Chapter 13
While Elizabeth Stiles wrote her report, Will Brown sat in the early hours with a stack of files and a blank sheet of paper and a pen. The top folder was the thickest: William Norvell Walker. The first four pages were covered with paste-ups of yellowed newspaper articles with marginal notes. A second section of the folder chronicled the life, exploits, and death of William Norvell Walker. The third section consisted of a list of legal documents with references to their origination.
While William Norvell Walker got the press for the military exploits, it was clear that younger brothers Jefferson, James, and Lipscomb were at William’s side when in 1853 he failed to conquer lower California and Sonora with a group of filibusters who called themselves The American Phalanx. Jefferson left his brothers before the Phalanx insinuated itself into a revolution in Nicaragua that ended with William being elected President of The New Republic of Nicaragua in 1856. A note referred to an earlier newspaper article that announced President Pierce’s recognition of the republic and its administration. James Walker died there in Masaya. Lipscomb died on the way home, and William fled to Honduras in 1860 and was executed there. The one sentence conclusion was appended: William and his Phalanx, funded in a large part by the Knights of the Golden Circle, had set out to create a utopian slave state, which they hoped would be ushered into the union as Texas had been.
Thomas Jefferson Walker’s file referred often to the information detailed in his brother’s file. Besides covering Jefferson’s adventures in Mexico, it went on to note that in the spring of 1856, before his brother’s inauguration, he had traveled to Beaver Island in northern Michigan and visited with James Strang, self-proclaimed King of the LDS “True Faith” Church. He left before Strang was assassinated in July.
Brown closed T. Jefferson Walker’s first folder and opened the second. It was a replica of a 14 page ledger of slaves, including names, ages, sex, skills, remarks, and the date and price at purchase as well as the date and price at sale. The copyist had scrupulously made the notations in the margins. Some of the entries were lined out and some were totally inked.
The third file was the thinnest: “Elliott Norvell Walker, the only surviving son of T. Jefferson Walker and Emily Sloan Walker. Elliott was raised by a negro nurse. His primary residence is his father’s house in St. Louis. He operated the slave pen across from Gratiot Prison for four years before the pen was closed. He has moved his business to Cheapside in Lexington, Kentucky. He takes pride in his stable of horses. He has no family of his own.”
A final file contained the summary and recommended actions: “Thomas Jefferson Walker is indictable on several federal counts. It is not advisable to move forward until we have developed the case and have gathered more evidence on all counts. He is clearly at the center of an enterprise that kidnaps individuals and either holds them for ransom, sells them, or murders them. We have hard evidence and corroborating testimony that the operation uses Union officers and soldiers for the purpose of kidnapping people of color, whether free, contraband, or fugitive. We have testimony that the operation uses Missouri rebel guerrillas as intermediaries. We have evidence and testimony that he has traded in wartime contraband, that is, confiscated chattel, for his profit.
What we suspect, but cannot yet prove, is that he is channeling the proceeds of his criminal operation to the Rebel army for the purchase of arms. We further suspect that he is trading with foreign agents to purchase arms or to trade contraband for arms.
There is enough evidence to indict T. Jefferson Walker on capital charges. We are investigating his connections to others involved in corruption at the highest level and will act on Walker when we have evidence at that level.
We are developing cases against his son Elliott Walker that are separate and discrete and suggest the government not file a case against Elliott Walker until the actions against T. Jefferson Walker are exhausted.”
The last folder Will Brown opened contained copies of legal papers and news stories. He set aside the single page items--a Loyalty Oath, a Certificate of Freedom, a Petition for Confiscation, a wanted poster, and a thinly written newspaper article about runaways that included information regarding Walker’s slave. He studied the two documents that warranted several pages each. The first was a petition from the runaway asking that the county jailer be appointed her legal representative and that she be sequestered in prison to keep Walker from seizing her. It further asks she be declared legally free and white along with a request that the courts award her ten thousand dollars for unspecified damages that had been done while she was a slave.
The last document Brown studied carefully. It was a reply written by Walker to a preliminary judgment regarding the runaway.
Dec. 2, 1862
The slave girl in this petition is my property. Her mother was a slave; therefore, partus sequitur ventrem, she is a slave and my property as is her mother. According to the 1661 Virginia statute, “all children born in the country shall be held bond or free according to the condition of the mother.” If the courts argue that it does not recognize the Virginia statute, it, therefore, also does not recognize Virginia under Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution’s full faith and credit clause. If that is the case, then Virginia is not in rebellion because it is not recognized as a state of the Union.
If the courts seize my property under the Second Confiscation Act of July 1862, I will needs be first judged in rebellion against the United States. I have taken the oath of loyalty to the United States and the Provisional Government of Missouri, recorded on November 15, 1862. (See attached affidavit.) I have not been judged treasonous by any legitimate court, and according to Col. Thomas T. Gantt, Provost Marshal General of St Louis, only a court with federal jurisdiction, not a local court, is able to adjudicate that. Were I to be judged so, the courts would have the right to strip me of ownership of my property under the law, but not to free the slave, who would paradoxically, be a slave in Missouri without a master. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation gives neither the Government of the United States nor the State of Missouri the right to take my slave because the law which takes effect on 1 January 1863 applies only to states in rebellion. Since Missouri is not in rebellion, the courts cannot free the slave. If it should strip me of my rightful ownership, she will become a slave in Missouri not under control of a master and, therefore, subject to capture and sale.
If, under a circumstance that I cannot anticipate, the courts were to judge me to be in rebellion, and if it were to construe the state of Missouri to be in rebellion, and if it were to affirm the state of Virginia to be an independent nation whose statutes it does not recognize, I then would claim the slave here mentioned as my daughter, and patri potesta in pietate debet, non in atroclatate consistere, she is my minor child and, therefore, subject to my will. I claim her, then, as filius nullius, and equal to my son, I am in control of her life and responsible for her well-being.
Will Brown set his notes on top of the folders and lay on his bed in his clothes and thought.
Floyd’s knock had him at the door before he was fully awake.
“I saw your light and thought you might be working. Do you want to go down and get something to eat? I hear them banging around down there. I couldn’t sleep.”
Will shook his head. “Come in and I’ll show you what I got.” He picked up the pile from the desk.
“It was delivered by courier. The man refused to identify himself, but he asked me to sign and then he rode off.”
“Highly suspicious, even in our line of work,” said Floyd.
“And would you say suspicious enough to make me suspicious of the contents?”
“Hell if I know,” said Floyd. “What’s in it?”
“Take a look.” They sat and Will dealt the files to Floyd with an explanation of what he’d learned from them.
“I’m not sending along the complete files just yet. We don’t know who generated them or why they were delivered up the channels to us. Instead, I’
m going to send along a summary of what I’ve got, hoping the man responsible will be polite enough to not ask for a complete copy.”
He read Floyd the brief cover letter.
Gentlemen:
Enclosed is a copy of the summary report on Jeffery Walker, his son Elliott, and his brother William. I have in my hand the files used in that report. If you do not have them, wire me and I will courier them to you.
Yours, etc.
Floyd took a look at the folders. “You want copies to go to how many people? Let’s be practical here. What is it you really want? Let me tell you what you want. You want to know what sneaky bastard sent them on to you and why, right? And maybe you’d like to know what he expects you to do about it. How about you just ask? Because you don’t want that sneaky bastard to know that you know, right? Jesus, Will. You got to trust somebody or you just end up chasin’ yer tail. Who can you go to? Tell me. Who is the one person you trust to tell you the truth? Besides me, ‘a course.”
“General Dodge, I’d say. I’ve known him since Kanesville, and he knows everybody and then some.”
“Then just wire him and ask. I wouldn’t wait on the couriers.”
“He doesn’t like the telegraph. He thinks it’s not secure.”
“Then put the request in language only he could understand, and tell him if he thinks it’s urgent to send the response by courier with all due haste.”
Will shuffled the folders and thought. “Floyd, you’re right on this. He’ll send something back, and I’ll know where to go from there. I want you to have a look at everything in these files. I should have a reply by the time I get back from seeing the nurse.”
“From seeing the nurse,” Floyd echoed. He looked up from the desk. “Be sure to turn your head when you cough.”
Will rode to Benton and sent a wire to Dodge. Then he rode to Gratiot, and Lawrence directed him to the prison wing, where Will was ushered to the guard’s desk. He was asked to wait there. When the guard returned he was taken to a closet filled with wooden crates stacked waist high. Elizabeth was standing at a makeshift desk poring over a letter.
“Will, look at this.” She handed him a letter.
He started reading it and handed it back.
“You can’t follow it, can you?” she said.
He shook his head. “Not very well. He’s talking about his mother’s health and then it kinda goes off into nonsense.”
“It’s not sophisticated. Read the paragraph backwards aloud.”
Will struggled with it. “Use no currency one clean package for every article no choice regarding articles guaranteed if you are unhappy then replacement exchange freight at hotel sang lou we a weak notice required.”
“That last part refers to an exchange at the Hotel St. Louis,” Elizabeth said.
Brown handed the letter back to her. “It came for someone in the hospital?”
“No. It was to go to Daniel Frost on the prison side. It was supposedly written by his brother. It was given to me to pass on. That’s when I learned from one of the prisoners here that Frost was sent to Alton to be exchanged.”
“How do we find out who wrote it?”
“That would be your job.”
“What would you do?”
“Turn it over to somebody.” When he didn’t respond, she nodded once. “That would be you.”
Brown scratched his jaw. “That would be me. Will you write out what you’ve got and make a copy for me? I’m going to take the envelope and see what I can find out. Can you tell me anything about who delivered it?”
“It came while I was on the hospital side.”
“Ask Lawrence’s brother out there and see what he knows. Hold on to the letter and your copies and I’ll see you at the convent.”
“What did you want to see me about?”
“Some files on the Walkers that were sent up channels. I wanted you to look them over. Maybe you can see something I didn’t.”
“I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. I need to get back to work. There are some sick boys that need me. Come by the convent tomorrow at seven.”
Will rode back to Benton, where he wired his contact at Alton Prison and inquired about Daniel Frost. He waited for a reply and Dodge’s came before Alton’s. “Re your wire: Lafayette Baker. Full response by courier within 24 hours. Yours, General G. M. Dodge.”
Brown waited another hour for a reply from across the river. “1700 Rebs. No master list. Come find him yourself.”
Will considered crossing the river just to deal with the jackass who wrote the cable. Instead, he rode back to the inn and showed Floyd the response from General Dodge.
“There’s a man who is on top of things, Will.” Floyd said. “Now, what did you get from the nurse?”
Will showed Floyd the message Elizabeth had gleaned from the letter. “What do you make of this? She got it from the outside to send on to someone in Alton Prison, and it seems the man is no longer there.”
Floyd read the message.
“What do you think, Floyd?”
“I would say it’s an offer for a trade—packages for articles.”
“I want you to go tomorrow afternoon and see if you can find out who was supposed to get it.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’s in the trade?”
Brown made a face and shrugged.
Floyd shook his head. “You got any ideas how I’m supposed to find out?”
Brown flopped in a chair. “Use your Indian ways, Floyd. I’m sending you because I have no idea what to look for.”
“Did you enjoy your visit?” Floyd asked.
“I’d bring you along next time if I thought you would behave. Tomorrow morning we’ll go to the Provost’s office and see what we can find out. I know if you don’t behave there, I can have you arrested. I need information about the politics of this town and I need another brain to put things together. Tomorrow night I go back to the convent and see Mrs. Stiles.”
The next morning at breakfast, Floyd suggested they divide and conquer. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy your company, Will. You know I do. But I’ll just be in the way talking with politicians. What say I just go down and poke around the dirt with a stick. Go down to the wharf, maybe go down to the old market. I’ll meet you back here for supper, and then you can take what we got and go from there.”
That night both Elizabeth and Will were excited to share what they had discovered. Elizabeth held up a sheaf of papers. “I thought you should have a copy of these. I forged a copy of the letter, the enigmatic one, and stuffed it into an envelope that looked reasonably like the original, and rode out to my contact. I told her I thought it might be important, and since I knew that Col. Frost was exchanged, returning the letter might be critical. Mrs. Vogel was surprised I knew the recipient. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘Daniel regularly gets letters through various channels, St. Louis being the richest.’ I was guessing about St. Louis, but it worked. ‘Mr. Walker should know right away. Would you pen a note about Col. Frost’s repatriation?’ she said. ‘I don’t know where he went,’ I said, ‘I just know when, but I’ll be glad to jot down what I know and I promise that I will forward any further information to you.’ That seemed to satisfy her and I was off. So it’s Walker, Jeffery Walker, who wrote the letter. What his connection with Daniel Frost might be I can’t imagine.”
Will Brown patted the leather messenger bag he brought with him. “Remember I said I wanted you to look at some papers the last time we met? Things are beginning to come together.” He gave her a quick summary of the contents of the files on the Walkers and his concern about who compiled it and sent it through channels to him.
“I wired General Grant and he replied immediately--your friend, and our boss, Lafayette Baker.”
“Lincoln’s spy chief is sending you dossiers on the Walkers? Jeffery Walker’s that important?”
“And here’s another bit. The St. Louis Hotel in the letter is in New Orleans. Its r
otunda is the site for what someone has called ‘the most glorious place for the most ignominious of human exchanges.’”
“I just assumed that it was our St. Louis here. How is it you know Frost’s letter refers to a hotel on the delta?”
“Because Frost is trading cotton for slaves, and there are no public slave auctions held in St. Louis anymore. An ‘article’ is trader argot for ‘slave.’ A clean package is a ginned bale of cotton.”
“And this you got from one of your people?”
Will shook his head. “Yes and no. I got it from my friend Floyd. He spent the day talking with the runaways down in the contraband camp next to the old slave market. That’s where he got a lesson, as he said, that you can’t get in school. Articles. Clean package. The St. Louis. Everything except Frost’s name is in Mrs. Stowe’s novel. Uncle Tom and the St. Clare slaves were traded under the dome of the rotunda. Floyd tried to convince me that he had read the book and suddenly remembered those details. It didn’t take much questioning to get him to admit that it all came from an old black man in the camp who had seen it all and read about it, too.”
“Where do we go with this now?”
“I have no doubt that Lafayette Baker already has it. My job is to backfill. I’ll send what new information we have to General Dodge and ask for his advice on how to proceed. Until then we keep doing what it is we do. Watch, read, and talk to each other. Share what we come up with.” He smiled. “I’ve got to get back. Floyd’ll be worried.
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