Jordan and Lewis “exchanged little notes on a string through cracks in the floor,” and during the exercise hour they paced the yard in each other’s company. Toward the end of November Jordan learned that the charges leveled against him had been dismissed; also, eyewitnesses told the inquiry Jordan had been “very humane and kind to citizens.” He was ordered to be returned to Washington on a flag-of-truce boat, along with “two hundred and forty five Abolition prisoners of war, and ninety-eight citizen prisoners of the North.” The prisoners departed Richmond on November 29, and Jordan had secreted on him a note from Lewis written the night before, which was addressed to Allan Pinkerton.
Among the ninety-eight civilian prisoners liberated along with Colonel Jordan was Hattie Lawton. As early as June 1862 the Richmond Dispatch had speculated that “Mrs. Webster,” as everyone in Richmond still described her, would soon be released. But she remained confined throughout the long hot summer. In August she too had been transferred from Castle Godwin to Castle Thunder, and while her new abode had horrified her, she was resilient enough to write Jefferson Davis on October 13. The letter was a heartfelt plea from a grieving widow.
My Honorable President
I come to you, a poor weak woman whose future looks, oh, so cheerless. I come to you the relic of him who has paid the penalty of his wrongdoing, if wrong he did, of which I know nothing. I come to you begging. I wish to go home. It was hinted an exchange. Oh sir, exchange me, Southern born, a South adoring woman … I have suffered. Oh, you can feel for the suffering; let me go home where I may seek some sot, and unnoticed pass the remainder of my dreary, dreary days. I will pray for you, do you no harm and my Holy Mother knows my heart; but I have ties in Maryland, interests there. Please let me go home.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant
Mrs. T Webster
The letter was forwarded to General Winder, who by now suspected there was more to Mrs. Timothy Webster than first met the eye. He returned the letter with a recommendation that the prisoner “would compromise many friends in Maryland” were she to be released. Eventually, however, the authorities in Richmond relented, and Lawton was sent North, to make her report on the sorry saga of Timothy Webster.
Colonel Jordan delivered Lewis’s letter as promised, but by now Pinkerton knew nearly all the events surrounding Webster’s death, and it appeared from the letter he dictated to one of his subordinates that he attached no blame to Lewis. The letter reached Castle Thunder early in the New Year of 1863.
Pryce Lewis Esq,
Castle Thunder, Richmond, Va
Dear Sir
I am requested by Mr. Allen [Pinkerton’s nom de guerre] to write you, and to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of No. 28th 1862, the first direct news from you. He requests me to say to you that he is very glad to hear directly from you and hopes still that you will improve other opportunities of writing to him, letting him know of any and every want so that if in his power, he may supply it to you. That he regrets your arrest, your sufferings, your long confinement, and that his efforts thus far, have not proved successful in your liberation … Mr. Allen, also directs me, further, to say that sometime since, he has received through the American Legation in London, a letter from your brother, saying that your relatives there had heard of your arrest and supposed execution, and desiring to know of your effects; and that he replied to the letter, through the same channel, giving your brother the facts of the case, and of the assurance had from the Confederate authorities, of your safety and probable release … I hardly need add that everyone in the employ of Mr. Allen, shares with him in the deep feeling on account of your long and dreadful suffering; and all alike, desire to express the wish and hope of your early deliverance.
Around the same time as Lewis received the letter, Captain Alexander underwent the first real test of his authority at Castle Thunder. On the night of Monday, January 26, 1863, a group of Confederate prisoners contrived to make firebombs from the prison stove, which they then hurled from the windows of their cells toward the building opposite. Inside were scores of captured Union soldiers. Their screams brought out the guards, and it was several hours before the fire was brought under control. In the opinion of the Richmond Examiner the arson “best illustrates the amount of hellish recklessness and devilry which is congregated within the walls of Castle Thunder.” It called for swift retribution, and Alexander obliged. Lewis looked between the cracks in the wooden planks across his window as the culprits were “marched down into the prison yard and there they were kept in the wind and rain without shelter for six days.”
Complaints were made, but Alexander was unrepentant, as he demonstrated in April 1863 when he was summoned to appear before the committee of the House of Representatives of the Confederacy to answer charges of cruelty within the walls of Castle Thunder. Even some of the staff condemned the practices of their superior. A hospital steward named T. G Bland told the hearing that in his view the prisoners were “most barbarously and inhumanely treated.” One of General Winder’s detectives, Robert Crow, singled out John Caphart, Timothy Webster’s hangman, as the most sadistic.
The committee published their report on May 1. In it George Alexander was found to have employed “improper” methods at times, but, because Castle Thunder “embraced among its inmates the most lawless and desperate characters,” they recommended that no further action be taken against either the superintendent or any of his guards.
Lewis had been “subpoenaed as a witness in [sic] behalf of Captain Alexander and though I enjoyed two trips under guard to the Capitol my testimony was not called for.” Not long after, Lewis fell ill. Fortunately it wasn’t smallpox, the disease men feared above all others. An epidemic had swept the city at the end of 1862, and the authorities ordered every house to display a white flag if there was a carrier of the disease within. Superintendents of Richmond’s prisons covered their floors with loam and lime, considered to be an effective deterrent against bacteria, but men still succumbed from time to time. Mumps, measles and typhoid were also prevalent, but when the prison surgeon, Coggin, was fetched to attend to Lewis he diagnosed dysentery. As the hospital was full, Coggin handed Lewis “three most powerful pills” and told the Englishman he would soon feel better. Lewis “swallowed only one of them [and] the effect of this was so prostrating that I was satisfied that if I had taken the entire dose, I should have died immediately.”
Weeks passed, and Lewis lay festering in the stale air of his cell, at times convinced “life was slowly ebbing away.” The cumulative strain of the past twelve months had turned his hair gray, and his once bold brown eyes had drawn back into the sockets of his pallid face. Lewis spent his days huddled under his threadbare blanket, a pitiable shadow of the man who, two years earlier, had traveled through Virginia as an impeccably attired member of the English aristocracy. Lice swarmed over his body, but he had neither the energy nor the strength to repel them. Occasionally he felt a rat scamper across his whiskers.
By the early summer of 1863 the fever had broken, and Lewis was on the mend. His psychological well-being improved when he received a letter from Allan Pinkerton. Lewis had written to his boss to ask for news of their possible release. Since the end of 1862 he and Scully had believed their freedom was pending, but each time something had gone awry, either the intervention of General Winder or a newspaper editorial such as the one that appeared in the Richmond Enquirer on December 11: “We understand that Scully and Lewis, who have been confined in Castle Thunder, under sentence of death, as spies, in co-partnership with Webster, who was hung, have been pardoned, and are to be sent North. It is difficult to comprehend the meaning of such kindness on the part of the Confederate authorities.”
Now Lewis was desperate for at least a glimmer of hope. “I regret much that you were not exchanged,” wrote Pinkerton, who this time used the alias of “T. H. Hutcheson.” He promised Lewis “that no effort of mine or your friends will be left untried to effect your speedy release,” and he mentioned t
hat he had written Lewis’s brother in England “to let him know how you are situated.” In addition, could Lewis “please say to Mr. Scully that I called on Mrs. S a few days ago—and that her and all the family were well, in fact, I may say all looking well.”
Finally, Pinkerton said he wanted to put Lewis’s mind at rest. Yes, he was now familiar with all the facts of Webster’s arrest, trial and execution, and the Englishman “may rest assured that my mind is perfectly unprejudiced and that you have my most sincere commiseration with you in the great sufferings you have endured … and I assure you that never for an instant has my faith or confidence in you wavered. And in this all your friends fully coincide.”
Pinkerton was true to his word; he was working feverishly to secure the release of his two operatives. At the end of May it appeared their release was imminent, but then for some reason it was canceled again at short notice. On May 25 Lieutenant Colonel William Ludlow, Federal agent for exchange of prisoners, wrote an angry letter to his Southern counterpart, Robert Ould, in which he brought “to your mind the cases of Lewis and Scully. You distinctly and without reservation told me that these men should be delivered on the day following the delivery to you of a large number of citizen prisoners; their names were especially mentioned and I have not yet received them. I shall deliver to you no more political or citizen prisoners except at ‘our own pleasure’ and no such agreement or understanding such as you propose will be for a moment entertained.”
The threats failed, however, and Lewis and Scully remained stewing in Castle Thunder as the summer arrived. If anything, their nationality now counted against them as the Confederate authorities no longer had any reason to curry favor with the British.
. . .
At the outbreak of hostilities, the Confederacy had acted with greater alacrity in dispatching to Great Britain emissaries to speak on its behalf; in other words, to propagandize. Men such as William Yancey and Pierre Rost had secured audiences with Lord John Russell, the foreign secretary, to plead the Southern cause, while the Union had procrastinated in appointing an American minister to London, one of their own, as opposed to George Dallas, a Buchanan appointee who, while capable, wasn’t wholly trusted by the new president. Finally Charles Adams had been assigned, but when he arrived in London in the second half of May 1861, he had a lot of ground to make up on his Southern rivals.
By the time Adams took up his new post, several dozen Union-supporting Negroes had taken it upon themselves to hold public meetings to counter the Confederate point of view, taking their lead from the most celebrated Negro to visit Britain, Frederick Douglass. He had been a leading member of the abolitionist movement since the 1840s and was a gifted writer and orator. Douglass was a friend of John Brown, but he had wisely refused to take part in the Harpers Ferry assault because he knew it would achieve nothing. Nonetheless the authorities claimed letters had been found among Brown and his men incriminating Douglass, so he fled to Canada and thence to England, arriving in November 1859. For six months he undertook a lecture tour of Britain for the American Anti-Slavery Society, playing to packed houses and captivating them with the eloquence of his oration on behalf of the enslaved. In May 1860 Douglass was about to leave for France on a similar tour when word reached him that his youngest daughter had died. He returned to the States and ended the war as a special adviser to President Lincoln.
Into Douglass’s shoes stepped other Negroes, many of whom had fled to Britain a decade earlier after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Others, such as the Reverend J. Sella Martin from Boston, came specifically to preach the message of emancipation. Martin toured the churches and chapels of England and Scotland, telling the congregations all about the iniquities of slavery.
The Confederate emissaries thought it wise to eschew public meetings and instead ingratiated themselves with selected editors of newspapers and journals in the hope of receiving a sympathetic press. The Irish Times, the London Standard and the London Herald all ran articles written by Southern agents. But these papers were read in the main by the middle classes, and they didn’t carry the influence of the workingmen and -women. It was they, ultimately, who would determine British government policy, and for a while the Confederate emissaries believed they would come down on their side, particularly as the Union blockade began to bite and the cotton ceased to come. From December 1861 to May 1862 only 11,500 bales of cotton arrived in England from the United States, less than 1 percent of the amount for the same period the previous year. Cotton workers in the north of England began to lose their jobs and applied for Poor Relief (the equivalent of today’s state benefits); in the county of Lancashire, 61,207 people out of a total population of 2.3 million asked for official handouts in November 1861; by March 1862 this figure had risen to 113,000, and by December it had soared to 284,418.
The working classes were suffering, but they weren’t starving, thanks to government aid (motivated by a fear of revolution) and donations from private charities. Ironically, the hardships endured by the mill workers in the north of England because of the Union blockade only strengthened their support for the North’s cause. They believed that no one, regardless of his color or creed, should be oppressed, and they were willing to suffer so that others wouldn’t have to. In this belief they were delighted by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, in which he declared that unless rebel states returned to the Union by January 1 their slaves would be considered as free men. Attendance at antislavery meetings in cities such as Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester shot up in the months that followed, and a typical resolution was the one passed at an assembly in Sheffield on January 10, 1863: “Resolved: that this meeting being convinced that slavery is the cause of the tremendous struggle now going on in the American states, and that the object of the leaders of the rebellion is the perpetuation of the unchristian and inhuman system of chattel slavery, earnestly prays that the rebellion may be crushed, and its wicked object defeated, and that the Federal Government may be strengthened to pursue its emancipation policy till not a slave be left on the American soil.”
The London Times, still at best ambivalent toward the North, dismissed these meetings as being attended by “nobodies,” but Charles Adams reported to Washington that “these manifestations are the genuine expression of the feelings of the religious dissenting and of the working classes.” The British government, he predicted, would not be so foolish as to do anything to enflame the passion of the workingman, not with memories of the Chartist movement still alive. Adams was correct in his estimation. Britain refused to change its position of neutrality on the question of the American conflict, even refusing a French idea to help broker a peace plan in November 1862. The United States didn’t need outside help to resolve its disputes. Then in 1863 a dispute arose between Denmark and the German Confederation over Schleswig-Holstein (a peninsula between the North and Baltic seas), giving the British government a convenient excuse to turn its attention from the west to the east.
Lincoln never forgot the benevolence of the British working class, nor their support for his cause, and on January 19, 1863, he wrote to the people of Manchester, telling them that he could not “but regard your decisive utterances upon the question of slavery as an instance of sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.”
In the mind of Allan Pinkerton, Abraham Lincoln had diminished in stature following the dismissal of George McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac on November 7, 1862. McClellan had gone because Lincoln was no longer able to tolerate his prevarication, “delaying on little pretexts of wanting this and that … I began to fear he was playing false—that he did not want to hurt the enemy.” Lincoln believed that but for McClellan’s cautiousness at Antietam the previous September, the bloody stalemate would have been a comprehensive Union victory. McClellan’s successor was General Ambrose Burnside.
Pushing his personal feeling aside, however, Pinkerton wrote Lincoln on June 5, 1863, telling
him about the execution of Webster and asking for his help in securing the release of Lewis and Scully. “Pryce Lewis is an Englishman and has no one in this country dependant upon him,” wrote Pinkerton to the president, “but I have been and still am supporting the families of Webster and Scully. The death of the former precludes the possibility of any interference in his behalf, but the latter, fortunately, can still be benefitted by such interference … my object in writing to you is to appeal to you, in the name of these men and of their friends, to see that Justice is done to those who have so long suffered for having risked everything, even life itself, to Serve their country; and to ask that such disposition may be made by you of the matter, by referring it to whoever may have the more immediate charge of such arrangements or in such other manner as may best ensure the release and return to their homes of men who cannot but appear to me, under all the circumstances, as having a peculiar claim upon their Government for protection and relief.”
When Pinkerton’s letter elicited no response from the president, he organized the dispatch south of twenty dollars in gold and some smart clothes for his two operatives. Lewis still had on the same tatty shoes he’d worn during his escape from Henrico County Jail, so he was delighted when a brand-new suit and boots arrived from Chicago. Scully was less requiring of the footwear, and to Lewis’s disdain “he made a present of his new boots to a nephew of Captain Alexander who was an officer in the Confederate army … it had good results for the captain took Scully twice to drive in Richmond soon after.”
Alexander scrupulously husbanded the money and allowed Lewis and Scully access to it whenever they wished. Intoxicated by the novelty of sudden wealth, the pair for several days drew upon the fund to buy food, “but it cost so much—six dollars a meal—that we gave up such extravagance.”
Double Death Page 25
