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John Singleton Mosby's success as a partisan leader was in many ways due to his persona.
His strong-willed, disciplined approach to leadership commanded immediate respect from his men and enemies. One of his captors in July 1862, Captain Willard Glazier of the 2nd New York Cavalry, remembered Mosby:
By his sprightly appearance and conversation he attracted considerable attention.
He is slight, yet well formed; has a keen blue eye, and florid complexion; and displays no small amount of Southern bravado in his dress and manners. His gray plush hat is surmounted by a plume, which he tosses as he speaks in real Prussian style.
Most people were amazed by Mosby's appearance.
Many expected a greater than life type of individual. Instead they found a small, slender man. "Soon I beheld Mosby himself. From the accounts which I had heard and read of him," noted Ranger John Munson, "I expected to see a man such a novelist's picture when describing some terrible brigand chief. I was therefore somewhat surprised when one of my companions pointed to a rather slender, but wiry looking young man of medium height, with light keen eyes and pleasant expression, who was restlessly walking up and down the street..." It was his eyes that belied the inner qualities of Mosby. John Esten Cooke wrote that "no one would have been struck with anything noticeable in him except his eyes. These flashed at times in a way which might have induced the opinion that there was something in the man, if it only had an opportunity to 'come out' ". Perhaps Charles A. Ranlett remembered Mosby's look best when he recounted that "I do not remember any man from whose eyes leadership shone so vividly as from that one hard grey eye of Mosby . . . . I'm quite certain that a man under his orders would rather face any kind of chances than come under his disapproval."
The "Gray Ghost" or "King of Fauquier" as Mosby was called, was of medium height with sandy blond hair and a clean-shaven face.
He wore a gray cape lined with scarlet that was thrown back over his shoulder, a curling ostrich plume decorated his hat, the second most famous feather in the Confederacy. Weighing just over 125 pounds, he
was agile and fearless. Mosby's pictures show a man whose determination bordered on ruthlessness but never overlapped into cruelty.
Grant wrote in his memoirs, "Since the close of the war, I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I had supposed . . . He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful."
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