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10 - Guerrilla Wars

from Part II - Managing the War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Barton A. Myers
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

Ultimately, General Robert E. Lee would agree with his subordinate Tom Rosser, almost completely. Guerrilla service, under any guise or definition, was not the West Point way. It did not respect the official chain of command, some Southerners’ notions of honor and legitimate warfare, and much of its activity fell into the liminal, gray area still being hotly debated and defined by the nation’s legal minds in relation to the laws of war. Lee endorsed the repeal of the Confederacy’s authorized service of partisan rangers, but in January 1864 he also endorsed the promotion of John Mosby to lieutenant colonel at the head of his own ranger battalion, an acknowledgment of the value of efficient and controllable officers of the partisan service. In February 1864 the Confederate Congress repealed the Partisan Ranger Act at Lee’s request with only Mosby’s and John “Hanse” McNeill’s commands retained for official service. Yet, that hardly ended the story of the Confederacy’s guerrillas because Pandora’s box had long been open.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 193 - 215
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

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