White’s Confederate cavalry battalion, the 35th Battalion of Virginia Cavalry, used guerilla tactics when in the area, as did the Unionist Loudoun Rangers raised in Waterford, Taylorstown, and Lovettsville along the border. “Mobberly’s band” from Between-the-Hills near Harpers Ferry often lured federal troops into ambushes. Mosby’s men were not the only ones involved in guerilla-style attacks in Loudoun. I have often thought that their fierce hostility to me was more on account of the sleep I made them lose than the number we killed and captured.” But the partisans generally got off with their prey. The alarm would spread through the sleeping camp, the long roll would be beaten or the bugles would sound to horse, there would be mounting in hot haste and a rapid pursuit. A blow would be struck at a weak or unguarded point, and then a quick retreat. I assailed its rear, for there was its most vulnerable point. I endeavored, as far as I was able, to diminish this aggressive power of the Army of the Potomac, by compelling it to keep a large force on the defensive. Every soldier withdrawn from the front to guard the rear of an army is so much taken from its fighting strength. “the military value of a partisan’s work is not measured by the amount of property destroyed or the number of men killed or captured, but by the number he keeps watching. In the words of the Civil War poet Herman Melville, Mosby was remembered by his uncomfortable Union opponents this way-“As glides in seas the shark rides Mosby through green dark. Mosby’s men became the 43rd Virginia Battalion of Cavalry, ultimately growing to eight companies and regimental strength. Mosby’s Rangers of this region and McNeill’s Rangers of the Potomac Highlands continued with numerical designations. However, two units had been so successful in gathering military intelligence, harassing Union transport and communications, tying up enemy soldiers, and reducing soldiers’ morale (being “gobbled up” by guerillas in the middle of the night and sent to a Rebel POW camp was never good for morale), that they were allowed to remain as partisan ranger units. In time, the Confederate government found this counterproductive to front-line morale-what would a soldier fighting on the Confederate line think while these privateers were prancing around getting rich? In the spring of 1863 the practice was ended.
Because partisan ranger units were allowed to keep such booty as they took-selling horses, weapons, and other valuable military articles to the Confederate army-it was hoped that this would increase manpower in the field, especially in border areas where mounted units could patrol for the Confederate side. Partisan rangers were enabled by the Confederate States Congress in April 1862, essentially allowing land privateers. There were so many other skirmishes in the Confederate effort to repel Union invaders using partisan ranger cavalry units that Loudoun is truly “hallowed ground,” many young men from the North and South lost their lives here. Zion Church (on Route 50 east of Gilbert’s Corner), Loudoun Heights (near Harpers Ferry), Leesburg, Waterford, and between Hamilton and Lincoln. Key battles in this nasty 1863-65 war were fought in Loudoun at Aldie Mill, Miskel’s Farm (in Eastern Loudoun), Mt. John Singleton Mosby) with his Rangers and federal cavalry. The most famous guerilla war of the Civil War was fought in Loudoun, western Fairfax, Fauquier, Clarke, and Warren counties between the “Gray Ghost of the Confederacy” (Col.