43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry - Name

Name

Exactly what to call the Confederate 43rd Battalion was controversial in their own day. Were they soldiers, partisan rangers, or (in the Union view) unsoldierly guerrillas hiding among civilians, simply a loose band of roving thieves? According to the memoirs of one of Mosby's men, John Munson, Mosby himself avoided overtly military words like "troops" or "soldiers" or "battalion" in favor of the more comradely "Mosby's Men" or "Mosby's command". The Yankees and Northern newspapers referred to them as guerrillas, a term of opprobrium at the time. Munson reports "the term (guerilla) was not applied to us in the South in any general way until after the war, when we had made the name glorious, and in time we became as indifferent to it as the whole South to the word Rebel." However, the term "guerilla" was used throughout the American Civil War almost daily to refer to any and all men serving in the Confederate Armed forces. For example, the Missouri Democrat, a newspaper in St. Louis, published on February 16, 1863 this account: "A fight took place at Mingo Swamp, Missouri, between a detachment of Union troops under the command of Major Reeder, and a numerous gang of rebel guerrillas under the leadership of Dan McGee, resulting in a complete rout of the latter."