When Major-General Hancock, so distinguished in the Federal Army, heard of Baylor's exploit he laughed heartily and exclaimed: "Well, that is the last of the Loudoun Rangers." As indeed it proved to be! _Mosby's Command in its Relationship to Loudoun County._ From January, 1863, until the close of the war Colonel Mosby's partisan operations were mostly confined to the counties of Loudoun and Fauquier, this rich, pastoral country affording subsistence for his command and the Blue Ridge a haven to which to retreat when hard pressed by the superior numbers that, from time to time, were sent against him. Here he planned and executed most of the daring coups that were to win for him international fame.[31] Here also his men were dispersed and reassembled with marvelous facility--one of countless manifestations of his great original genius. "They would scatter for safety, and gather at my call like the Children of the Mist," was what he wrote in after years. Of all his methods this has been the least clearly understood. The explanation that he has offered in his _War Reminiscences_ can be only partially complete; for he could not, with propriety, point to his personal magnetism and daring as the dominant influences, though he must have known that to an extraordinary extent they were responsible for this almost unparalleled devotion. "The true secret," he says, "was that it was a fascinating life, and its attractions far more than counterbalanced its hardships and dangers. They had no camp duty to do, which, however necessary, is disgusting to soldiers of high spirit. To put them to such routine work is pretty much like hitching a race horse to a plow." [Footnote 31: In alluding to the famous "greenback raid" (October 14, 1864), in which a party of Rangers entered a train of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, near Kearneysville, capturing, among other officers, Majors Moore and Ruggles, Federal paymasters, with their funds, Lieutenant Grogan, of the Rangers, has said that the command, the next day, "met at Bloomfield, in Loudoun County, and examined into the condition of our sub-U.S. Treasury, and finding there a net surplus of $168,000, the same was divided among our stockholders ($2,000 each) and circulated so freely in Loudoun that never afterwards was there a pie or blooded horse sold in that section for Confederate money."]