by John Boyko
While Lord Lyons was being publicly dressed down by General Dix in New York, Governor General Monck was reading a telegram from frenzied Vermont governor, J. Gregory Smith.81 Smith had surmised that the raid was part of a larger invasion and so he called out all the reserves he could to protect other towns and important railway junctions. Unaware that their capture was already in progress, Monck ordered the raiders arrested. Meanwhile, Dix telegraphed an order to Vermont that American troops should find and arrest the raiders even if it meant crossing the Canadian border. Lyons protested, and Dix admitted that he was issuing the order without authorization from Washington.82
The raid from Canada, along with Conger’s posse and the Dix order, meant trouble. Secretary of State Seward was quickly involved and sent a message to acting British minister Joseph Burnley, still in charge pending Lyons’s official return to duty, insisting on the immediate extradition of the St. Albans raiders.83 A couple of days later, with the men still in the Canadian jail, he repeated his demand. 84
Even before the St. Albans raid, Seward had sent a message to Foreign Secretary Russell in London stating that recent incidents demonstrated that Britain’s pledge of neutrality could not be trusted and, therefore, that Canada and Britain should prepare themselves for the abrogation of the Rush-Bagot Agreement and the re-arming of the Great Lakes.85 The raid made the bad situation worse and had even moved Robert E. Lee to write to Jefferson Davis arguing that adventures such as occurred at St. Albans were illegal and ill-advised. Men sent to carry out such activities, he argued, would be better put to use in battle or protecting Southern cities.86
The press on both sides of the border exploded with recriminating articles. American papers were nearly unanimous in their condemnation of Canada’s involvement in the raid; meanwhile, Canadian papers decried the raid itself while expressing outrage at Conger’s cross-border incursion.87 The Montreal Gazette, for example, echoed even the normally pro-Southern papers in editorializing: “It is the first duty of the Government of Canada and the people of Canada to see that the right of asylum which their soil affords is not thus betrayed and violated. The Government must spare no pains to prevent it. [But] to surprise a peaceful town and shoot people down in the streets, at the same time committing robbery, is not civilized war; it is that of savages.”88
Thompson’s people did themselves no favours by entering the newspaper fracas. From his cell, Young penned a letter to Montreal’s pro-South Evening Telegram explaining his actions. He wrote that he had intended to burn a number of Vermont towns in retaliation for the Union’s burning of Southern cities and towns. With impressive temerity, Young continued that he had been captured in Canada by American citizens and that each should be charged with violating Canadian neutrality.89 An editorial in the Toronto Leader, while not condoning the raid, allowed that it supported Young’s point. If, it argued, the Union army can act with impunity in destroying property in the South, then why could Confederate forces not use every means at their disposal to do the same thing in the North?90
Young’s letter was followed by another from Thompson’s agent George Sanders arguing that Young was a prisoner of war and must be treated as such, for he had been hired by the Richmond government with the express purpose of organizing the St. Albans expedition. It was not a raid or a bank robbery, Sanders contended, but a legitimate act of war.91
With newspapers keeping the raid hot, Burnley, Russell, Monck and the Canadian government did all they could to cool matters by reassuring everyone that they opposed the attack, and held no regard for those who carried it out or for the Confederates in Canada who had organized and financed it. Burnley wrote to Monck saying that Lincoln was pleased by the actions taken so far in the St. Albans and Philo Parsons cases. He said that Lincoln believed that the raid and acts of piracy on the Great Lakes were attempts by the Confederates in Canada to embroil the United States and Britain in war and that his government would not fall into the trap.92
At the same time, rumours of more plots along the border were brought to Seward’s attention and he alerted Monck and Burnley. There were stories of planned piracy on the Great Lakes, of more border raids and of plotters in Montreal eager to put a number of Northern towns to the torch. Unlike Lincoln, Seward publicly criticized Canadian efforts to stop it all as being tepid at best: “It is not the Government or the people of the United States that are delinquent in the fulfillment of fraternal national obligations.”93
With the rumour mill churning, Vermont’s Governor Smith called out militia units and asked Secretary of War Stanton to send him cavalry supplies, including five hundred carbines, pistols, sabres and other equipment. Demonstrating the attention being paid to the northern border, Stanton replied that very day and sent the governor everything he requested.94 The next day, Stanton wrote to General Grant outlining aspects of the affairs in New York State, including the levels of security of forts, canals, ports and cities “from rebels imported from Canada.” Grant acknowledged the threat and suggested that new recruits that were currently being organized in the state for his army should be diverted to defend the northern border.95 About two thousand recruits were kept from Grant and assigned instead to Dix.
The St. Albans raiders were brought before Magistrate Charles-Joseph Coursol at St. Johns, a short distance southeast of Montreal, on October 25.* The courtroom was packed with American, Canadian and Maritime reporters and a large crowd that included many who had arrived by train from Montreal, decked out in Confederate uniforms. Young and the others were defended by lawyers paid for through Clay’s funds and hired by George Sanders. Their chief counsel was John C. Abbott, who was McGill University’s dean of law and in 1891 would become Canada’s prime minister. There were six charges, all extraditable: robbery, attempted arson, horse-stealing, assault, intent to murder and murder. After three days it was decided that tensions in the small town were simply too high and so the proceedings were moved to more secure facilities in Montreal. Young and his compatriots lived at the home of their jailer, where Sanders arranged fine food, good wine and expensive prostitutes. They also welcomed a number of visitors, including Clay and Thompson.
The hearing began again on November 3. It dragged on through days of arcane legal arguments and delays. Attempts were made to procure documents from Richmond meant to prove that the defendants were commissioned by Davis, but first Monck and then Lincoln refused to allow messengers safe passage. The decision to deal with each charge separately slowed the proceedings even more.
As the preliminary hearing ground along at a glacial pace, Thompson carried on with exploits that he had been planning for weeks. His actions turned the already complex and volatile situation volcanic.
BURNING CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
By October 1864, General Grant’s relentless assault on the South was visiting unprecedented horror upon cities, soldiers and civilians. Petersburg saw combatants dug into the mud of zigzag-shaped trenches, where they lived and fought—and many died. Cities and crops were burned. Homeless refugees wandered wide-eyed and hungry. It was total war.
The Richmond Whig saw the war for what it had become and called for revenge upon the civilians and cities of the North. Its October 15 editorial, printed just days before the St. Albans raid, urged:
Burn one of the chief cities of the enemy, say Boston, Philadelphia, or Cincinnati. If we are asked how a thing can be done, we answer, nothing would be easier. A million of dollars would lay the proudest city of the enemy to ashes. The men to execute the work are already there. There would be no difficulty in finding there, or here, or in Canada, suitable persons to take charge of the enterprise and arrange its details.96
Thompson had been planning for just such an attack. In his Toronto hotel suite, he met with three selected conspirators: Captain Thomas Hines, Colonel Robert Martin and Captain John Headley, to discuss how it could happen. They agreed that spectacular events in major Northern cities could galvanize support for the Sons of Liberty and their drive to end the war to th
e Confederacy’s advantage. They decided that the day of the presidential election, November 8, would be perfect to demonstrate the secret society’s power and resolve. Thompson arranged for Hines and men named Walsh and Morris to organize an attack on Chicago. The city was a natural choice, as there were already many Canadian-Confederate connections there and it was designated as the capital of the Copperheads’ new republic. They developed a plan whereby Confederates would be sprung from Camp Douglas and other Illinois prisons. Fires would be set and bombs exploded in various predetermined locations, and Chicago’s military officials would be captured or killed. With an army of 25,000 recently sprung Confederate prisoners, the state would be taken.97
Thompson believed that New York City was also ripe for attack. The city’s mayor, after all, had made a number of rabid and popular anti-war, anti-Lincoln speeches, and then the draft riots had shown popular support for those sentiments. Thompson appointed John Headley and men named McMaster, Horton and Wood to lead the assault on New York. They were convinced that twenty thousand Confederates, its Sons of Liberty members and vast numbers of others would celebrate their liberation from Lincoln and the war, and support the attack while welcoming the Canadian-based Confederates as heroes. 98
When news of Thompson’s plans leaked out, the Chicago operation fizzled. On November 2, Seward telegraphed military commanders and told them of the Confederate raiders coming from Canada.99 On November 9, Chicago’s Colonel Benjamin Sweet and Brigadier General John Cook, commanding the District of Illinois, organized a dragnet that scooped up all of Thompson’s conspirators and other assorted ne’er-do-wells. The ever-resourceful Hines escaped by hiding inside a box-spring mattress upon which lay a woman friend, feigning illness. 100
On October 30, eight Confederates from Toronto arrived in New York. They travelled in pairs to avoid detection and checked into a number of lower Manhattan hotels. With letters of introduction from Thompson, they met several times with New York Copperheads. Through the force of his personality and power of his contacts, James McMaster, who was the owner and editor of the New York Freeman’s Appeal, became the group’s chief spokesman. McMaster claimed to have met with New York’s Governor Seymour, who supported what was about to happen and promised not to send troops to stop it.101 After New York was taken, McMaster insisted, Seymour would help bring the governors of New Jersey and other New England states together, secede from the United States, and form another republic akin to the Northwest republic. Emboldened by such support and grand ideas, the group made its final preparations.
As with the Chicago plot, the plans were leaked. On November 7, Major General Benjamin Butler, who had taken effective but brutal control of New Orleans after its capture by Union forces, moved five thousand troops into New York. The New York Times, reporting on Confederate activities in the city, applauded Butler’s arrival: “The wisdom of the Government in selecting the man who had scattered the howling rabble of New Orleans like chaff, and reduced that city to order most serene, approved itself to the conscience of every patriot and made Copperheads squirm and writhe in torture.”102
Obviously betrayed, the conspirators postponed their attack. Lincoln’s re-election on November 8 further deflated their élan. Contact was made with Thompson in Toronto, who encouraged the group to ignore the collapse of the greater plan and carry on.103 They hid and waited.
With the quiet that followed the election, Butler’s troops were withdrawn. Their departure excited the patient conspirators. Their numbers had been dwindling, but those who remained were the most passionate about their cause. They devised a new reason for the old plan. They would set fire to the city just to scare the people of the North and to let Lincoln know that there would be repercussions for burning Southern property.104 Headley purchased bottles of Greek fire from a chemist next to Washington Square. On November 25, the group set out with ten bottles each. They checked into various hotels and waited. At 8:00 p.m., they emptied some of the bottles, lit their matches, and then moved to other pre-arranged hotels and theatres to set more fires.
Bells echoed down Broadway as nineteen hotels and several theatres simultaneously burst into flames. There were panicked screams as people dashed from burning buildings. Many jumped from first- and second-storey windows, while others scrambled down ladders. Thompson’s Confederates joined the crowds and enjoyed the chaos. The Winter Gardens was among the theatres evacuated. The audience had gathered at the opulent theatre to raise funds for the erection of a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park and to attend a performance of Julius Caesar featuring three of America’s most talented and respected actors: Junius Booth, his son Edwin, and the star of the family, John Wilkes Booth.
It quickly became apparent that much of the Greek fire was ineffective and many of the fires had been improperly set. Many snuffed themselves out, while others were quickly handled by alert fire brigades. Within hours, all of the hotel and theatre fires were extinguished. Despite the alarm and terror, no one was seriously hurt.
The conspirators ate a leisurely breakfast the next morning at a Broadway and 12th restaurant and read about their exploits in the morning papers. Some enjoyed an afternoon in Central Park, but when they returned downtown it was discovered that some of their co-conspirators had been arrested. The afternoon edition of the New York Times reported that a couple of weeks earlier, a man from Canada had told authorities in Washington about the plots to burn American cities and asked for one hundred thousand dollars in return for information regarding the perpetrators. He had named names.105 Headley and his group took a train north that evening and the next day reported to Thompson in Toronto.
It was discovered that Godfrey Hyams of Arkansas was the man who had betrayed the New York mission. He was also implicated in the selling out of other operations. Hyams had been living at the Queen’s Hotel for some time and Hines had warned Thompson about him, but Thompson liked and trusted him. Hyams left the hotel that day, but stayed in Toronto.
A few days later, Thompson met a woman called Katie McDonald. She had travelled from New York to ask him for money to support the trials of men arrested for having abetted those who tried to burn the city, among whom was her brother, the editor of New York’s Day Book. Thompson agreed to consider her request, but was then told that New York detectives had arrived in Toronto, apparently having followed McDonald. Thompson advised the men who had been to New York to go into hiding.
Meanwhile, Lord Lyons had again fallen ill. He had fainted in his office on November 6, and the next day had temporarily passed his duties on to his secretary and sometime acting minister, Joseph Burnley. Five months later, Lyons was replaced by Sir Frederick Bruce, the younger brother of former Canadian governor general Lord Elgin. Bruce had served as lieutenant-governor of Newfoundland as well as in South America, Egypt and China.
Lyons’s last official meeting before returning to England was with Seward. The two had worked together for three years and both had grown to be nuanced and effective diplomats. In his final message to Seward, Lyons assured him that Monck was doing a good job in dealing with Thompson and that he needed to be patient with the Canadian efforts. Despite this assurance, Lyons had just written to Russell stating that more needed to be done to stop Thompson and his men, because the pressures being put on the American government to respond were becoming impossible to resist.106 After a month spent trying to recover in his darkened room, Lyons finally rallied sufficient strength to travel and on December 12 he left America for the last time. He would be missed.
THE GEORGIAN
Thompson was still not done. In late October 1864, he had persuaded his Canadian friend Lt. Col. George Denison to front the purchase of the steamer Georgian from Kentucky’s Dr. James Bates for eighteen thousand dollars. Captain John Beall, who had commandeered the Philo Parsons, returned from hiding to organize its crew. The ship was to be taken to Port Colborne on Lake Erie’s north shore, only twenty miles from Buffalo. It would be armed and outfitted, and then used to free the Johnson�
�s Island prisoners, some of whom would provide crew for more ships. The Georgian would form the core of a ghost navy working from Canadian ports and prowling the Great Lakes. It would bomb American cities and bring terror to the North.107 Final plans were made in Toronto and then the conspirators left for Port Colborne to await Beall and the Georgian.
As happened with so many of Thompson’s plots, an informer surrendered the plan. With telegrams already flying regarding the fallout of the St. Albans raid and the New York attacks, Monck, Seward and Burnley learned of this latest threat.108 Seward telegraphed General Dix, who wrote to Secretary of War Stanton for help. Stanton and Seward consulted with Lincoln, and General Grant was asked to take troops from his forces to augment border defences. Grant noted in a wry telegraph to Dix that all the troops he believed were needed had been sent. He added, “It seems to me that you and General Butler ought to be able to take care of Jake Thompson and his gang.”109 Dix did what he could with what he had, and alerted governors and military leaders. Buffalo’s harbour was reinforced, and guns were affixed to more tugboats. The next Sunday, news flooded Detroit that Confederates were on their way across the river from Canada on the Georgian. Church bells sprang people from their pews and men to the docks to defend their city—but the rumour of attack had no substance.
Monck had the Georgian examined but no weapons or anything untoward were found. Bates claimed he was working for a lumber company and refitting the ship to haul wood. Days later, the Georgian left port, moving northward past Detroit and into Lake Huron, tracked carefully throughout its journey by American ships. It eventually moored at Collingwood, far from the American border on the south shore of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. Seward sent Monck a message asking him to continue to pay special attention to the Georgian, as a number of American mayors along the lakes, especially at Buffalo, remained concerned that their cities would soon be bombarded.110
