Note 55 — HISTORICAL NOTES
Reading edition
J. S. Mosby, Mosby’s War Memoirs and Stuart’s Cavalry Campaigns (New York: Pageant Book Co., 1958), p. 10. Mosby records in his memoirs that in Richmond, before being sent to the Shenandoah Valley, the men were issued uniforms of very rough quality from the state penitentiary. There was almost a mutiny as the men piled them up in front of the captain’s tent and refused to wear them—all except Mosby and Beattie. Mosby then states, “I do not think any clothes I ever wore did me more service than these. When I became a commander, I made Beattie a lieutenant.”
This story is corroborated in Charles W. Russell (ed.), The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby (Boston: Little Brown, 1917), p. 30.