tic
gestures of gallantry. And so he finally got his independent
command--all of six men--and orders to operate in the enemy's rear.

Whatever Stuart might have had in mind in leaving him behind "to look
after the loyal Confederate people," John Mosby had no intention of
posting himself in Laura Ratcliffe's front yard as a guard of honor.
He had a theory of guerrilla warfare which he wanted to test. In part,
it derived from his experiences in the Shenandoah Valley and in
Fairfax County, but in larger part, it was based upon his own
understanding of the fundamental nature of war.

The majority of guerrilla leaders have always been severely tactical
in their thinking. That is to say, they have been concerned almost
exclusively with immediate results. A troop column is ambushed, a
picket post attacked, or a supply dump destroyed for the sake of the
immediate loss of personnel or materiel so inflicted upon the enemy.
Mosby, however, had a well-conceived strategic theory. He knew, in
view of the magnitude of the war, that the tactical effects of his
operations would simply be lost in the over-all picture. But, if he
could create enough uproar in the Union rear, he believed that he
could force the withdrawal from the front of a regiment or even a
brigade to guard against his attacks and, in some future battle, the
absence of that regiment or brigade might tip the scale of battle or,
at least, make some future Confederate victory more complete or some
defeat less crushing.

As soon as Stuart's column started southward, Mosby took his six men
across Bull Run Mountain to Middleburg, where he ordered them to
scatter out, billet themselves at outlying farms, and meet him at the
Middleburg hotel on the night of January 10. Meanwhile he returned
alone to Fairfax County, spending the next week making contacts with
the people and gathering information.

On the night of Saturday, January 10, he took his men through the gap
at Aldie and into Fairfax County. His first stop was at a farmhouse
near Herndon Station, where he had friends, and there he met a
woodsman, trapper and market hunter named John Underwood, who, with
his two brothers, had been carrying on a private resistance movement
against the Union occupation ever since the Confederate Army had moved
out of the region. Overjoyed at the presence of regular Confederate
troops, even as few as a half-dozen, Underwood offered to guide Mosby
to a nearby Union picket post.

Captur