Specially Protected Persons in Combat Situations (new title)

[jmm99]

A good, short (19 pages) article is Jeffery Bateman, Bushwackers and Terrorists - Combatant Status Policy in the Civil War and Global War on Terror (2006) (abstract and link) (pdf direct).

A snip re: Mosby (footnotes omitted):

General Order 100 seems to have been largely ignored by Union commanders in the field. In fact, senior civilian and military leadership issued individual instructions to subordinates directly contradictory to the Lieber Code’s distinction between partisan rangers and other irregular combatants. Ironically, this disregard for national policy was most evident in the Eastern Theater in the pursuit of Mosby’s Rangers in the Shenandoah Valley.

John Singleton Mosby led a guerilla group that conformed more closely than any other to the partisan ranger units described by the Lieber code. Mosby’s men wore uniforms, they were led by commissioned officers, and they operated under Confederate orders. By 1864, Mosby’s unit was the only such unit that had not been officially absorbed by the Confederate Army.[23] Its unique status reflected its conduct (the poor conduct of many other Confederate guerillas had become a major embarrassment to Confederate leadership), as well as Mosby’s effectiveness frustrating Union Army commanders.

Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s actions in 1864 reflected the frustration he and Major General William Tecumseh Sherman were encountering trying to destroy Mosby. Grant authorized Sherman to deny combatant rights and encouraged summary execution without trial of any of Mosby’s men Sherman caught, as well as suggesting that the families of Mosby’s men could be held prisoner.[24] Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued similar instructions to the Union commander at Martinsburg, Brigadier General William H. Seward, authorizing him to employ “any means that may within your power to accomplish” in order to defeat guerilla units.[25]

Union Cavalry officer Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer executed Mosby’s men on several occasions. He hanged five of them in 1864, while wearing Confederate uniforms, and executed six more later that same year, believing Grant’s and Sheridan’s directives authorized his actions.[26] Custer could certainly have argued , had his actions ever been challenged, that he was operating with confusing and contradictory guidance, as was every other field commander in the Civil War.

Phil Sheridan had his own anti-Mosby unit ("scouts" attached to his headquarters), who played something of the role of "pseudo-guerrillas". That from Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (Army of the Potomac, Vol. 3).

Regards

Mike