Daredevils of the Confederate Army: The Story of the St. Albans Raiders

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Text originally published in 1959 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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DAREDEVILS OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY:

THE STORY OF THE ST. ALBANS RAIDERS

BY

OSCAR A. KINCHEN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

FOREWORD 5

I—CONFEDERATE ACTIVITIES ALONG THE CANADIAN BORDER 6

II—THE RAID UPON ST. ALBANS 13

III—PANIC ON THE BORDER 20

IV—THE CAPTIVES 23

V—RAIDERS BEFORE JUDGE COURSOL 29

VI—COURSOL AND LAMOTHE ON THE CARPET 38

VII—THE FUGITIVES 43

VIII—RAIDERS BEFORE JUDGE SMITH 51

IX—THE MESSENGERS 57

X—RAIDERS PRESENT THEIR CASE 61

XI—THE LAST HURDLE 67

XII—FREEDOM 75

AFTERWORD 81

BIBLIOGRAPHY 85

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES 85

PRINTED SOURCES 86

SECONDARY WORKS 88

SPECIAL ARTICLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 90

NEWSPAPERS 91

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 92

DEDICATION

TO

MY BELOVED TEACHER,

DR. WALTER ROSS LIVINGSTON,

GENTLEMAN, SCHOLAR, AND FRIEND

FOREWORD

On October 29, 1864, twenty one young Confederate soldiers led by Lieutenant Bennett Young, all of whom had escaped into Canada from the northern prison camps, made the notorious raid upon St. Albans in Vermont, looted all the banks, shot several citizens, and attempted to burn the town with a highly-rated substance called Greek Fire.

While bent upon retaliation in kind for atrocities then being committed upon the civilian population of the South, their larger purpose was to engender such a panic of fear along the northern boundary as would draw off vast numbers of federal troops from the beleaguered Confederacy to guard a new hostile frontier.

Though regaining the Canadian border, with a band of infuriated citizens in hot pursuit, a demand for their delivery to the United States was followed by one of the most sensational and prolonged extradition trials of that generation.

It is with this latter phase of the St. Albans affair with which this study is more especially concerned. This little volume is the product of a careful examination of the sources and other accounts that relate to this famous episode in the American Civil War. Throughout this investigation, therefore, the attention of the author has been focused upon the raiders, rather than upon the raid alone, the latter having already been treated in a number of feature articles in recent years.

In gathering materials for this study, thanks are especially due to Mr. Norman Fee of the Dominion Archives at Ottawa for his kindly assistance in making available to the author a special collection of several hundred documents relating to the raid upon St. Albans and the developments which followed, along with other documents under his charge. Thanks are also due the Montreal Public Library, the Congressional Library at Washington, and to Mr. Edmund Royce of St. Albans for valuable local tradition concerning the historic raid. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Allan Gunn of the English Department at Texas Technological College for his valued suggestions as to form and style of treatment in relating the story of these stirring events of nearly a century ago.

O.A.K.

I—CONFEDERATE ACTIVITIES ALONG THE CANADIAN BORDER

By the mid-summer of 1863 the fortunes of the Confederacy were in rapid decline. Early in July Lee had suffered a decisive defeat at Gettysburg and Vicksburg on the Mississippi River had fallen into the hands of the Union forces, thus cutting the Confederate States in twain. Later in that same month General John H. Morgan with his entire force had been captured while on a raid into Ohio. The Union blockade of the southern ports was steadily gaining a strangle hold upon the Confederate States, while their manpower and economic resources were rapidly being drained away.

By the close of this fateful year, the attention of the Confederate government was being drawn toward Canada where hundreds of Confederate soldiers, who had escaped from prison camps in the North, had found a sanctuary within the British province, and where no small number of civilian refugees from the South had taken up their residence in the larger towns and cities where their presence was an important factor in moulding sentiment in favor of the Confederate cause.

To create a diversion of federal troops to the northern frontier and thus relieve the crushing pressure upon the South, the idea dawned upon the leaders at Richmond of making use of these escaped soldiers and their friends in carrying the war into the heart of the New England States in retaliation for federal outrages, then being committed upon the people of the South. Then too, rumors had begun to flow into the Confederate capital of a giant peace movement in the Old Northwest, of great secret societies bent upon ending the war by a negotiated peace, and also of a project for the creation of a northwestern confederacy within that section of the states.

In order to take advantage of these rumored developments, as well as to make effective use of these escaped prisoners of war and their sympathizers in Canada, the authorities at Richmond, by the mid-spring of 1864, finally determined to send commissioners into the Canadian province, who would have charge of Confederate activities along the northern frontier.

Early in May of that year, President Jefferson Davis issued instructions to Jacob Thompson, a former secretary of interior in Buchanan’s cabinet, and Clement C. Clay, Jr., a former congressman from Mississippi, to proceed at once to Canada, there to carry out such instructions as you may have received from me verbally, in such a manner as may seem most likely to conduce the furtherance of the interests of the Confederate States of America While these instructions were, indeed, vague and flexible, it was expected that these Confederate agents would make use of the escaped prisoners as well as the civilian refugees that fringed the northern frontier during the remainder of the war.

On May 6, Thompson, Clay, and W. W. Cleary as secretary to the commission, started from Wilmington, North Carolina, on the steamer Thistle, a fast blockade runner; and after being chased for several hours by a Union gunboat, they arrived safely at Bermuda from whence they made their way to Halifax on a British vessel, arriving at that port on May 29. After reaching the Canadian province some days later, Thompson, after depositing three quarters of a million dollars in the Bank of Ontario at Montreal, finally established his headquarters at the Queen’s Hotel in Toronto, while Clay took up his residence at St. Catherine’s, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. Here he was joined by James P. Holcomb, formerly professor of law at William and Mary’s College, who had earlier been sent to Canada to round up escaped prisoners within the province; and George N. Sanders, a self-appointed adviser on Confederate tactics, a man of commanding presence and a persuasive conversationalist especially in the dining room where the convincing power of his table talk was most effective upon his guests.

Early in June, Thompson made a trip to Windsor where he held an interview with Clement L. Valandingham, head of the secret society of the Sons of Liberty whose purpose was to engineer an uprising in the Northwest, the creation of a new confederacy in that quarter, and a speedy termination of the war. Thompson resolved to encourage this movement and advanced no less than seventy-five thousand dollars toward financing the scheme.

The plan called for a concerted uprising in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in which states a total membership of 175,000 active members was claimed. The first step was to arrange a series of peace meetings at Peoria, Springfield, and Chicago, all backed by funds which Thompson would supply. These meetings were to pave the way for a general uprising on August 29, at which time the Democratic national convention would meet in Chicago where the Sons of Liberty would assemble their forces. Here, with the aid of escaped Confederate soldiers coming over from Canada, they were to liberate some eight thousand prisoners at Camp Douglas, capture the city itself, seize the public buildings, and gain the co-operation of sympathizers at the convention. With their united forces they would seize the states of Kentucky and Missouri, overpower such federal forces as could be arrayed against them, and throw such a tremendous weight against the remaining northern states as to bring an end to the war.

As the date of the convention drew near, an expedition was set on foot at Toronto under the command of Captain Thomas H. Hines, formerly of General John H. Morgan’s command, composed of nearly one hundred escaped prisoners from the northern camps, and accompanied by Colonel St. Leger Grenfell, Morgan’s chief of staff. Hines and his men were armed with pistols at Toronto, and in citizens dress, they came to Chicago by different routes, on the same trains which brought thousands to the Chicago convention, which made it difficult to detect their presence. Hines’ party was to be joined by a large force of the Sons of Liberty who were to come well armed from all parts of the Old Northwest and were to be under the immediate command of General Charles Walch.

As vast and excited crowds surged through the streets of Chicago, or congregated in the hotels and saloons, the plans of the conspirators became known to the federal authorities and such large reinforcements were being moved into the city that the projected raid on Camp Douglas was postponed to a later time. To the disappointment of the Confederate commissioners, not a few of the conspirators in the convention had lost their nerve, some declaring that the ballot should be given a trial before a final resort to force. To their utter disgust, a majority of the delegates thought it necessary to pander to the military by nominating General George B, McClelland, a Union Democrat, as the most suitable candidate to head the ticket in the coming campaign.

Convinced that little or nothing could longer be expected from the co-operation of the Sons of Liberty, the Confederate commissioners in Canada fell back upon their escaped prisoners within the province, and shortly another scheme was set on foot for the release of Confederate prisoners in the various northern camps, and particularly those on Johnson’s Island in the Sandusky Bay. The liberated prisoners were to move upon Cleveland and take the city by a sudden attack, after which they were to march through to Wheeling, and on to the Confederate lines in Virginia where manpower was being steadily depleted and reinforcements a crying need.

For this purpose, it would first be necessary to gain possession of the armed steamer Michigan, the only American war vessel on Lake Erie. Charles H. Cole, who claimed to be a commissioned officer in the Confederate navy, was designated to carry out the task. Cole then made plans to win the confidence of the crew by entertaining them at a wine-drinking party and when the revelry should reach a high pitch, Confederate soldiers from another vessel were to board the Michigan and take her captive by surprise.

To carry this plan into execution, the Philo Parsons, a small lake steamer plying between Sandusky and Detroit, was boarded by groups of Confederate soldiers at Sandwich and Malden on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. Dressed as civilians and under the command of John Yates Beall, they took over the vessel at a given signal and directed her course toward Johnson’s Island where the Confederate prisoners were encamped while the Michigan lay in guard nearby. After seizing and scuttling the Island Queen at Middle Bass Island and leaving her crew and passengers stranded on shore, Beall’s expedition was drawing near its destination when the Michigan was sighted in the distance with steam up, her decks cleared, and ready to challenge the approaching vessel. Having received no signal from Cole, there was a mutiny on board the Philo Parsons and nothing could be done but to return to the Detroit River where the captured vessel was scuttled and its Confederate crew took to the woods on the Canadian side.

There had been no wine drinking party on board the Union war ship. Cole had been betrayed by a Confederate turn-coat and taken into custody while on a drunken spree at one of the hotels in Sandusky and was soon to be lodged with the prisoners on Johnson’s Island, whom he had intended to release.

In the meantime, a scheme was being advanced by Captain John B. Castleman