Execution of Mosby’s Rangers
“The ‘dark day’ of 1864”
"Mosby will hang ten of you for every one of us!"
were William Thomas Overby’s last words to his
executioners before the rope tightened around his
neck here on Richardson’s Hill. This was the
final scene of a tragedy that began less than two hours earlier when Union cavalrymen captured six of Lt. Col. John S. Mosby’s Rangers a few
miles south of Front Royal on September 23,
1864. Believing that Mosby’s men had killed a
Union officer after he surrendered, the Federals executed them in retaliation.
Capt. Samuel F. Chapman, commanding a detachment of the Rangers, had split his force in
two to attack what he thought was an unguarded
ambulance train. On discovering that in fact two
Union cavalry divisions trailed the train, Chapman tried to call off the attack, but it was too
late. The Federals quickly encircled the Rangers;
most of them cut their way out and escaped
(allegedly killing the captured Union officer in
the process), but six were ridden down and taken
to front Royal. Gen. Alfred T. A. Torbert, the senior Union officer, probably approved the executions, although Mosby blamed Gen. George A. Custer and promised vengeance on Custer’s men.
Four of Mosby’s men were shot, but two including Overby were hanged, having refused to reveal the location of Mosby’s headquarters. Near Berryville a month and a half later, on November 7, Mosby ordered the execution of seven captured
Federals, most of them from Custer’s command, in retribution.
(sidebar) One of the men executed, 17-year-old Henry Rhodes, was not a Ranger but a Front Royal
boy who had long dreamed of joining them. When Chapman led his men through town that morning, Rhodes resisted no longer but rode a neighbor’s horse into battle. He was captured when his mount collapsed, brought to a field just south of here, and shot down
in sight of his mother.
Marker is on North Royal Avenue north of West 14th Street (U.S. 340), on the left when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
