Pardoning a Union survivor of Mosby's Rangers - photo 1

Pardoning a Union survivor of Mosby's Rangers

Lot 189
02.02.2024 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
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$ 6 300
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 1129810
Lot 189 | Pardoning a Union survivor of Mosby's Rangers
Estimate value
$ 1 000 – 1 500
GRANT, Ulysses S. (1822-1885). Partly-printed document signed ("U.S. Grant") as President, Washington, 14 December 1869.

One page, 203 x 252mm (lightly toned at the edges).

Grant pardons a Union infantryman who survived a vengeful and brutal show execution by Mosby's Rangers. Private Melchior H. Hoffnagle, 153rd New York Infantry, was one of seven Union prisoners-of-war randomly selected for execution in retaliation for the "Front Royal killings" of Confederate cavalrymen.

On 23 September 1864, Mosby’s Rangers attacked a Union Army wagon train near Front Royal. A Union brigade commanded by Colonel Charles Lowell, Jr. caught the Rangers off guard, forcing their retreat and taking six prisoners back to the Union stronghold at Front Royal. The death of Union Lieutenant Charles McMaster, shot in the head during the ambush, caused a fervor among the Federal cavalrymen; many believed Confederate forces murdered McMaster following his surrender. Brigadier Generals Wesley Merritt and George A. Custer ordered the six to be executed without trial. A sign reading “such is the fate of all of Mosby’s men” was hung on one of the bodies. (A seventh Ranger would later be executed in a separate incident.)

Determined on revenge, Mosby waited until 27 Union prisoners were captured from Custer’s command and forced them into a brutal lottery. Twenty-seven slips of paper were put into a hat, twenty being blank and seven being numbered. Those who drew the seven numbered slips would be killed and their bodies left alongside the Union supply lines. Of the seven condemned men, four would survive: two would escape before serious injury, and two were shot yet survived their wounds, including Pvt. Hoffnagle, who lost his arm due to the injury after being shot in the elbow and pretending to be dead. Hoffnagle would be found alive by one of the Union survivors, who took him to a nearby civilian's home and then to a military hospital for treatment. The remaining three were hung, with the following note being left on one of the bodies: “These men have been hung in retaliation for an equal number of Colonel Mosby’s men, hung by order of General Custer at Front Royal. Measure for measure.” (For further detail, see James Ramage's Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby or James J. Williamson's Mosby's Rangers).

According to muster roll records, Hoffnagle, from Essex County, NY, would be discharged for disability in 1865 and was later breveted to the rank of Second Lieutenant. He would return to Essex County as a postal carrier, where in 1868, he would be arrested for embezzling money from the mails by a special Post Office agent (Rutland Weekly Herald, 27 February 1868). Grant issued this pardon one year later.
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