rs and forced them to draw lots,
selecting, in this manner, seven of them--one for each of the men
hanged at Front Royal and another for a man named Willis who had been
hanged at Gaines' Cross Roads several weeks later. It was decided that
they should be taken into the Shenandoah Valley and hanged beside the
Valley Pike, where their bodies could serve as an object lesson. On
the way, one of them escaped. Four were hanged, and then, running out
of rope, they prepared to shoot the other two. One of these got away
during a delay caused by defective percussion caps on his
executioner's revolver.

A sign was placed over the bodies, setting forth the reason for their
execution, and Mosby also sent one of his men under a flag of truce to
Sheridan's headquarters, with a statement of what had been done and
why, re-enforced with the intimation that he had more prisoners,
including a number of officers, in case his messenger failed to return
safely. Sheridan replied by disclaiming knowledge of the Front Royal
hangings, agreeing that Mosby was justified in taking reprisals, and
assuring the Confederate leader that hereafter his men would be given
proper treatment as prisoners of war. There was no repetition of the
hangings.

By this time the Shenandoah Valley campaign as such was over. The last
Confederate effort to clear Sheridan out of the Valley had failed at
Cedar Creek on October 19, and the victor was going methodically about
his task of destroying the strategic and economic usefulness of the
valley. How well he succeeded in this was best expressed in Sheridan's
own claim that a crow flying over the region would have to carry his
own rations. The best Mosby could do was to launch small raiding
parties to harass the work of destruction.

By the beginning of December, the northern or Loudoun County end of
Mosby's Confederacy was feeling the enemy scourge as keenly as the
valley, and the winter nights were lighted with the flames of burning
houses and barns. For about a week, while this was going on, Mosby
abandoned any attempt at organized action. His men, singly and in
small parties, darted in and out among the invaders, sniping and
bushwhacking, attacking when they could and fleeing when they had to,
and taking no prisoners. When it was over, the northern end of Mosby's
Confederacy was in ashes and most of the people had "refugeed out,"
but Mosby's Rangers, as a fighting force, was still intact. On
December 17, for instan