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 re-enforcement of the cavalry in Fairfax County from the
front, but the line of picket posts was noticeably shortened.

About two weeks later, with forty men, Mosby raided a post at Herndon
Station, bringing off a major, a captain, two lieutenants and
twenty-one men, with a horse apiece. A week later, with fifty-odd men,
he cut up about three times his strength of Union cavalry at
Chantilly. Having surprised a small party, he had driven them into a
much larger force, and the hunted had turned to hunt the hunters.
Fighting a delaying action with a few men while the bulk of his force
fell back on an old roadblock of felled trees dating from the second
Manassas campaign, he held off the enemy until he was sure his
ambuscade was set, then, by feigning headlong flight, led them into a
trap and chased the survivors for five or six miles. Wyndham and
Stoughton had found Mosby an annoying nuisance; their successors were
finding him a serious menace.

This attitude was not confined to the local level, but extended all
the way to the top echelons. The word passed down, "Get Mosby!" and it
was understood that the officer responsible for his elimination would
find his military career made for him. One of the Union officers who
saw visions of rapid advancement over the wreckage of Mosby's Rangers
was a captain of the First Vermont, Josiah Flint by name. He was soon
to have a chance at it.

On March 31, Mosby's Rangers met at Middleburg and moved across the
mountain to Chantilly, expecting to take a strong outpost which had
been located there. On arriving, they found the campsite deserted. The
post had been pulled