He then began giving instructions, detailing parties to round up horses and capture any soldiers they found awake and moving about. He went, himself, with several men, to the home of a citizen named Murray, where he had been told that Wyndham had quartered himself, but here he received the disappointing news that the Englishman had gone to Washington that afternoon.
A few minutes later, however, Joe Nelson came up with a prisoner, an infantryman who had just been relieved from sentry duty at General Stoughton’s headquarters, who said that there had been a party there earlier in the evening and that Stoughton and several other officers were still there. Mosby, still disappointed at his failure to secure Wyndham, decided to accept Stoughton in his place. Taking several men, he went at once to the house where the prisoner said Stoughton had his headquarters.
Arriving there, he hammered loudly on the door with a revolver butt. An upstairs window opened, and a head, in a nightcap, was thrust out.
“What the devil’s all the noise about?” its owner demanded. “Don’t you know this is General Stoughton’s headquarters?”
“I’d hoped it was; I almost killed a horse getting here,” Mosby retorted. “Come down and open up; dispatches from Washington.”
In a few moments, a light appeared inside on the first floor, and the door opened. A man in a nightshirt, holding a candle, stood in the doorway.
“I’m Lieutenant Prentiss, on General Stoughton’s staff. The general’s asleep. If you’ll give me the dispatches. …”
Mosby caught the man by the throat with his left hand and shoved a Colt into his face with his right. Dan Thomas, beside him, lifted the candle out of the other man’s hand.
“And I’m Captain Mosby, General Stuart’s staff. We’ve just taken Fairfax Courthouse. Inside, now, and take me to the general at once.”
The general was in bed, lying on his face in a tangle of bedclothes. Mosby pulled the sheets off of him, lifted the tail of his nightshirt and slapped him across the bare rump.
The effect was electric. Stoughton sat up in bed, gobbling in fury. In the dim candlelight, he mistook the gray of Mosby’s tunic for blue, and began a string of bloodthirsty threats of court-martial and firing squad, interspersed with oaths.
“Easy, now, General,” the perpetrator of the outrage soothed. “You’ve heard of John Mosby, haven’t you?”
“Yes; have you captured him?” In the face of such tidings, Stoughton would gladly forget the assault on his person.
Mosby shook his head, smiling seraphically. “No, General. He’s captured you. I’m Mosby.”
“Oh my God!” Stoughton sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes, overcome.
Knowing the precarious nature of his present advantage, Mosby then undertook to deprive Stoughton of any hope of rescue or will to resist.
“Stuart’s cavalry is occupying Fairfax Courthouse,” he invented, “and Stonewall Jackson’s at Chantilly with his whole force. We’re all moving to occupy Alexandria by morning. You’ll have to hurry and dress, General.”
“Is Fitzhugh Lee here?” Stoughton asked. “He’s a friend of mine; we were classmates at West Point.”
“Why, no; he’s with Jackson at Chantilly. Do you want me to take you to him? I can do so easily if you hurry.”
It does not appear that Stoughton doubted as much as one syllable of this remarkable set of prevarications. The Union Army had learned by bitter experience that Stonewall Jackson was capable of materializing almost anywhere. So he climbed out of bed, putting on his clothes.
On the way back to the courthouse square, Prentiss got away from them in the darkness, but Mosby kept a tight hold on Stoughton’s bridle. By this time, the suspicion that all was not well in the county seat had begun to filter about. Men were beginning to turn out under arms all over town, and there was a confusion of challenges and replies and some occasional firing as hastily wakened soldiers mistook one another for the enemy. Mosby got his prisoners and horses together and started out of town as quickly as he could.
The withdrawal was made over much the same route as the approach, without serious incident. Thanks to the precaution of cutting the telegraph wires, the camp at Centreville knew nothing of what had happened at Fairfax Courthouse until long after the raiders were safely away. They lost all but thirty of the prisoners—in the woods outside Fairfax Courthouse, they escaped in droves—but they brought Stoughton and the two captains out safely.
The results were everything Mosby had hoped. He became a Confederate hero over night, and there was no longer any danger of his being recalled. There were several halfhearted attempts to kick him upstairs—an offer of a commission in the now defunct Virginia Provisional Army, which he rejected scornfully, and a similar offer in the regular Confederate States Army, which he politely declined because it would deprive his men of their right to booty under the Scott Law. Finally he was given a majority in the Confederate States Army, with authorization to organize a partisan battalion under the Scott Law. This he accepted, becoming Major Mosby of the Forty-Third Virginia Partisan Ranger Battalion.
The effect upon the enemy was no less satisfactory. When full particulars of the Fairfax raid reached Washington, Wyndham vanished from the picture, being assigned to other duties where less depended upon him. There was a whole epidemic of courts-martial and inquiries, some of which were still smouldering when the war ended. And Stoughton, the principal victim, found scant sympathy. President Lincoln, when told that the rebels had raided Fairfax to the tune of one general, two captains, thirty men and fifty-eight horses, remarked that he could make all the generals he wanted, but that he was sorry to lose the horses, as he couldn’t make horses. As yet, there was no visible reinforcement of the cavalry in Fairfax County from the front, but the line of picket posts was
