recommend that the law authorizing these partisan corps be
abolished. The evils resulting from their organization more than
counterbalance the good they accomplish." The Secretary of War, Mr.
Siddon, drafted a bill to abolish them, and it passed the
Confederate House. Delay occurring in the Senate, the matter was
compromised by transferring all the Rangers except Mosby's and
McNeill's to the line. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 1082, 1253.] As it was
to Mosby's that the reported facts applied, and all agreed that his
was the best of the lot, we may imagine what must have been the
character of the rest.

In the first two winters of the war, these organizations were in the
height of their pernicious activity, and the loyal West Virginians
were their favorite victims. We knew almost nothing of their
organization, except that they claimed some Confederate law for
their being. We seldom found them in uniform, and had no means of
distinguishing them from any other armed horse-stealers and
"bush-whackers." We were, however, made unpleasantly certain of the
fact that in every neighborhood where secession sentiments were
rife, our messengers were waylaid and killed, small parties were
ambushed, and all the exasperating forms of guerilla warfare were
abundant. Besides all this, the Confederate authorities assumed to
call out the militia of counties into which they were intending to
make an expedition, so that they might have the temporary
co-operation of local troops. They claimed the right to do this
because they had not recognized the separation of West Virginia, and
insisted that the whole was subject to the laws of Virginia. The
result was that the Union men formed companies of "Home Guards" for
self-protection, and the conflict of arms was carried into every
settlement in the mountain nooks and along the valleys. In this kind
of fighting there was no quarter given, or if prisoners were taken,
they were too often reported as having met with fatal accidents
before they could be handed over to the regular authorities. As all
this could have no effect upon the progress of the war, the more
cool and intelligent heads of both sides opposed it, and gradually
diminished it. Severe measures against it were in fact merciful, for
the horrors of war are always least when the fighting is left to the
armies of responsible belligerents, unprovoked by the petty but
exasperating hostilities of irregulars. The trouble from this source
was less duri