John Mosby, the legendary “Gray Ghost,” and his small band of partisans harassed, baffled, outsmarted, and embarrassed the Union Army. After Lee surrendered many Northerners considered Mosby a common horse thief and cried for blood.  Rather than suffer the humiliation of surrender, Mosby disbanded his men. Thus he did not receive a pardon. He went into hiding for two months and rumors abounded about his whereabouts and his intentions. With a price on his head, chances of his survival looked grim. Who could have dreamed he would one day be America’s consul to Hong Kong?

After a failed attempt at parole, Mosby received a second offer promising protection. Behind it was Grant’s desire for an absolute, quick peace. Thus Mosby was paroled and opened a legal practice in Warrenton. However, he was arrested several times when traveling to other locations. His angry wife traveled to Washington to protest her husband’s unjustified arrests. President Johnson rebuffed her icily, so she then sought General Grant. He received her graciously and wrote a letter on Mosby’s behalf which allowed him to travel freely. Mosby never forgot this favor.

In 1872 when Horace Greeley was nominated to oppose Grant’s reelection, Mosby felt Grant was the lesser of the two evils. He decided to visit the president to gain his promise to support helping the Southern people. Grant’s reception was friendly and they exchanged war stories.

“If I had captured you,” Mosby remarked, “things might have changed—I might be in the White House and you might be calling on me.”

“Yes,” Grant agreed wryly.

Mosby threw his full political influence behind Grant and Grant carried Virginia in the election. But Mosby’s defection to the Republican Party incensed most Southerners who labeled him a turncoat and traitor. The rancor and animosity over Mosby’s political affiliations exploded in 1877. This time Mosby’s former comrades threatened his life. He disembarked from the train in Warrenton one night after returning from Washington. Someone took a pot shot at him from the darkness.

Grant was so concerned for Mosby’s safety that he appealed to his successor, President Hayes, to get Mosby out of the country.  Hayes appointed Mosby consul to Hong Kong where he served from 1878-1885. The Virginian never liked China, but was happy to see ex-President Grant and his wife when they paid him a visit during their world tour in 1879.

Over breakfast one morning Grant complained that the donkey trip he had taken from Jaffa to Jerusalem was the roughest road he had ever traveled. But Mosby reminded his former enemy that he had traveled a rougher road—the one from the Rapidan to Richmond. When Grant’s ship departed Mosby ordered a full gun salute. Thus the two former enemies, who had united in the hope of bringing reconciliation to America, waved goodbye for the last time.

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 completely from what I had supposed…He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful. There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate detachment, in the rear of an opposing army and so near the border of hostilities, as long as he did without losing his entire command.”

From “Ranger Mosby” by Virgil Carrington Jones