reported the fate of these six men. They
had been taken into Front Royal, and there, at the personal order of
General George A. Custer, and under circumstances of extreme
brutality, they had all been hanged. Rhodes' mother, who lived in
Front Royal, had been forced to witness the hanging of her son.

To put it conservatively, there was considerable excitement in Mosby's
Confederacy when the news of this atrocity was received. The senior
officers managed to restore a measure of calmness, however, and it was
decided to wait until Mosby returned before taking any action on the
matter.

In addition to the hangings at Front Royal, Custer was acquiring a bad
reputation because of his general brutality to the people of the
Shenandoah Valley. After the battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting
Bull would have probably won any popularity contest in northern
Virginia without serious competition.

On September 29, Mosby was back with his command; his wound had not
been as serious as it might have been for the bullet had expended most
of its force against the butt of one of the revolvers in his belt.
Operations against the railroads had been allowed to slacken during
Mosby's absence; now they were stepped up again. Track was repeatedly
torn up along the Manassas Gap line, and there were attacks on camps
and strong points, and continual harassing of wood-cutting parties
obtaining fuel for the locomotives. The artillery was taken out, and
trains were shelled. All this, of course, occasioned a fresh wave of
Union raids into the home territory of the raiders, during one of
which Yank Ames, who had risen to a lieutenancy in the Forty-Third,
was killed.

The most desperate efforts were being made, at this time, to keep the
Manassas Gap Railroad open, and General C. C. Augur, who had charge of
the railroad line at the time, was arresting citizens indiscriminately
and forcing them to ride on the trains as hostages. Mosby obtained
authorization from Lee's headquarters to use reprisal measures on
officers and train crews of trains on which citizens were being forced
to ride, and also authority to execute prisoners from Custer's command
in equal number to the men hanged at Front Royal and elsewhere.

It was not until November that he was able to secure prisoners from
Custer's brigade, it being his intention to limit his retaliation to
men from units actually involved in the hangings. On November 6, he
paraded about twenty-five such prisone