by Charles Lane
Case Western Reserve University, The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: Teacher Education, https://case.edu/ech/articles/t/teacher-education; author correspondence with Ronald E. Romig, Site Director, Kirtland Temple, Kirtland OH, 2016.
R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830 (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 223.
Benjamin Shurtleff, Descendants of William Shurtleff of Plymouth and Marshfield, Massachusetts (Revere MA: 1912), 754.
R. M. Campbell, “To My Patrons and the Public,” Boston Herald, Aug. 15, 1856.
Burnham, Memoirs, 33.
R. M. Campbell, “To My Patrons and the Public,” Boston Herald, Aug. 15, 1856; Hiram C. Whitley, “To My Patrons and the Public,” Boston Herald, Aug. 15, 1856; R. M. Campbell, “Hiram C. Whitley, Again!” Boston Herald, Aug. 21, 1856; Hiram C. Whitley, “R.M. Campbell Again,” Boston Herald, Aug. 22, 1856.
“Whitley,” Weekly Kansas Chief (Troy KS), May 4, 1876.
Untitled news item, Lawrence (KS) Republican, Feb. 3, 1859; “More of the Kidnapping Case,” Lawrence (KS) Republican, Feb. 10, 1859; “From Kansas,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 11, 1859.
“Old Brown,” New York Herald-Tribune, Feb. 12, 1859.
“From Kansas,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 1859.
Ibid.
Ibid.; Untitled news item, Portland (ME) Advertiser, Sept. 13, 1859; “The Letter Writers on Lawrence,” Herald of Freedom (Lawrence KS), Oct. 1, 1859.
Charles Gardner, New Orleans Directory for 1861 (New Orleans: C. Gardner, 1861), 454. The Whitleys lived in a house at 175 St. Peter Street.
“Recorder Emerson’s Court,” New Orleans Daily Delta, Dec. 27, 1861.
“The Whitleys’ Anniversary: Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary Observed by Quiet Day with Children and Grandchildren,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 25, 1916.
Burnham, Memoirs, 21–22; Whitley, In It, 25–27.
Ibid., 27–32.
“Counterfeiting Tickets,” New Orleans Daily Delta, Oct. 23, 1862.
This account of Whitley’s clash with the man known as Pedro Capdeville is derived from Whitley, In It, 48–49; Burnham, Memoirs, 24–26; “The City,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jan. 9, 1863; “The City,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jan. 16, 1863; “City Intelligence,” New Orleans Daily Delta, Jan. 16, 1863; “Hiram C. Whitley,” National Republican, Apr. 20, 1876.
Whitley Pension File; Whitley, In It, 74.
Ibid. See also Connelley, Kansas and Kansans, 2218.
“Counterfeiting: Trial of Miner, the Alleged Counterfeiter,” New York Herald, Dec. 19, 1871; Custom House Hearings, 719–23 (Testimony of Hiram C. Whitley).
U.S. Congress, House Ex. Doc., 40th Cong., 2d sess., no. 267, “Appointments in the Treasury: Special Agents under Internal Revenue Appointed since February 20, 1868,” 4; Whitley, In It, 85–86, 91.
“Provost Court,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Aug. 6, 1863.
Chapter 3
Daily Sun (Columbus GA), Mar. 24, 1868, quoted in KKK Hearings, Vol. 6, 452 (Testimony of J. H. Caldwell).
Wilber W. Caldwell, The Courthouse and the Depot: The Architecture of Hope in an Age of Despair: A Narrative Guide to Railroad Expansion and Its Impact on Public Architecture in Georgia, 1833–1910 (Macon GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), 191.
Capt. William Mills to Lt. John E. Hosmer, Apr. 6, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 9–10; “Historic Claflin School Restoration Project Gets Momentum at Last,” Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Dec. 7, 2017.
“The Killing of G.W. Ashburn,” Daily Sun (Columbus GA), Apr. 1, 1868 (as reprinted in Macon Weekly Telegraph, Apr. 10, 1868).
Ibid.
Capt. William Mills to Gen. George G. Meade, Apr. 10, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 14.
William H. Reed to Gen. George G. Meade, Apr. 22, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 20–21.
Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, May 4, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 23.
When General Meade later published his correspondence on the Ashburn case, he attempted to portray Whitley’s use of “severity” as a typographical error. Whitley had actually said “celerity”—speed—the general claimed. See “Errata,” Gen. Meade’s Book.
U.S. Statutes at Large, 14: 428–30. See also Andrew Johnson’s veto message for the first Reconstruction Act, Congressional Globe, Mar. 2, 1867, 1969.
Capt. William Mills to Gen. R. C. Drum, May 14, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 24–25.
Brochure, Fort Pulaski National Monument, U.S. National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/fopu/index.htm.
Burnham, Memoirs, 35–36.
Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, May 18, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 25.
Ibid.
The account of the Columbus Klan’s efforts to intimidate witness Alexander Bennett is derived from Gen. Meade’s Book, 92–107 (Military Commission Testimony of Alexander Bennett), 108–15 (Military Commission Testimony of Amanda Patterson).
Gen. Meade’s Book, 108–15 (Military Commission Testimony of Amanda Patterson).
Biographical information for William Dudley Chipley is derived from Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Florida State Horticultural Society, May 1895 (DeLand FL: E. O. Painter, n.d.), 135–36; Edward C. Williamson, “William D. Chipley, West Florida’s Mr. Railroad,” Florida Historical Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Apr. 1947), 333–55.
During the military commission trial, Chipley himself was allowed out of the barracks, on the condition that he not leave Atlanta. Gen. George G. Meade to Gen. W. M. Dunn, July 11, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 48.
Congressional Globe, May 13, 1868, 2450.
Congressional Globe, May 18, 1868, 2751–52.
Details of Hiram C. Whitley’s interrogation of George Betts are derived from Gen. Meade’s Book, 75–91 (Military Commission Testimony of George Betts).
Link, Atlanta, 103.
Ibid.
Information on Whitley’s interrogation of Charles Marshall is derived from Gen. Meade’s Book, 52–75 (Military Commission Testimony of Charles Marshall).
Ibid., 106 (Military Commission Testimony of Alexander Bennett).
Gen. Meade’s Book, 51.
The pro-Klan version of events spread well beyond Georgia. See, for example, “The Ashburn Tragedy,” New York World, June 18, 1868. This article, based on a letter from an unknown correspondent in Columbus, refers to “drumhead justice,” the “indiscriminate arrest of innocent persons,” and the “tyranny of General Meade.”
“The Inquisition Revived,” Atlanta Constitution, June 22, 1868.
“Atlanta, Ga.: The Murderers of Hon. G.W. Ashburn,” Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1868.
“The Ashburn Murderers,” New York Tribune, June 18, 1868; “The Ku Klux Klan,” New York Tribune, July 18, 1868.
Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, June 27, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 33–36.
Gen. Meade’s Book, 128–29 (Military Commission Testimony of Burrill Davis).
Ibid., Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, May 18, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 25–26.
James W. Barber, Civil War Soldiers Service Cards, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery AL, http://www.archives.alabama.gov/civilwar/soldier.cfm?id=8337.
Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, May 18, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 25–26.
Ibid., 120 (Military Commission Testimony of Wade Stevens); Radical Rule, 156 (Military Commission Testimony of John Peabody). Pro-Klan Democrats published Radical Rule as a rebuttal to General Meade’s report in the fall of 1868. Despite its inaccuracies and falsehoods, and obvious political purposes, which included influencing that year’s presidential election, Radical Rule reproduced a complete and reliable transcript of testimony at the military commission trial, including that of the defense witnesses, w
hich was omitted from Gen. Meade’s Book.
The account of Hiram C. Whitley’s abuse of prisoners at Fort Pulaski derives from the following sources: “Mysteries of the Sweat Box Revealed,” Atlanta Constitution, July 16, 1868 (John Stapler affidavit); “Putting Negroes to Torture,” National Intelligencer, June 17, 1868 (John Wells affidavit); “The Ashburn Murder Trial: Confession of One of the Suborners,” National Intelligencer, Aug. 14, 1868 (William H. Reed affidavit); Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, June 27, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 35.
“Putting Negroes to Torture,” National Intelligencer, June 17, 1868.
“The Radical Steam Torture Box at Fort Pulaski,” Macon Weekly Telegraph, July 17, 1868.
Hiram C. Whitley to Gen. George G. Meade, June 27, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 33–36.
Gen. George G. Meade to Gen. U. S. Grant, July 21, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 5.
Gen. George G. Meade to Hon. Secretary of War and Gen. U. S. Grant, June 30, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 37.
“The Ku-Klux Klan: Trial of the Columbus (GA.) Prisoners for the Murder of G. W. Ashburn, a Member of the Georgia Constitutional Convention,” New York Tribune, July 6, 1868.
For biographical information on Rufus Saxton, see Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle’s Laugh, and Other Surprises (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), 175–82; Link, Atlanta, 114.
William Wesley Woolen, William McKee Dunn, Brigadier-General, U. S. A.; A Memoir (New York: Putnam, 1892), 64.
Richard Brookhiser, “Confederate Cornerstone,” www.nationalreview.com, Mar. 21, 2011.
“The Ashburn Tragedy,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 8, 1868.
“The South: Trial of the Ashburn Murderers at Columbus, Georgia,” Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1868.
Gen. Meade’s Book, 70 (Military Commission Testimony of Charles Marshall).
“The Ashburn Tragedy,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 8, 1868.
“The Ashburn Murder: Tenth Day of the Trial—Southern Society,” New York Tribune, July 21, 1868.
Radical Rule, 111, 115.
“Affairs in Atlanta,” Macon Weekly Telegraph, July 10, 1868.
“The South,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1868.
Gen. George G. Meade to Hon. Secretary of War and Gen. U. S. Grant, June 20, 1868, Gen. Meade’s Book, 37.
Gen. John A. Rawlins to Gen. George G. Meade, July 2, 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Edited by John Y. Simon (Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2012) (Hereafter cited as “Grant Papers”), Vol. 18, 230.
Telfair, History of Columbus, 166–67; “Stand Firm!” Atlanta Constitution, July 21, 1868; “In the Union,” Atlanta Constitution, July 22, 1868; “Suspension of the Military Commission,” Atlanta Constitution, July 23, 1868.
“Georgia Legislature,” Atlanta Constitution, July 22, 1868. See also Alan Conway, The Reconstruction of Georgia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966), 161–63.
“Return of the Prisoners,” Columbus Daily Enquirer, July 26, 1868; Telfair, History of Columbus, 167.
Nation’s Peril, 68–69.
“The Georgia Legislature—Progress of the Ashburn Murder Trial,” New York Times, July 17, 1868.
“The Ashburn Tragedy,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 8, 1868.
Gen. George G. Meade to Gen. U. S. Grant, July 21, 1868, General Meade’s Book, 5.
Chapter 4
Ben Tarnoff, A Counterfeiter’s Paradise: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Early American Moneymakers (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 86.
Clinton L. Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (New York: Mentor, 1999), 84.
Stephen Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 63–102.
James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 593–94.
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 24.
David R. Johnson, Illegal Tender: Counterfeiting and the Secret Service in Nineteenth-Century America (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 72–73. See also reports submitted on legal origins of the Secret Service Division by Chief James J. Brooks: James J. Brooks to R. C. McCormick, et al., Sept. 17, 1877, and James J. Brooks to William Windom, Mar. 19, 1881, both in U.S. Secret Service Archives, Washington DC.
Johnson, Illegal Tender, 69–77; Curtis Carroll Davis, “The Craftiest of Men: William P. Wood and the Establishment of the United States Secret Service,” Maryland Historical Magazine 83, no. 2 (Summer 1988), 111–26.
Johnson, Illegal Tender, 76–77; “The Secret Service,” newspaper clipping, dated June 20, 1869, contained in the Hiram C. Whitley Scrapbooks, Lyon County History Center, Emporia KS.
In response to a demand from Congress, President Johnson submitted a complete report on these pardons, including capsule biographies of each convicted counterfeiter, details of the alleged offense, and the reason for granting clemency: U.S. Congress, House Ex. Doc., 40th Cong., 2d sess., no. 179, “Pardons for Making or Passing Counterfeit Money, Forgery, and Perjury.”
“The Counterfeiting Cases,” New York Times, July 2, 1867.
“Counterfeiters in the Employ of the Government,” New York Times, June 28, 1867.
Frank Warren Hackett, A Sketch of the Life and Public Services of William Adams Richardson (Washington DC: n.p., 1898), 135.
“The Secret Service,” newspaper clipping, dated June 20, 1869, contained in the Hiram C. Whitley Scrapbooks, Lyon County History Center, Emporia KS.
U.S. Congress, House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., no. 559, “The Sanborn Contracts,” 189 (Testimony of Everett C. Banfield).
1870 U.S. Census for Cambridge, Middlesex County, MA.
“More Revenue Frauds—Important Arrests by United States Detectives,” New York Times, Aug. 5, 1869.
Hiram C. Whitley to Everett C. Banfield, June 14, 1870, Letters Sent from Headquarters of the Chief in New York, Records of the U.S. Secret Service, Record Group 87, National Archives, College Park MD (Hereafter cited as “Whitley Official Correspondence”).
Hiram C. Whitley to Everett C. Banfield, June 16, 1870, Whitley Official Correspondence.
Custom House Hearings, 633.
Hiram C. Whitley to Everett C. Banfield, June 16, 1870, Whitley Official Correspondence.
U.S. Statutes at Large, 16: 291.
“Crime Against the Government,” New York Herald, Mar. 9, 1871.
Burnham, Memoirs, 122–24.
Ibid., 301–303, 310.
“M.G. Bauer Removed,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Feb. 15, 1894; “Captain Bauer’s Sudden Death,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 17, 1898; House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., no. 785, “Testimony in Relation to the Alleged Safe-Burglary at the Office of the United States Attorney” (Hereafter cited as “Safe Burglary Hearings”), 267–68 (Testimony of Michael G. Bauer); James J. Brooks to R. C. McCormick, Sept. 26, 1877, U.S. Secret Service Archives, Washington DC.
Burnham, Memoirs, 160–64; I. C. Nettleship Daybook, June 25, 1869, I. C. Nettleship Papers, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark NJ; “Obituary Notes (I. C. Nettleship),” New York Times, Nov. 10, 1887.
Burnham, Memoirs, 278–85; Safe Burglary Hearings, 256–57 (Testimony of Abner B. Newcomb).
Burnham, Memoirs, 63–77.
Ibid., 103–11.
Ibid., 78–89; “Bill Gurney, the Counterfeiter, at Work in Jail,” Evening Star (Washington DC), Oct. 7, 1870; “An Important Arrest,” New York Herald, Aug. 26, 1870.
Biographical information for Joshua D. Miner is derived from the following sources: Untitled news item, New York Tribune, Nov. 2, 1867 (reporting Miner’s candidacy for local office as a Republ
ican); “Counterfeiters Seized,” New York Sun, Oct. 27, 1871; “Counterfeiting Annihilated,” New York Dispatch, Oct. 29, 1871; “Joshua D. Miner: A Wealthy Tammany Contractor,” New York Sunday Dispatch, Dec. 31, 1871; Burnham, Memoirs, 420–34; “Death of Miner, the Counterfeiter,” New York Tribune, Mar. 13, 1886; “Death of a Noted Counterfeiter: Joshua D. Miner, Autocrat of the Coney Men, Dies in New York,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mar. 13, 1886; A. L. Drummond, True Detective Stories (Chicago: M. A. Donahue, 1908), 47–65.
Details of Whitley’s first encounter with Joshua D. Miner, and their subsequent meetings leading up to Miner’s surrender of the counterfeit National Shoe and Leather Bank note plates, are derived from “Counterfeiting: The Trial of Miner, the Alleged Counterfeiter,” New York Herald, Dec. 16, 1871; Custom House Hearings, 697 (Testimony of Hiram C. Whitley).
Burnham, Memoirs, 46–56.
“Miner the Counterfeiter,” New York Register, Dec. 15, 1871. Bill Gurney would eventually be sentenced to ten years—five years fewer than Fred Biebusch got for his similar offenses. Whitley, In It, 89.
“Counterfeit Plates, Dies, &c. to be Destroyed,” Evening Star (Washington DC), Nov. 3, 1870.
Whitley, In It, 5.
Burnham, Memoirs, 35.
“The Alleged Head Centre of the Counterfeiters,” New York Herald, Dec. 12, 1871.
Details of the undercover investigation and arrest of Joshua D. Miner are derived from the following sources: Burnham, Memoirs, 427–34; Whitley, In It, 223–35; Drummond, True Detective Stories, 47–57; “Counterfeiters Seized,” New York Sun, Oct. 27, 1871; “A Seizure of Men and Money,” New York World, Oct. 27, 1871; “Arrest of Counterfeiters,” New York Times, Oct. 27, 1871; “Counterfeiting Annihilated,” New York Dispatch, Oct. 29, 1871; “Counterfeiting,” New York Herald, Dec. 13, 1871; “Joshua D. Miner: Wealthy Tammany Contractor,” New York Sunday Dispatch, Dec. 31, 1871; Custom House Hearing, 697 (Testimony of Hiram C. Whitley).
“Counterfeiting,” New York Herald, Dec. 13, 1871.