John S. Mosby: Quotes about homeland

“I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery, a soldier fights for his country, right or wrong, he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in. The South was my country.”

John S. Mosby

Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)
Context: Mason and Hunter not only voted against the admission of California (1850) as a free state but offered a protest against it which the Senate refused to record on its Journal, nor in the Convention which General Taylor had called to from a Constitution for California, there were 52 northern and 50 southern men, but it was unanimous against slavery. But, the Virginia senator, with Ron Tucker & Co. were opposed to giving local self-government to California. Ask Sam Yost to give Christian a skinning. I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery, a soldier fights for his country, right or wrong, he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in. The South was my country.

Fight , Country

“War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first than the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country; but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it.”

John S. Mosby

War Loses Its Romance (1887), as quoted at the Veterans Memorial at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

War , Feeling , Country

“Soldiers! I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we have cherished of a free and independent country, has vanished, and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your commander. After association of more than two eventful years, I part from you with a just pride, in the fame of your achievements, and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now at this moment of bidding you a final adieu accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard. Farewell. John S. Mosby, Col.”

John S. Mosby

Letter to the Mosby's Rangers (April 1865), as quoted in Mosby's Rangers, Simon and Schuster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671747452 (1991), Jeffry D. Wert, p. 289
Letter (1865)

Confidence , Time , Parting , Country