which
provided for independent bodies of cavalry to be organized as other
government troops. The officers were to be regularly commissioned and
the men to be paid like other soldiers. The distinctive features were,
that the rangers should operate independently of the regular army and be
entitled to the legitimate spoil captured from the enemy.

While John S. Mosby was employed as a scout by General J.E.B. Stuart, he
had concluded that a command organized and operated as contemplated by
this act could do great damage to the enemy guarding that portion of
Northern Virginia abandoned by the Confederate armies. But the partizan
branch of the service having been brought into disrepute by the worse
than futile efforts of others, his superior officers at first refused
him permission to engage in so questionable an enterprise. Finally,
however, General Stuart gave Mosby a detail of nine men from the regular
cavalry with which to experiment.

At that time the two main armies operating in Virginia were confronting
each other near Fredericksburg. To protect their lines of communication
with Washington, the Federals had stationed a considerable force across
the Potomac, with headquarters at Fairfax Court-house. They also
established a complete cordon of pickets from a point on the river above
Washington to a point below, thus encompassing many square miles of
Virginia territory. Upon these outposts Mosby commenced his operations.
The size of his command compelled him to confine his attacks to the
small details made nightly for picket duty. But he was so uniformly
successful that when the time came for him to report back to General
Stuart, that officer was so pleased with the experiment that he allowed
Mosby to select fifteen men from his old regiment and return, for an
indefinite period, to his chosen field of operations.

His first exploits had been so noised abroad that the young men from the
neighboring counties and the soldiers at home on furloughs would request
permission to join in his raids. He could easily muster fifty of these,
known as "Mosby's Conglomerates," for any expedition. The opportunity
for developing his ideas of border warfare was thus presented. With
great vigor he renewed his attacks upon the Federal outposts. As a
recognition of one of his successful exploits, the Confederate
government sent him a captain's commission with authority to raise a
company of partizan rangers. The material for this was already