Right now which will be the final volume in press. Hes received two awards of the Jefferson Davis historical gold medal. Mr. Buckland is a graduate of the university of kansas and had a 22year career in the u. S. Army in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, slightly higher than i got to when i was in the army, and he has many awards. He served much of his career in special forces. You see some of the awards he received during that time period. We thank him for his service. He currently works for the United States government. Lives with his wife maureen in centerville, virginia. They have three sons. The title of his presentation today is john s. Mosby, the perfect man in the Perfect Place. Please help me welcome mr. Eric buckland. [ applause ] good morning. In keeping with the theme on leadership, patrick had asked me to talk about john mosby so we could address a leader at the unit level, down at the tactical and operational level. There is no doubt that john mosby was a singularly outstanding combat commander. I think he is one of the few, if not the only commander during the civil war who actually put together a unit and commanded it all the way until the very end of the war when he disbanded the unit. I cant think of another regiment that was formed where that commander, if he lived, continued to command. In many cases they would have been promoted out of the job. He was a remarkable man, but i will make the case, and its with my title, i believe, the perfect man in the Perfect Place that the stars a lined for John Singleton mosby. He had some luck in his success. A great deal of it had to do with his abilities, but i also think that the stars aligned to a certain extent in what he was able to do and you might say get away with over a 26month period of time. To understand john mosby and who he became, i think you have to understand, know a little bit about his youth. He was a sickly child born december 6th, 1833, and the family did not expect him to live far into adulthood. He, in fact, when he was full grown was perhaps 57, probably closer to 56, 125 pounds. Not a big man. Because of his illness and because of his fraility, he was doted on by his mother. He didnt have to do chores around the house. He spent a great deal of time reading. He became highly educated and he was a very intelligent man, became a very intelligent older gentleman as well, but that opened his world to him. He was doted on at home. Once he began to go to school, i think he had a certain amount of selfconfidence that bubbled over into arrogance. He probably rubbed a lot of his school mates the wrong way. He was a smaller boy and he tended to be picked on. He himself said he had to fight almost every day when he was in public school, and he lost every fight, but hed go back the next day and get right back at it. He would not back down. Youd see that in his partisan ranger career. This was not a man that would back down from a fight. He was courageous. In fact, i often claim that he had ice water in his veins. I know thats a cliche, but this is a man that is as close to fearless as i have ever read about. I think he even exhibited that as a youth. I think he was ambitious to a certain extend. Im not sure if he always knew what direction he wanted that to take, but i believe with being somewhat spoiled at home, being told he was, you know, the apple of his mothers eye, the fact that he was very intelligent, again, he was bubbling with selfconfidence. When you read his memoirs and other things he writes, hes very selfdeprecating to a certain point and then you realize that that may be just a tad disingenuous. I think from the very start mosbys life and as he became commander and as he grew older, it was John Singleton mosbys way or it was the highway. He did not broker people disputing with him, especially as a commander and later as an older man. He challenged people at least two, three, four times to duels after the war. This was an ornery man who had great confidence in himself and as a younger man that translated well into his partisan ranger career but not someone, even though John Singleton mosby did not drink, he was not someone i would have wanted to sit down and have a bourbon with. I believe most of the stories would have been about him and any i might have told about him i probably would have been wrong and he would have corrected me. I think one of the things that encapsulates his personality is an incident that occurred at the university of virginia when he was a student there. He wanted to have a party. He had invited two young gentlemen to come to his party. They were known as musicians. There doesnt seem to be any thought that there was subterfuge in mosbys inviting him. George turpin who was the town bully, a big, brutish type of man already known to cut up one uva student with a knife and cave another ones head in with a rock or a brick, george turbin wanted to have a party as well. He wanted them to come to his party. He heard that mosby had already invited them to his. He began a rumor or stories that mosby had only invited these two men to come to play music, sort of an insult to the two men. Mosby heard about it and in the way they did things back then to turbin, sir, what do you mean by these comments . And turbins comments for all practical purposes was, i will eat you blood raw. He took that literally. This was a dangerous, violent man. He armed himself with a pepper box pistol. I think you can say at that time mosby realized that even at 56, 57 as you would find later in the war, your size and your weight didnt much matter if you had a pistol in your hand. And so he armed himself with a pepper box pistol and eventually george turbin came to the boarding house where mosby was staying. Some movement was made after turbin came to the front door. Whether or not he lurched at mosby, whether or not he began to move up the stairs. He was a few stairs up by the front door. Nonetheless, once he moved he found himself shot in the neck and lying on the floor in a pool of blood. I think at that point mosby did two things that he would later make almost Standard Operating Procedures for himself, and that was, one, to be armed with a pistol, something you control for up close and very personal work and the second thing was once an enemy attacks, you dont sit back and wait for the attack to hit you, you go into the attack mode itself. And he did that with his command later when he began his partisan ranger career. As well as the fact that he was fearless. He was not intimidated by turpin. He took care of business and he would do that later on. You would fight everything in school to the young man who armed himself and was not going to back down when he got into a confrontation. That possibly required some sort of violence. He was arrested for shooting turpin. He was tried and convicted and he was put in jail and it was while he was in jail he studied the law. In fact, his prosecutor is the man who lent him his law books. Mosby would eventually become a lawyer. There were some twists and turns with his case. In the end he was actually exonerated, the record expunged and he was released from jail. He would become a lawyer down in the bristol, virginia, area. And then, of course, war clouds began to loom in virginia. Now, up until the time of virginias secession, mosby was a unionist. He did not believe that the country should be torn apart, but when virginia seceded he made the comment that he had to go with his mother, meaning the state of virginia, and he enlisted in a unit called the First Washington mounted rifles or the washington mounted rifles. That was a Calvary Company formed down in southwestern virginia that would eventually be rolled into the first virginia calvary. His Company Commander was william e. Grumble jones and jones took mosby under his wing. It was there that mosby discovered that he hated camp life. He did not like the regiment of the army. He found that hed much rather be out on picket duty or outpost duty, and he didnt like to be in camp. That will show up later in his partisan career. After the battle of bull run or manassas, of course, the Confederate Army began to go through some transformation. Grumble jones would become the Regimental Commander of the first virginia. He would make john mosby his adjutant. He took him under his wing. He spent a great deal of time with him learning about training his men, how to take care of the men. Jones, as you might imagine by his nickname grumble, was not the most affable man, but he took good care of the men and he looked out for their welfare as mosby would do later on. So mosby became his adjutant. Second in command of the regiment was fitzhugh lee. Mosby and lee did not like each other at all. And when elections were held in 1862 once the confederate soldiers were given the right or the privilege to elect their commanders, grumble jones was voted out, fitzhugh lee was voted in. Mosby did not want to work for lee and he knew lee did not want him his adjutant. He resigned. Luckily for him, he had done some errands, small work for jeb stewart. Stewart knew of him, thought he was intelligent, trusted of him and stewart hearing of mosbys plight back to the ranks from First Lieutenant to private at best and stewart asked mosby to come up on his staff as a scout for a career. And this is when the stars begin to align for mosby where he had the opportunity to prove his work for jeb stewart. One was the ride around mcclellan. Mosby led stewarts ride around mcclellan. He did a couple of other things for stewart that gained stewarts trust in mosby. He knew that mosby reported something, it was accurate, it was true. He could count on him to get the job done, and somewhere along this time mosby, a scout for stewart began to prove his worth, he began to espouse this idea of going behind union lines with a small group of men and annoying the union forces, disrupting their lines of communication. Stewart would continually stiff arm mosby saying, i dont have the people. I cant give you any men to go off and do this. But eventually very late december 1862 after the what was known as the christmas raid when stewart was up in northern loudoun county, mosby with him as a scout, stewart told mosby, im going to leave you behind. Now the quote here from mosby says six, but it was actually nine men that stewart left with mosby. And he told mosby, you can go ahead and try this idea that you have. Lets see how it works out. And his area of operation was to be in loudoun county. Now, mosby almost immediately began to display his ability to pick targets and be successful in what he was doing, so about two weeks after stewart had left with the remainder of the confederate cavalry and went down to winter encampment, about two weeks later mosby rode down with his nine men to report to stewart and bring these nine men back who had been on loan, but with them were about 30 captured union horses, all the tack and all the weaponry that had been with the Union Troopers that had been captured. All the Union Troopers who had been on those mounts had been paroled, but mosby went down with 30 sets of cavalry including horses. Stewart thought, thats pretty good. Im going to give you 15 men now, not for a total of 24, but 15 instead of nine. You go back and see if you can continue to do what you were doing. Mosby expresses these ideas later on in what he wanted to do as far as his mission as a partisan ranger. A great deal is made by some that mosby studied Francis Marian as a child and he did, in fact mosby even refers to it as Francis Marian and whooping in delight tricking the british soldiers. People say that mosby took his tactics and his ideas directly from Francis Marian. Ive read some of the books. To equate mosby becoming the partisan ranger he was from reading those books of Francis Marian would be like many of us taking the Owners Manual of our car and disassembling the engine and then putting it back together. There just wasnt that much information in the books. Mosby just understood Unconventional Warfare. He understood what needed to be done and how he should be operating while he was out with his men. And you see this very clearly, i believe, in these two comments that he made. I told stewart that i would by incessant attacks compel the enemy either greatly to contract his lines or to reinforce them either of which would be of great advantage to the southern cause. It was an economy of force mission. Never, ever did mosby envision taking his force en masse and attacking a Union Cavalry unit. It was hit and run, continue to cause trouble, disrupt them, make them concerned, make them worried, make them pull back forces. Mosby said the greatest thing he accomplished as a partisan ranger was to anybody who has been in the military knows how precious sleep is. If for no other reason, just to escape the drudgery that youre involved in. But oftentimes, you know, if youve been out on an operation, on patrol, sleep is wonderful. And mosby really felt that by his operating at night and coming into places where he was least expected, he caused worry and angst amongst the Union Troopers, the calvary, especially. Again, it was to either push back the union posts that rendered Washington City, to put them back so he could have a little more room to maneuver or to force those outposts to be reinforced. And in order to have them be reinforced, they would have to draw from the main battle area down where the army was confronting robert e. Lee. When all was said and done, he was successful on both levels. He pushed those outposts back tighter into Washington City and they were reinforced. He tied up a good number of union forces because of worry about problems within Washington City. I dont believe anyone ever felt that mosby would capture washington but certainly would get close enough that he began to worry them as far as what things he might do. And so he was successful on both levels. But from start to finish, i believe mosby did things his way. Initially, his chain of command, he would report to jeb stewart. He had a direct shot to stewart. He reported directly to robert e. Lee. Thats the only instance i can think of where a colonel reported directly without anyone in between to robert e. Lee as far as his operations. But mosby did it his way. What do i mean by that . When he had enough men to go from being what he called mosbys conglomerate, which would be 1863 to the 9th of june 1863 when he operated not as a formal unit with no other blessing from anyone other than the fact that he was in charge of this group of people until the 10th of june 1863 when he formalized his command by forming company a, the 43rd battalion calvary. When he was about to form that unit, jeb stewart told him, dont call them partisan rangers. Dont call yourself rangers. Thats a word that has kind of fallen in to refute at this point. Stewart also told him, you will have elections. When you form your new companies, you will have elections. Mosby would have elections but he did it his way, which ill talk about in a few moments. Also, from robert e. Lee, as audacious as he was, i think when all is said and done, robert e. Lee never fully understood what it was that john mosby was doing. And i dont think hes any different than a good number of conventional general officers in todays military. They dont understand special operations, irregular warfare. They dont get it. Or they dont want to get it. Lee was audacious. Absolutely. Did he push the envelope . Absolutely. But i believe when all was said and done, he was a conventional officer and he was also, to a certain extent, a gentleman of the old school who really, it wasnt mosby didnt fight fair and he doesnt fight fair. He fought to win. Did he fight dirty sni dont know. But i think when all was said and done, lee didnt understand what mosby was about and a couple different times general lee complained to stewart that mosby was fighting in too many school groups. The decentralized way that he operated didnt make sense. He needed to mass his forces and pick one big target. That went against completely everything that mosby was doing. He could have three, four, five, six different combat patrols out on any given night, especially as the unit increased in size. 10, 15, 20, 30 miles apart. And disrupt the union lines of communication at several different points at the same time. If he were to mass his unit and only once, remember, he started with nine men at the end of the war, 800 men were officially mustered into the 43rd battalion virginia calvary and almost 2000 men had ridden with him at one time or another. The Largest Group of mini had for one operation was about 350 at the wagon raid in the late summer of 1864. Generally operated in groups of 50 to 100, maybe 150. And lee emphasized to stewart that he thought mosby was wasting his time and needed to bring all of these people together and hit more bridges or more trains when in fact that would have really diluted mosbys effect in this. So he continued to do what he believed was the right way or go about operating it in the way that he believed was the right way to operate. Now, his area of operations, northern virginia, loudoun, was known as the debatable land. This was a great area for an Unconventional Warfare unit to operate within. It was compartmented as far as the draws, the hollows, the valleys, the thick woods, the people in the area were essentially prosouthern. There were some small quaker settlements or communities in northern loudoun county. By and large, the people in the area were in support of southern activities. It was a tremendous area in which mosby was able to operate as far as having a great freedom of movement. In fact, from the time he started operations in january 63 up until the very end of the war, there were only really two times that mosby didnt have almost complete freedom of movement. That was during the Gettysburg Campaign when the union forces began to move down what is todays route 50 as they were chasing lee who was going