Rebel, the life and times of John Singleton Mosby by Kevin H Siepel

by Kevin H. Siepel

Rebel is the first complete biography of the Confederacy’s best-known partisan commander, John Singleton Mosby, the “Gray Ghost.” A practicing attorney in Virginia and at first a reluctant soldier, in 1861 Mosby took to soldiering with a vengeance, becoming one of the Confederate army’s highest-profile officers, known especially for his cavalry battalion’s continued and effective harassment of Union armies in northern Virginia. Although hunted after the war and regarded, in fact, as the last Confederate officer to surrender, he later became anathema to former Confederates for his willingness to forget the past and his desire to heal the nation’s wounds. Appointed U.S. consul in Hong Kong, he soon initiated an anticorruption campaign that ruined careers in the Far East and Washington. Then, following a stint as a railroad attorney in California, he surfaced again as a government investigator sent by President Theodore Roosevelt to tear down cattlemen’s fences on public lands in the West. Ironically, he ended his career as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Genres: Civil War, American Civil War, History, Biography

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Kevin H. Siepel writes on personal, historical, and environmental themes. His most recent work is the two-volume Conquistador Voices, a fresh look at the Spanish Conquest of the Americas that makes extensive use of eyewitness and first-person accounts by conquistadors or others to whom the account may have been dictated. The five personages covered in these two volumes are Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizarro, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and Hernando de Soto.
The author’s benchmark Rebel: The Life and Times of John Singleton Mosby (St. Martin’s, DaCapo, University of Nebraska Press) has proven durable, as has his biography of a western New York state pioneer, which also broke new ground.
Siepel’s essays and articles have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Service Journal, Civil War, Wild West, two Chicken Soup for the Soul volumes, at www.wordworth.com, and elsewhere. One of his Monitor essays was translated into several languages and published worldwide by Readers Digest.
Siepel speaks and teaches Spanish.

Reviews

[Sarah Bierle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, it was a good introductory biography. There was a lot of Civil War story and explaining things that didn't have a lot to do with Mosby, but I think the author was trying to explain the war, in case readers weren't familiar. I felt there were more details about Mosby himself in the post-war section and this part of the book was superb.
It was a good book to start with, but I will definitely be looking for another to learn more about Mosby's family and Civil War adventures. I realize the raiders probably didn't keep a lot of journals, but there must be documentation that could fill out the account a little better.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until reading this book I'd thought of Mosby simply in terms of his role as a Confederate irregular during the civil war. This period of his life covers only half the story of this book, a full biography of the figure. In fact, Mosby went on to become the friend of Republican presidents, beginning with Grant, and worked consistently towards a reconciliation between the South and North.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average biography. Nothing will really jump out and amaze you.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy and breezy read about a true maverick. Mosby was a hard man to figure out because he was an independent thinker. It made him a great partisan commander but a lackluster politician.