{"id":75541,"date":"2024-06-14T12:47:38","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T18:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=75541"},"modified":"2024-06-14T12:47:38","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T18:47:38","slug":"know-your-real-civil-war-history-herman-melvilles-terrifying-ride-into-mosbys-confederacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/14\/know-your-real-civil-war-history-herman-melvilles-terrifying-ride-into-mosbys-confederacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Know Your Real Civil War History: Herman Melville\u2019s Terrifying Ride into Mosby\u2019s Confederacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Herman Melville\u2019s Terrifying Ride into Mosby\u2019s Confederacy<\/a><\/h1>\n

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On April 18, 1864, author Herman Melville rode through the twilight, embedded with the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, on a scouting mission deep in enemy territory.<\/h2>\n

Nearly thirteen years had passed since the forty-four-old Melville had published\u00a0Moby Dick,<\/em>\u00a0a book that was not considered a critical or commercial success during the author\u2019s lifetime. Before the Civil War, Melville tried his hand at poetry and submitted a book of verse to his publisher. The manuscript had been rejected months earlier. To resurrect his career and eke out a living as a writer, he thrust himself into the war as a civilian and observer, capturing the conflict with his pen in a book of poetry titled\u00a0Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War<\/em>.<\/h2>\n

The Union cavalry hunted Confederate guerrilla leader John Singleton Mosby and his intrepid Rangers, \u201cthe South\u2019s most dangerous men.\u201d These highly disciplined men, who never numbered more than a few hundred, terrorized the North\u2014tied down tens of thousands of Federal troops, cut Union supply lines, captured generals, and pioneered a form of warfare that, had the South adopted it on a larger scale, would have prolonged the Civil War and perhaps resulted in a different outcome.<\/h2>\n

Weeks earlier in 1864, Mosby had launched a devastating ambush on the Union cavalry at Anker\u2019s blacksmith shop about two miles from Dranesville, Virginia. Hiding in a pine thicket, Mosby relayed his orders: \u201cMen, the Yankees are coming, and it is very likely we will have a hard fight. When you are ordered to charge, I want you to go right through them. Reserve your fire until you get close enough to see clearly what you are shooting at, and then let every shot tell.\u201d<\/h2>\n

RTWT<\/a><\/h2>\n

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Additional Reading:\u00a0 John Singleton Mosby<\/a><\/h2>\n

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Herman Melville\u2019s Terrifying Ride into Mosby\u2019s Confederacy   On April 18, 1864, author Herman Melville rode through the twilight, embedded with the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, on a scouting mission deep in enemy territory. Nearly thirteen years had passed since the forty-four-old Melville had published\u00a0Moby Dick,\u00a0a book that was not considered a critical or commercial success…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5773,5523,2280,5479,2004,5944,475,476,477,8448,478,479,6096,4634,1286,5573,1893,14953,14779,486,487,14620,14057,13855,491,492,493],"tags":[16081,17559,259,17557,8798,17556,9835,16009,763,17558,5809],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75544,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75541\/revisions\/75544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}