia had not passed the ordinance of secession. She is out of the Union now. Virginia is my mother, God bless her! I can't fight against my mother, can I?' "
Note:
* Mosby frequently interjected references from the classics into his everyday conversation. Ironically, one of the first battles of the War WAS at Philippi, Virginia (now in West Virginia)
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