Book Read Free

Freedom's Detective

Page 32

by Charles Lane


  Lessoff, The Nation and Its City, 125.

  “Letter from Washington,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 22, 1876.

  Biographical information for Michael Hayes derived from the following sources: U.S. Congress, House Reports, 43d Cong. 1st sess., no. 785, “Testimony in Relation to the Alleged Safe-Burglary at the Office of the United States Attorney,” passim; Whitley KKK Report I; Hiram C. Whitley to George H. Williams, Aug. 15, 1872, Letters Received from the Department of Treasury, Records of the Department of Justice, Record Group 60, National Archives, College Park MD; Michael Hayes to M. G. Bauer, Sept. 6, 1872, and Michael Hayes to M. G. Bauer, Sept. 9, 1872, M. G. Bauer Papers, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.

  “The Safe Burglary: A Nolle Pros. Entered in Whitley’s Case,” New York Times, Sept. 21, 1876.

  U.S. Congress, House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., no. 785, “Testimony in Relation to the Alleged Safe-Burglary at the Office of the United States Attorney,” 120.

  “Detective Nettleship,” New York News, June 30, 1874.

  “Special Report on the Harrington Safe Burglary,” Baltimore Sun, June 24, 1874.

  Hiram C. Whitley to William B. Allison, June 23, 1874, Benjamin H. Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  David Davis to Benjamin H. Bristow, June 15, 1874, Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  Hiram C. Whitley to Benjamin H. Bristow, June 2, 1874, Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  Bluford Wilson to Benjamin H. Bristow, July 27, 1874 (copy), Letters Received from the Secret Service Division, 1865–1895, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, National Archives, College Park MD.

  Bluford Wilson to Benjamin H. Bristow, June 8, 1874, Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  “Developments in the Secret Service,” New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord NH), Sept. 30, 1874.

  Bluford Wilson to George Bliss and others, July 3, 1874 (copy), Letters Received from the Secret Service Division, 1865–1895, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, National Archives, College Park MD.

  “The District of Columbia Safe Burglary,” New York Times, July 9, 1874. See also “The District of Columbia Safe Robbery,” New York Times, July 15, 1874.

  Benjamin H. Bristow to James H. Wilson, July 18, 1874, Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  Letter of Wm. P. Wood, to the Hon. Geo. S. Boutwell, Secretary of the Treasury, Relating to one of his favorite officials, with facts and quotations submitted for reference and study, Broadside pamphlet [Washington DC], 1872, 2. Wood claimed, apparently falsely, that Whitley had a venereal disease. Ibid.

  “The Safe Burglary Investigation,” Baltimore Sun, July 20, 1874.

  Hiram C. Whitley to Benjamin H. Bristow, telegram, July 20, 1874, Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  Bluford Wilson to Benjamin H. Bristow, telegram, July 18, 1874, Bristow Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington DC.

  Bluford Wilson to Benjamin H. Bristow, July 27, 1874 (copy), Letters Received from the Secret Service Division, 1865–1895, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, National Archives, College Park MD.

  Hiram C. Whitley to Bluford Wilson, July 24, 1874, Letters Received from the Secret Service Division, 1865–1895, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, National Archives, College Park MD.

  Bluford Wilson to Benjamin H. Bristow, July 27, 1874 (copy), Letters Received from the Secret Service Division, 1865–1895, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, National Archives, College Park MD.

  “The Safe Burglary: Col. Whitley Makes a Statement,” Evening Star (Washington DC), Sept. 10, 1874.

  “Counterfeit Money: The Secret Service Division,” Pittsburgh Evening Telegraph, July 8, 1874.

  Boynton, “Safe Burglary,” 426–27.

  “The Secret Service System,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 14, 1874.

  “The Safe Burglary Investigation,” Baltimore Sun, July 20, 1874.

  “The Secret Service: A Project for Its Reorganization Approved by Secretary Bristow,” New York Evening Post, Dec. 16, 1874.

  Chapter 7

  “The Clansman in Emporia,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 24, 1906.

  Anthony Slide, American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon (Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 59–60. The Clansman’s success as a stage play led to the production of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film based on the same novel, Birth of a Nation.

  “Emporia: Downtown Historic Survey,” Christy Davis, Davis Preservation, Inc., 2011, https://www.kshs.org.

  “Ku Klux on the Stage,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 19, 1906.

  “Knocking the Clansman,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 17, 1906.

  Untitled news item, Emporia Gazette, Mar. 20, 1906.

  “The Clansman in Emporia,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 24, 1906.

  James Delbert Kemmerling, “A History of the Whitley Opera House in Emporia, Kansas, 1881–1913” (M.S. thesis, Kansas State Teachers College, 1967), 28–48.

  Indictment quoted in “Letter from Washington,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 17, 1874.

  “Whitley and Alexander,” Washington Critic-Record, Oct. 28, 1874.

  “Letters from Washington,” Baltimore Sun, Nov. 18, 1874.

  “The Safe Burglars’ Jury,” Forney’s Sunday Chronicle (Washington DC), Nov. 29, 1874.

  “The End of the Safe Burglary Trial,” Baltimore Sun, Nov. 28, 1874.

  Bluford Wilson to James H. Wilson, Mar. 28, 1875, Grant Papers, Vol. 26, 106.

  “A Curious Narrative,” New York Herald, Aug. 19, 1876.

  Bluford Wilson to James H. Wilson, Mar. 28, 1875, Grant Papers, Vol. 26, 107.

  “Safe Burglary Trial,” National Republican, Sept. 22, 1876.

  “Telegraphic News from Washington: The Safe Burglary,” Baltimore Sun, Apr. 10, 1876.

  Boynton, “Safe Burglary,” 442.

  “Washington: Astounding Developments by the Ex-Chief of the Detectives,” New York Herald, Apr. 15, 1876.

  “Letter from Washington,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 22, 1876. See also “From Our Regular Correspondent,” New York Herald, Apr. 13, 1876.

  “Letter from Washington,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 22, 1876; “Fourth Day of the Trial,” National Republican, Sept. 23, 1876.

  “The Safe Burglary,” National Republican, Oct. 2, 1876.

  Boynton, “Safe Burglary,” 444.

  “H.C. Whitley, or Hale,” National Republican, Apr. 12, 1876.

  “The Safe Burglary,” National Republican, Oct. 2, 1876.

  “Obituary Notes (I. C. Nettleship),” New York Times, Nov. 10, 1887.

  Shotwell Papers, Vol. 3, 458–59; Trelease, White Terror, 417.

  William A. Smith to Ulysses S. Grant, Jan. 21, 1874, Grant Papers, Vol. 27, 328; “The Secret Service Division,” Washington Daily Critic, Sept. 10, 1874; “The Move on the Secret Service Bureau,” Baltimore Sun, Sept. 11, 1874.

  “Washington Notes,” New York Tribune, Sept. 30, 1882; “Funeral of Capt. Hester,” Evening Star (Washington DC), June 17, 1901. Between September and November of 1874, Hester worked as an undercover agent of the Post Office Department, investigating a suspected white terrorist murder of an African American political leader and U.S. mail agent in Sumter County, Alabama. As he had done during the 1871 campaign against the Klan in North Carolina, Hester penetrated the Alabama white vigilante network disguised as a tobacco peddler, and helped federal marshals and troops round up the guilty parties. Hester returned to North Carolina as a Department of Justice detective in 1876. When he
was temporarily laid off in August of that year due to budget cuts, he wrote President Grant warning of impending “Ku Klux” plots in the state and pleading for his job. The president, praising Hester’s “exertions and fearlessness,” ordered his reinstatement. Grant Papers, Vol. 27, 328–29; “Affairs in Alabama,” 1007–46; “The Ku Klux in Alabama,” National Republican, Oct. 16, 1874.

  “The Release of Kuklux Prisoners,” New York Times, Aug. 5, 1873.

  U.S. Statutes at Large, 20: 377, 384.

  Appendix to the Congressional Record, Vol. 8 (1879), Feb. 24, 1879, 205.

  Appendix to the Congressional Record, Vol. 8 (1879), Feb. 27, 1879, 227.

  Congressional Record, May 25, 1880, 3771–72.

  Frank P. Vazzano, “President Hayes, Congress, and the Appropriations Riders,” Congress and the Presidency 20, no. 1, (Spring 1993), 25–37.

  Congressional Record, June 10, 1880, 4377–78.

  Burnham, Memoirs, 14.

  U.S. Statutes at Large, 22: 219.

  Johnson, Illegal Tender, 96.

  James J. Brooks to R. C. McCormick, Sept. 26, 1877, U.S. Secret Service Archives, Washington DC.

  “Capt. Bauer’s Sudden Death,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 17, 1898.

  Johnson, Illegal Tender, 101.

  Ibid., 144; Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters, 373.

  Johnson, Illegal Tender, 139.

  Williamson, “William D. Chipley,” 333–55.

  This remarkable artifact, known as the “Columbus Prisoners’ Cane,” is housed in the Columbus Museum, Columbus GA. A photograph is available at http://www.columbusmuseum.com.

  Bowen and Neal, Secret Service, 26.

  Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1889), 222. See also Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters, 345.

  Norman Ansley, “The United States Secret Service: An Administrative History,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 47, no. 1 (May–June 1956), 94–96.

  Rossiter, ed., The Federalist, 424; Max Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. 1 (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1911), 584.

  Jan Huston, “Hiram C. Whitley, a Builder of Emporia,” Emporia Living, Feb. 2, 2014, 82–88.

  “Story of a House,” Emporia Weekly Gazette, Nov. 20, 1947.

  Order, Lyon County KS, Probate Court, July 17, 1894, certifying adoption of Sabra and Kittie Whitley; Delayed Certificate of Birth for Sabra Whitley, Kansas State Department of Health, Topeka KS, Mar. 15, 1946; Last Will and Testament of Hiram C. Whitley, Jan. 3, 1895, all in Hiram C. Whitley Papers, Danforth W. Austin Family Collection. Sabra Whitley’s birth certificate, a post hoc document reconstructing the facts of her birth from various witnesses’ memories, lists her birthplace as Emporia, her name at birth as “Sadie Gardner,” and her parents as Lizzie W. Gibbs and John E. Gardner. According to U.S. Census and Massachusetts Census records, Lizzie W. Gibbs was born in 1853 in Sagamore, Massachusetts, near Sandwich, which was the family home of Abner B. Newcomb. Later she took the last name “Newcomb,” while she lived with the Whitleys, despite never having married anyone by that name. No census or other records documenting the existence of “John E. Gardner” could be found, though the 1902 Emporia city directory lists her as his “widow.” Kittie Whitley’s parentage is mysterious, as well. No trace of any family with her last name at birth, Gladde, can be found in the U.S. and New York state census records of the relevant period. It is unclear who the girl’s biological father was and how he came to be separated from her mother, Lottie N. Luckey, who later married J. B. Luckey. The speed with which Whitley placed a newspaper ad seeking to adopt a girl of a particular age, found a woman willing to provide one, and closed the adoption—all within a single week—is impressive. In photographs, Kittie Whitley, too, bears a faint physical resemblance to her adoptive father.

  “The Whitleys’ Anniversary,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 25, 1916.

  “‘Colonel’ Whitley Was One of Emporia’s Most Picturesque Personalities in the 1880s and 90s,” Emporia Daily Gazette, June 26, 1957.

  John Stephen Farmer and William Ernest Henley, A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English (London: Routledge, 1905), 237.

  Whitley, In It, 243.

  Ibid., 2–3.

  Ibid., 9.

  Ibid.,104.

  “Colonel Whitley’s View,” Emporia Gazette, Mar. 26, 1906.

  “Who Was William Chipley?” Pensacola News-Journal, Apr. 18, 2015. A photograph of the inscription is available at www.hmdb.org.

  INDEX

  The pagination of this digital edition does not match the print edition from which the index was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your ebook reader’s search tools.

  A

  abductions, Secret Service

  botched, 219–21

  James Ivins, 218–19, 221–24

  African Americans, federal intervention for, 264

  African Americans, voting rights of, 23–24, 77, 91

  Akerman, Amos Tappan, 149–53, 150, 155–56, 158–63, 172, 175, 180, 182–83, 186–92, 205–206, 238, 267

  Albany Penitentiary, 119, 196, 198–200, 258

  Alexander, Columbus, 227–37, 241–42, 250–52, 254–55

  Allison, William B., 236, 239

  Anchisi, Charles E., 107, 107, 110–11, 141, 263

  anti-counterfeiting force, formation of, 99–100

  Appletons’ Journal, 211–13

  Army of the Cumberland, 21

  Army of the Potomac, 39, 185

  Ashburn, George W., 21–22, 28–36

  Ashburn murder

  artist’s rendition of, 30

  confessions obtained, 77–87

  investigation and arrests, 63–77

  as threat to Reconstruction, 101

  trial, 87–94

  See also Democrats; Ku Klux Klan; Republicans; Whitley, Hiram Coombs

  Atlanta Constitution, 80, 92

  Avery, James William, 220–21

  B

  Babcock, Orville E., 217, 225–37, 252–53

  trial and acquittal, 254–57

  Baker, Lafayette, 39–40, 99

  Ballard, Thomas, 114, 121, 124, 138, 211, 212

  Baltimore Sun, 252

  Banfield, Everett C., 102–106, 110, 117, 126, 134, 136, 141, 157, 216, 224–25, 237, 239

  Banks, Gen. Nathaniel, 57

  Barber, James W., 75–77, 79, 81–82, 84–85

  Bates, Catherine Webster. See Whitley, Catherine Webster Bates

  Battle of New Orleans, 57

  Bauer, Michael G., 107, 125, 181–83, 192, 210, 263

  Bay State Republican Party, 102

  Beatty, Abraham, 124–29, 125, 133–37, 158, 237

  Beck, James Burnie, 75–76, 213–15, 214, 235, 245, 261, 264, 267

  Beckwith, James R., 244

  Bedell, Christopher Columbus “Lum,” 74–76, 78–79

  Benedict, Judge Charles Linneaus, 131–35, 139, 141–42, 190, 213, 270–71

  Bennett, Alexander, 64–66, 70–74, 78–79, 88

  Benning, Gen. Henry L., 88

  Betts, George, 75–78, 88–89

  Biebusch, Fred, 110

  Biggerstaff, Aaron, 153

  Bill of Rights, 38–39

  “black codes,” 23

  Bleecker Street, Secret Service Headquarters, 102, 109, 116, 118–21, 124–25, 133, 137, 139, 141, 161–62, 211, 215, 223, 229, 236, 240

  “bleeding Kansas”/Lawrence, Kansas, 40

  Blue, Dan, 145

  Bonaparte, Napoleon, 38

  Booth, John Wilkes, 264

  Boston Herald, 46

  Boston Times, 136

  Boutwell, George S., 17, 101–102, 116–17, 141,
214–15, 237

  Bow Street Runners, 38, 213

  Boyd, Jim, 110–11

  Boynton, Henry V., 246

  branch office, chief operatives, 110

  Bratton, James Rufus, 221

  Bristow, Benjamin H., 238–42, 245–47, 252–53, 257, 263

  Brooks, James J., 262

  Brown, John, 40–41, 48, 198

  Brown, Joseph E., 87–90

  Brown, Samuel G., 200–202, 259

  Bryan, Jesse, 171–72

  Buck, Jake, 111–12, 125

  Burnham, George P., 139

  Butler, Gen. Benjamin, 53–57, 59–60, 101, 106, 148, 150, 196, 246

  Butts, William H., 223

  C

  Caldwell, Tod R., 151–52, 168

  Call, Wilkinson, 261

  Campbell, John A., 164–69, 171

  Campbell, R. M., 45–46, 48, 51, 59, 128–29, 134

  Capdeville, Pedro, 56–57, 212, 256

  carpetbagger governments, 273

  Carter, George W., 176–80, 192, 232–37

  Casserly, Sen. Eugene, 137–38

  Central Intelligence Agency, 266

  Chalmers, James Ronald, 261

  Chicago Post, 203

  Chicago Tribune, 81, 91

  Children’s Aid Society, 209

  Chipley, William D., 71–72, 74–76, 79–81, 92, 213–14, 235, 264, 274

  Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 30, 89–90, 94

  “Circular of Instructions,” 215–17, 232, 262–63

  Civil Rights Act, 1866, 24, 159

  Civil War, 39, 61, 68–69, 83, 114, 122, 159

  Civil War debt, 60

  The Clansman, 248–51, 251, 272–73

  Cleveland, President Grover, 265

  Clough, W. F., 47–48

  Cockspur Island, Georgia, 68–69

  Cold War, 266

  Cole, Cornelius, 149–51

  Cole, Harry, 118–20, 123–24, 128, 130–31, 138, 263

  Collins, David, 202–203

  Columbus, Georgia, 20–36

  Columbus Prisoners, 80–81, 88, 91–92

  Company G, 16th Infantry Regiment, 31–34

  coniackers/coney men/counterfeiters, 97

  counterfeiter arrests, 110–11, 141–42

  counterfeiting, 96–100, 103–105

 

‹ Prev