John Singleton Mosby - the "Gray Ghost"



1870 Farquier County Virginia John S Mosby 36 Pauline Mosby 33 Mariah V Mosby 12 Beverly C Mosby 9 John S V Mosby 6 Victoria S Mosby 3 Paulina V Mosby Lucy F Mosby 21 Florence Mosby 19 Pauline Mariah Clarke Mosby BIRTH 30 Mar 1837 Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky, DEATH 10 May 1876 (aged 39) BURIAL Warrenton Cemetery Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, MEMORIAL ID 6083013 The daughter of a prominent Kentucky lawyer. She was said to be a woman as spirited and intelligent as her husband. In the spring of 1876, after the birth of her ninth child, Pauline Mosby died, leaving six children and a crushed forty-three-year-old widower. John Singleton Mosby never remarried. In 1880 Bedford County, Virginia, Virginia J. Mosby is 64, Eliza J. Mosby 39 Daughter Beverly C. Mosby 19 Grandson John S. Mosby 16 Grandson Stuart V. Mosby 13 Granddaughter Pauline V. Mosby 10 Granddaughter Ada C. Mosby 9 Granddaughter John Singleton Mosby Sr. BIRTH 6 Dec 1833 Powhatan County, Virginia, DEATH 30 May 1916 (aged 82) Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, BURIAL Warrenton Cemetery Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, MEMORIAL ID 3080

As I have said, my first interview with General Grant was in May, 1872, when I was introduced to him by Senator Lewis of Virginia. He immediately began telling me how near I came to capturing the train on which he went to take command of the Army of the Potomac in 1864. I remarked, "If I had done it, things might have been changed - I might have been in the White House and you might be calling on me." "Yes," he said. In our talk I became convinced that he was not only willing but anxious to lift the Southern people out of the rut they were in, but he couldn't help them without their coöperation. If they insisted on keeping up their fire on him, he had to return the fire. I knew that he was in favor of relieving Southerners of the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment, as he had recommended in his message. Such a bill had passed the House, but in the Senate, Sumner had insisted on tacking to it his Civil Rights Bill, which made it odious, and the measure was defeated. Page 393 I suggested that if he could get such a bill passed, it would be construed as an olive branch, and would create such a reaction in his favor in Virginia that we could carry the State for him. "We will see what can be done," he replied. As I was under no disability myself, it would have been hard to discover a selfish motive in what I urged Grant to do. A few days afterwards, a bill removing political disabilities was reported in the House; the rules were suspended, and the bill passed. It was sent to the Senate; there was a night session; Sumner went to his committee room to take a nap, and while he was asleep, the bill was called up and became a law. He was furious when he awoke and found out what had been done. Many Confederates who had been excluded from public position were then sent to Congress or received appointments from Washington. Among them was the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy. I crossed the Rubicon when I paid my first visit to the White House, and I never recrossed it. My son Beverly, who was about twelve years old, was with me. He had been with his mother six years before, when she called on Andrew Johnson. That night, when he knelt by her to say his prayers, after getting through the usual form, Page 394 he turned to her and said, "Now, mamma, may I pray to God to send old Johnson to the devil?" I told the story to Grant. "A great many would have joined in Beverly's prayer," he said, laughing. As many people in the South regarded me as a connecting link between the administration and themselves, I had to pay frequent visits to the White House, either to ask favors or to carry complaints. Such a duty is a shirt of Nessus to any one who wears it. Although I declined to take office from General Grant and exerted all the influence I had with him for the benefit of the Virginia people, this did not save me from the imputation of sordid motives. It is generally believed that Grant appointed me consul at Hong Kong. He did not; I was appointed by Mr. Hayes. Often as I went to the White House during Grant's second term, I never failed to see him except once, when he was in the hands of a dentist. In those days hundreds went to him for appointments, who would now be sent to the Civil Service Commission. In spite of all this pressure, he never seemed to be in a hurry. He was the best listener I ever saw, and one of the quickest to see the core of a question. Page 395 I once called at the White House about seven o'clock in the evening, with a telegram I had received from General Hampton. The door-keeper said that the President was at dinner. I gave the man my card and told him I would wait in the hall. He returned with a message from General Grant, asking me to come in and take dinner with the family. I replied that I had already dined. Then Ulysses S. Grant, Junior, came out and said, "Father says that you must come in and get some dinner." Of course, I went in. At the table, the General spoke of having called that evening on Alexander Stephens, who was lying sick at his hotel. It looked as if our war was a long way in the past when the President of the United States could call to pay his respects to the Vice-President of the Confederate States. A few weeks before the close of Grant's second term, I introduced one of my men to him. "I hope you will not think less of Captain Glasscock because he was with me in the war," I said. "I think all the more of him," the President promptly replied. I once said to General Grant, "General, if you had been a Southern man, would you have been in the Southern army?" Page 396 "Certainly," he replied. He aways spoke in the friendliest manner of his old army comrades who went with the South. Once, speaking of Stonewall Jackson, who was with him at West Point, he said to me, "Jackson was the most conscientious being I ever knew." I saw Grant on the day when he signed the Electoral Commission Bill to decide the Hayes-Tilden dispute. He was in an unusually good humor, and said that the man in whose favor the commission decided should be inaugurated. He talked a good deal about his early life in the army and gave a description of his first two battles - Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. A few days after he left the White House, I called on General Grant at the home of Mr. Hamilton Fish, where he was staying. I did not ask him to recommend me to the new administration, as some members of the Cabinet were not friendly to him. President Hayes, however, appointed me United States Consul at Hong Kong; and it was there, in 1879, during Grant's tour of the world, that I last saw him. I went in a boat to meet him, and, as I was the official representative of the United States, the other craft that surrounded the steamship as soon as it anchored gave me the right of Page 397 way. As I went up the gangway, I recognized him, with his wife and eldest son, standing on the deck. It did look strange that I should be there representing the government, while General Grant was a private citizen. There was with me an old Virginian who had gone to Hong Kong before the war. When I introduced him, I told General Grant that when I arrived I had found this fellow countryman of mine in about the same temper that I was in when the general was fighting in the Wilderness; but that he was willing to surrender to the man to whom General Lee had surrendered. Mrs. Grant spoke up and asked liberal terms for him, and Grant said that he paroled him, and hoped he would be a loyal citizen. The Governor of Hong Kong met General Grant's party at the wharf, and they went to the Government House. Next morning the general paid his respects to me at the American Consulate. He was the guest of the governor for about ten days. On several days I breakfasted with him, and we had many free and informal talks. Once he was giving a description of his ride on donkey-back from Jaffa to Jerusalem. "That," he said, "was the roughest road I ever traveled." Page 398 "General," I replied, "I think you have traveled one rougher road than that." "Where?" he inquired. "From the Rapidan to Richmond," I answered. "I reckon there were more obstructions on that road," he admitted. I went with the general, Mrs. Grant, Colonel Fred Grant, and the governor, in a launch, to the United States man-of-war which carried his party up the China coast, and bade him my last farewell. When we started ashore, the ship began firing a royal salute of twenty-one guns, in honor of the governor, and the launch stopped. When the firing was over, General Grant lifted his hat, and we responded. I never saw the great soldier again. Some time afterwards, I sent the general a Malacca cane which I had had lacquered for him. It bore the inscription, "To General U. S. Grant from John S. Mosby, Hong Kong." He was in very poor health when he received it, but Colonel Fred Grant wrote me that his father was pleased at my remembrance of him. When I heard that President Cleveland had removed me as consul, in 1885, I wrote to General Grant and asked him to secure me employment from some-corporation, by which I could make Illustration Page 399 a living. I did not then know how near he was to his end. My letter was forwarded to him at Mount McGregor, and on the day before I sailed from Hong Kong a dispatch announced his death. I felt that I had lost my best friend. I did not suppose that my letter would have any result, but on arriving in San Francisco, I learned that he had dictated a note to Governor Stanford, of the Southern Pacific, asking him, as a personal favor, to take care of me. I was made an attorney in the company and held that position for sixteen years. I have given as faithful an account as Æneas did to Dido of events - all of which I saw and part of which I was. No one clung longer to the Confederacy than I did, and I can say with the champion of another lost cause that if Troy could have been saved by this right hand even by the same it would have been saved.



November 1881 " Col. John S. Mosby, United States consul at Hong Kong, complains in a letter to the State Department that his predecessor in office, Gen. Bailey, has gone unpunished for the frauds which Mosby ferreted out."

Letter to from Mosby to Chinn dated August 15, 1901, on a Department of the Interior letterhead written from Akron, Colorado. “Chinn ” likely was Benton Chinn a member of his Civil War company and "longtime Eastern factotum"  (factotum - a servant employed to do a variety of jobs). See Benton Chinn obituary below.

The letter reads, in part:
“I arrived here a week ago. This [Akron] is a station on the Burlington road—112 miles east of Denver. The climate is delicious—like Virginia in October. My companions are cowboys—coyotes—& cattle. I hope to be transferred & have my headquarters at Denver very soon…I wrote to Miss Kate about sending my portrait to Clarke’s to be framed.




October 25, 1901 Fort Morgan, Colorado " Col. Mosby of war fame, now special officer under the U. S. Interior department, came up from Akron to this county last week in his office capacity, leaving Fort Morgan for home Monday night."

January 31, 1902 Holyoke, Colorado "Colonel J. S. Mosby a noted confederate cavalry officer of the civil war, was in Holyoke Wednesday on business for the Interior Department. Colonel Mosby is a very interesting talker and especially so on all questions connected with the ; civil war on which he is thoroughly posted. He was raised a whig and was a strong unionist up to the time of the beginning of the civil war when he took sides with his people of Virginia for the Confederacy and enlisted as a private and before the close of the war was commissioned of Colonel. After the close of' the war he affiliated politically with the republican party and supported Gen. Grant for president in both campaigns. General Grant offered him a government office which he declined for the reason that he could not afford to leave his law practice. He afterwards accepted an appointment by President Hayes as Consul to Hong Kong, China which office he held till removed by President Cleveland for political reasons. For sixteen years Colonel Mosby held the position as attorney for the Southern Pacific R. R. and made his home in San Francisco till the reorganization of the western roads made a change in attorney's. Colonel Mosby now holds a position in the Interior Department."

October 24, 1902 "Col. John S. Mosby, special agent of the interior department, called upon the president Wednesday and laid before him the result of his investigation of the illegal occupation of public lands in Colorado and other western states by stock raisers.
Col. Mosby told the president that millions of acres of public land that ought rightfully to be opened to the homestead settler, were occupied by stock raisers. After concluding the investigation it is making, the interior department will oust such stock raisers as are not occupying the public lands lawfully."


June 28, 1901.

Miscellaneous excerpt:
In May 1902 the Rattler reported “U.S. Land Inspector Col. Mosby, of Washington, arrived in Haigler [Nebr] Tuesday night.”

May 1902





October 24, 1902
Newspaper article, source unknown:



July 1910 "Col. John S. Mosby, who distinguished himself in the Confederate cause during the Civil war as a daring guerilla fighter and who in the early part of President Roosevelt's administration was appointed a special attorney for the department of justice, has lost his government position. The reason has not been made public, but it is thought old age was the cause for the dismissal. Colonel Mosby is 73 years old, but his friends say he is still active and energetic. He has made no appeal to be restored, although this is deemed probable, and the president and the attorney general may be asked to intervene. The colonel, it is stated, may devote his time to writing a book on the Civil war."

September 3 1915 "John S. Mosby, Jr of Washington, DC well known in Denver and Colorado as Jack Mosby, former lawyer, newspaperman and educator, died at the emergency hospital, Washington, aged 51."
John Jr. is a lawyer in Denver in 1900, single, in a boarding house.

John Singleton Mosby Jr. BIRTH 8 Dec 1863 Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, DEATH 26 Aug 1915 (aged 51) District of Columbia, BURIAL Warrenton Cemetery Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, MEMORIAL ID 6154717
June 1916 Holyoke, Colorado "Colonel John S. Mosby, the famous confederate cavalry raider of the civil war died at Washington, D. C., on May 30, Memorial day, age 82 years. He was known to a number of our people in Phillips county as for some time he held a position with the Interior Department and was sent to Colorado to look after stock men who had been fencing government land in violation of law and he was in our county a few times on this business."

Benton Chinn Obituary