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this (my) partisan corps was the only Confederate force that operated in his rear, or in Northern Virginia east of the Blue Ridge., Sheridan affected to call us guerillas, but never defined what he meant by the term.’
Sheridan to Grant: Berryville, Va., August 17, 1864—（9 P. M.）
* * * ‘Mosby has annoyed me and captured a few wagons.
We hung one and shot six of his men yesterday.’
Two days before this I had sent three hundred of his men prisoners to Richmond.
Again, August 19th, Sheridan to Grant:
‘Guerrillas give me great annoyance, but I am quietly disposing of numbers of them.’
Everybody will understand what ‘quietly disposing’ of a man means, especially when read in the light of his former dispatches.
(The last dispatch suggests the quiet operations of Jack the Ripper.)
Again, Halltown, August 22d, Sheridan to Grant: ‘We have disposed of quite a number of Mosby's men.’
“Disposed of” is not the usual language in which military reports state the casualties of war.
On September 11th, Sheridan again tells General Grant:
We have exterminated three officers and twenty-seven men of Mosby's gang in the last twelve days.“We have exterminated” is the language of the Master of Stair, when he announced the massacre of Glencoe. Not one-third of my command was from that section of Virginia. A great many were Marylanders. Even if it had been an unorganized body of citizens defending their homes, they would only have been doing what Governor Curtin and General Couch urged the Pennsylvania people to do when threatened with invasion.
Your situation is such that a raid by the enemy is not impossible at any time during the summer and coming fall.
I therefore call upon you to put your rifles and shotguns in good order, and also supply yourselves with plenty of ammunition.
Your cornfields, mountain forests, thickets, buildings, etc., furnish favorable places for cover; and at the same time enable you to kill the murderers, recollecting that if they come it is to plunder, destroy and burn your property.
D. N. Couch,
Major-General Commanding.
