Double Death

by Gavin Mortimer

  Not long before sundown on Thursday, April 3, at around the time Cridland was shaking hands with Benjamin and Randolph, there was a knock at the Websters’ door. Standing outside was Campbell who, in a detached voice, announced that a policeman was on his way up the stairs.

  Philip Cashmeyer was one of the younger members of the military police, a cunning man with a “blarney smile” whose favorite phrase was “you can always catch flies with molasses”; in other words, grease his palm, and he might turn a blind eye. But not in Webster’s case.

  Cashmeyer entered the room and announced that it was his “painful duty” to arrest both Mr. and Mrs. Webster and convey them to Castle Godwin prison. There was the sound of heavy boots running up the stairs, and then two soldiers with bayonets fixed appeared. Hattie Lawton exclaimed that Webster was in no fit state to be moved, but Cashmeyer had his instructions.

  The Richmond Dispatch reported a few days later that eleven people were committed to Castle Godwin on April 3. Mike Fitzgerald from New Orleans was imprisoned because of “fighting,” John Fallon for “a breach of discipline” and J. T. Reed had been “disloyal.” The paper made no special reference to the two suspected Union agents; it simply stated: “Tim Webster, Mrs. Webster, Kentucky, spies.” The Websters were put in a cell on the second floor of Godwin, in which were “several females accused of disloyalty and giving aid to the United States government.” On the floor above the Websters was a thirty-four-year-old Virginian named George Washington Frosst, a machinist in a woolen factory arrested on suspicion of “disloyalty.” Over the coming days Frosst saw Webster several times and noted that “he was greatly suffering from rheumatic pains in his limbs … and was compelled to use crutches.”

  On the day of his reprieve Lewis was moved from the condemned cell to a furnished room on the first floor with a window. There was a table and chair, writing material and plenty of books. Lewis was shackled at the wrists, which made writing impossible and reading tiresome, so he spent hours at the window enviously watching people go about their business outside the prison’s walls. Still unnerved by the morning’s events, Lewis leaped to the door whenever he heard footsteps and peeped through the keyhole. In the afternoon he thought he recognized the squat frame of General Winder climbing the stairs to the second floor.

  The next day, Saturday, April 5, Lewis’s guards brought him the newspapers. He read about the postponement of his execution, and then he came to the final paragraph. “The condemned have made disclosures affecting the fidelity of several persons.” Lewis slumped into a chair and read the words again, hoping that perhaps he had imagined them. He hadn’t. It was several minutes before his head stopped spinning. Then he began to think. He must get a message to Scully. When a Negro arrived to collect his breakfast tray, Lewis asked if he might deliver a message to John Scully on the top floor.

  The servant looked doubtful, but Lewis persuaded him with two dollars slipped into his hand. The message asked Scully what he had told the authorities. The reply came in a note hidden under Lewis’s lunch plate. “I have made a full statement and confessed everything and it would be better for us if you would do the same.”

  The news upset Lewis for reasons, initially, unrelated to Tim Webster. At that point self-preservation was Lewis’s priority. By saying he had “confessed everything,” was Scully referring just to their trip to Richmond or to their entire espionage career? In particular Lewis was terrified that “Scully had told about my visit to [Henry] Wise’s camp.” Lewis had heard it said that Wise was in Richmond at this very moment. If there was any proof he had spied on Virginian soil, he would hang.

  Lewis passed an anguished night. The next morning he handed the Negro another dollar bill, folded around a note that asked Scully if he had mentioned anything about his trip to West Virginia. Lewis knew the note might be intercepted, but “my mental suspense was such that I was desperate enough to take the risk.”

  A different man brought Lewis his supper, so it wasn’t until the morning of Monday, April 7, that he received Scully’s reply. It was a terse note, one which studiously ignored Lewis’s question. It simply exhorted Lewis to tell Winder everything he knew. In the afternoon Father McMullen appeared and advised the Englishman “to make a statement to the authorities.”

  Lewis brusquely dismissed the suggestion. McMullen sighed and reminded Lewis that he was in a bad fix, one that only a full and frank confession could remedy. On Tuesday Lewis was taken from his cell into the guards’ room. There was a group of men sitting around a table on which “were a couple of large, leather-bound account books or ledgers.” He recognized George Alexander, assistant provost marshal, and Judge Advocate William Crump. The latter spoke first, saying he understood Lewis “desired to make a full statement.” Lewis said he wished to do nothing of the sort.

  Crump asked for another chair and beckoned the prisoner to sit. Lewis removed his felt hat and did as instructed. Then Crump, “in a soft and gentlemanly manner,” told Lewis that he was an Englishman, caught up in a conflict that had nothing to do with him. He was in this predicament because the Washington government “recklessly led you into this trouble without caring a snap what became of you.” What loyalty could he possibly harbor for Abraham Lincoln?

  Lewis listened impassively as the judge tried to snare him with civility, aware that “his line of argument was a powerful one in my condition of mind.” When Crump had finished he looked in expectation at the disheveled figure across the table. Lewis raised his head and said, “Judge, I have no statement to make.”

  No one spoke for two or three minutes; then Crump asked Lewis what he knew of Timothy Webster. Lewis repeated his earlier assertion, that he barely knew the man and was just passing along a letter to him. Crump shook his head wearily, called Lewis a “foolish man” and ordered him to be taken back to his cell and “put in double irons.”

  Lewis was returned to his cell, and his feet and hands were shackled. All the furniture supplied by Captain Freeburger was removed; even the books were confiscated. His food was thrown in through the small hatch in the cell door, and, except for a few hours a day, he sat in darkness. Lewis felt “entombed [and] began to devise some scheme to get out of this torture chamber.” If Scully had made a full confession and the rebels knew everything, concluded Lewis, it was pointless to maintain his silence. They knew he was a Northern detective; if he said nothing about his adventure in western Virginia, and nothing that they didn’t already know about Tim Webster but instead fed his inquisitors scraps of harmless information, it might appease their vengeful souls.

  On the morning of Thursday, April 10, Lewis told his guards he wished to see Judge Crump. The judge arrived in the afternoon, and he and the prisoner sat down across a table in the guards’ room. Crump asked if now he would make a statement. Yes, he would, replied Lewis, rubbing his red wrists as the manacles were removed. Crump smiled and told Lewis he was a sensible man. The statement should be written, he added, as “Scully had done.” The Englishman refused, saying he would answer any questions put to him but he wouldn’t put pen to paper. Crump accepted the compromise and for nearly an hour plied Lewis with questions. When did he leave England? How long had he worked for Allan Pinkerton? So what did he do before becoming a detective? A traveling book salesman. For which company? The titles of the books? There were inquiries about Rose Greenhow, Eugenia Phillips, and more information was demanded about his role in the search of the Morton home.

  Crump listened intently to all Lewis’s answers. Suddenly he asked him about his trip to Tennessee, information that could only have come from Scully. Lewis told the judge about the murder case, including his purchase of the novel about Eugene Aram. It had nothing to do with the war, Lewis stressed, offering to furnish the judge with the names of several people in Jackson who could testify to that effect.

  Eventually Crump brought up Timothy Webster, and Lewis replied, yet again, that he had never met him prior to handing over the letter. Crump refused to believe it. Lewis shrugged a
nd said it was true. What more could he say? Crump leaned back in his chair and considered Lewis for several long, dragging seconds. The Englishman felt sure the judge was building up to his final question, the one about Charleston and the Kanawha Valley, but then Crump expressed his “astonishment.” At what? inquired Lewis. The judge said it appeared Lewis did indeed have nothing to hide. Lewis was unsure if the judge was being sincere or sarcastic. But then Crump told the guards to return the prisoner to his cell and to remove his irons. The judge left Castle Godwin and reported his findings to the officers of the court-martial; having spoken at length to Mr. Lewis, Crump related, he was satisfied that he was who he said he was, nothing more than a minor detective working for Allan Pinkerton, and not “an emissary between the Union people of Richmond and the Government of Washington … [who] could give information that would expose the secret political affiliations of hundreds of people in Richmond.”

  That same day, Thursday, April 10, John Beauchamp Jones wrote in his diary about the facts gleaned from the newspapers: “The condemned spies [Lewis and Scully] have implicated Webster, the letter-carrier, who has had so many passports. He will hang, probably. Gen. Winder himself, and his policemen, wrote home by him. I don’t believe him any more guilty than many who used to write by him.”

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T W O

  “I Suffer a Double Death”

  THE CHARGE WAS LAID before Timothy Webster by Colonel Nathaniel Tyler, president of the court and also the co-owner and editor of the Richmond Enquirer.* The defendant stood accused of “lurking about the armies and fortifications of the Confederate States of America,” and it was the court’s intention to prove two specifications.

  First Specification: That on the 1st of April [1862], being an enemy alien and in the service of the United States, he lurked about the armies and fortifications of the Confederate States in and near Richmond.

  Second Specification: That about the 1st of July 1861, prisoner being an enemy alien and in the service of the United States, did lurk in and about the armies and fortifications of the Confederate States at Memphis, in the State of Tennessee.

  The court summoned John Scully, who confirmed that the accused was Timothy Webster, an employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He also told the court that he had come to Richmond to collect information from Webster and to take this information to Washington.

  The next day Pryce Lewis was called. The Englishman looked across at Webster and noticed how much he had changed. He was gaunt, worn-out, a man who no longer had the strength to keep up the act. Webster acknowledged Lewis with a bow of his head. When Lewis was asked if he knew the accused, he replied in the affirmative. And what else do you know of him?

  Very little, said Lewis. Was he aware Webster carried mail between Richmond and Washington? Lewis had never seen him carry any mail.

  Well then, had he heard any rumors to that effect? Yes, replied Lewis. It was rumored that he carried mail. But he couldn’t swear upon it because he had never seen him do it.

  For several minutes the prosecution skirmished with Lewis, pressing him again and again on the subject of Webster’s role as a letter carrier. But the witness stuck to what he’d already said, reemphasizing that he had never seen Webster in possession of Richmond mail. Webster’s defense counsel, James Nance, asked Lewis to elaborate on what he’d already said: he came to Richmond to deliver a letter to Webster. No, he knew neither the contents of the letter nor why it had to be handed over in person. And that was correct, prior to delivering the letter he had never met the accused.

  Lewis was returned to his cell in Castle Godwin. More than a week had now passed since the postponement of his execution, and he was being tolerably well treated, though not as well as Scully if Father McMullen was to be believed. His cell, so the priest said, “might be termed elegant.” Lewis wrote again to Frederick Cridland but received no reply. He passed the days reading or standing on the bench looking out of the window. One day Lewis saw Tim Webster in the prison yard below, “sitting down on a step, very pale and weary-looking.”

  Webster’s trial concluded on Saturday, April 19. Three days later the Richmond Dispatch reported that “the result has not transpired.” However, added the newspaper, a guilty verdict was assured because “the proof, it is understood, was direct and positive.” On Friday, April 25, Timothy Webster was taken from Castle Godwin to City Hall, where the verdict was announced by Colonel Tyler, president of the court. Guilty.

  Tyler then announced that with “two thirds of the Court concurring, it was adjudged that the accused suffer death by hanging … that the sentence should be executed under the direction of the provost marshal on the 29th of April, between the hours of 6 and 12 o’clock.”

  It was the Richmond Dispatch’s report of April 5 that first alerted the Federal authorities to the fate of Lewis and Scully. The next day Captain Gustavus Fox, assistant secretary of the Union navy, received a telegram at his headquarters at Fort Monroe, on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula, signed by C. C Fulton. It read: RICHMOND PAPERS MENTION THAT TWO MEN NAMED PRICE [SIC] LEWIS AND JOHN SCULLY HAVE BEEN CONVICTED AS SPIES AND WERE TO HAVE BEEN HUNG YESTERDAY, BUT THAT A SHORT RESPITE HAS BEEN GRANTED. THE MEN CLAIM TO BE BRITISH SUBJECTS AND LOYAL.

  Word was quickly passed to Pinkerton, who was on the Virginia Peninsula with McClellan. Two days earlier, on April 4, McClellan had begun to push west toward the Confederate-held port of Yorktown. McClellan arrived outside Yorktown on the fifth, the same day he learned that President Lincoln had rescinded his order to General Irvin McDowell to move his thirty-five-thousand-strong corps from northern Virginia to the peninsula.*

  McClellan was apoplectic when he found out, petulantly fuming that he was the victim of political intrigue on account of his Democratic leanings. He still had fifty-five thousand men under his command, however, as he drew closer to Yorktown. Entrenched around Yorktown were no more than fifteen thousand poorly equipped rebels. Most other generals would have invested the port in a matter of days, but not McClellan. He recoiled from an all-out assault, preferring to wait for his artillery to arrive so he could blast the rebels from their trenches. It was Lincoln’s turn to rage. it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow, the president telegraphed his general, warning that THE COUNTRY WILL NOT FAIL TO NOTE—IS NOW NOTING—THAT THE PRESENT HESITATION TO MOVE UPON AN ENTRENCHED ENEMY, IS BUT THE STORY OF MANASSAS [THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN] REPEATED.

  Confronted with the gravest crisis of his military career, General McClellan had more pressing matters than the fate of two spies,* but Pinkerton sought clarification from the harbormaster at Fort Monroe. The thought that one or all of his operatives might be dead left him “almost prostrated” with anxiety.

  Subsequent intelligence was confused. The harbormaster confirmed that it appeared the men were indeed still alive. But then on April 16 the Boston Herald ran an article headlined a spy hung by the rebels in which it said that “Price [sic] Lewis late of Wolcottville, Con; was a few days since hung at Richmond, having made several trips to the enemy’s camp successfully was caught at last and manfully paid the penalty.”

  After hearing his verdict, Webster was returned to Castle Godwin and moved to the condemned cell lately occupied by Pryce Lewis. Hattie Lawton, whom the Confederates still believed to be the real Mrs. Webster, had been found guilty of complicity and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. Although she was now separated from her companion, Lawton was allowed a few minutes each day with Webster, and she was also granted permission to petition President Jefferson Davis. Her plea for clemency was rejected.

  Webster wrote to no one. What was the point in writing to Frederick Cridland when he had long since renounced his British citizenship? Tim Webster was a Yankee. He couldn’t even write to his real wife, Charlotte, six hundred miles northwest in Onarga, for fear of exposing Hattie Lawton as a Pinkerton operative.

  On the evening of Monday, April 28, Lawton called on Webster for the final time. He gave her his possessio
ns, including “plenty of gold and C.S Treasury notes,” and then they embraced. Webster’s last visit was from the Reverend Dr. George Woodbridge, the fifty-one-year-old rector of Richmond’s Episcopal Monumental Church. Woodbridge was an avuncular figure, father to four children and a much respected preacher.

  Webster prayed with Woodbridge; then they talked for many hours. The rector left a Bible with the prisoner and promised to return the next morning. Webster passed the night reading the Bible. One psalm in particular gave him solace, it was psalm 35, David’s psalm, and contained within it were the following lines.

  Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me:

  fight against them that fight against me.

  Take hold of shield and buckler,

  and stand up for mine help.

  Draw out also the spear,

  and stop the way against them that persecute me:

  say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.

  Let them be confounded and put to shame

  that seek after my soul:

  let them be turned back and brought to confusion

  that devise my hurt.

  Let them be as chaff before the wind:

  and let the angel of the Lord chase them.

  Let their way be dark and slippery:

  and let the angel of the Lord persecute them.

  For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit,