History of the
Confederate
Partisan
Rangers
In May 1861 a man interested in military affairs in
the village of Forest Depot, Bedford Country, Virginia
sat down to write a letter to General Robert E. Lee.
Captain R.C.W. Radford offered to raise and mount a
company of a thousand active men for Ranger or irregular
service if the Confederate government was willing to arm
them with long-range guns and pistols. The object of
such a unit would be to annoy and harass an invading
army, cut off escorts and detachments. Lee sent Captain
Radford's letter to Colonel Jubal A. Early, who was in
charge of organizing in Radford's area and on the letter
was made a note that the writer would probably be
suitable as a company commander.
Had Radford alone been the man behind the idea it
would probably not have come to much. But as he wrote
the newspaper Dispatch of Richmond had a leading
editorial urging that men of the Old Dominion form
themselves into companies for guerrilla warfare
"If the line of march of the Federal troops is made
to swarm with our guerrillas, who will pick off every
man and every squad that dares to leave the main body of
the invading column, the very success in the field will
prove ruin, for they will tempt the men further and
further into the interior and involve them more and more
inextricably in the meshes and snares of guerrilla
warfare". A Baltimore newspaper reported that hundreds
of men were on their way to wage guerrilla warfare.
Governor John Letcher of Virginia was also the first
to organize for irregular warfare. By an act of the
Virginia General Assembly he was authorized to issue
commissions for the organization of ten companies of
Partisan Rangers. They were to be mustered into state
service but were to operate as individual units.
But calls came from other parts of the Confederacy.
In July 1861 D.M.K. Campbell of Alabama wrote to
Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker asking how the
Confederate government felt about guerrilla warfare:
"Quite a number of men of undoubted respectability are
anxious to serve the government of their own account",
he wrote. They wanted to organize companies to fight
without restraint, under no orders, and would convert
captured property to to there own private use. They
would take care of themselves.
