On Sunday, March 8, 1863 Union Brigadier General E.H. Stoughton and his garrison at Fairfax County Court House, Virginia were asleep when twenty-nine men under the command of Confederate partisan ranger John S. “the Gray Ghost” Mosby entered the town, Stoughton’s headquarters, and then his bedroom.
Stoughton’s forces had been tracking the elusive Mosby, but stoughton was captured shamefully asleep in his bed. The general, two captains and thirty other prisoners were seized without a single shot being fired. Mosby’s men and their “booty” from Fairfax County Court House eluded numerous Federal troops before triumphantly returning to Confederate lines.