by John Boyko
The trials of those involved dragged on for over a year. It was discovered that Alexander Keith* of Halifax, who had played a lead role in helping Wade to escape, had been acting for some time as a Confederate agent. Papers were produced which proved he had been involved in purchasing twelve thousand muskets to be shipped to the South. It would be three months before the Chesapeake was returned to Portland.
The Johnson’s Island and Chesapeake incidents demonstrated both the degree to which Canadian, Maritime, British and American officials understood how quickly a small incident could explode into a new Trent crisis, with potentially catastrophic consequences, and how adroit they had become at the diplomacy needed to address them. Suspicion, distrust and rancour remained nonetheless. American consul James Howard, in a dispatch to Seward, described Canadians as “stupidly bad,” “rotten rubbish” and “the dregs of society.” And worse: “Any notorious offender may murder the Governor … of Massachusetts, may take the steamer to this province, and walk the streets of St. John … with impunity, there being no power to arrest him for an offense within the Extradition Treaty.”20
In London, American minister Adams met with Foreign Secretary Russell to express disappointment with the British and Canadian governments for allowing Confederate activity in Canadian cities. Russell explained that with the British proclamation of neutrality, its colonies were open to both Americans and Confederates.21 Adams reported the conversation to Seward, adding—perhaps unnecessarily—that he saw Confederate activity in Canada as a Southern tactic meant to disrupt relations between the North and Britain in the hope of dragging Britain into the war.22
THE MAN: CLEMENT VALLANDIGHAM
Ohio congressman Clement Vallandigham was a Copperhead. The loosely organized group’s name was taken from the venomous snake, known for striking without warning. Copperheads believed that neither the hope of reuniting the Union nor the freeing of slaves was worth the Civil War’s expenditure of blood and treasure, and so negotiations with the Confederacy should be undertaken to end it. Many Copperheads were also motivated by a desire to rebuild the shattered Democratic Party and nominate a candidate who could defeat Lincoln in November 1864. The movement also attracted those in the Midwest who believed national economic policies were geared to eastern needs and felt themselves beyond the pale of Richmond’s passions and Washington’s power. If peace could not be quickly negotiated, or their outlier ideas respectfully considered, the Copperheads would seek the establishment of a new, independent republic made up of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Lincoln said he feared the Copperhead movement, the “fire in the rear,” as he called it, more than military failure.23
Vallandigham became one of the most effective leaders of the Copperhead movement. He had entered Congress in 1858 opposed to the march to war. When war began, he delivered fiery anti-war speeches at home and from the House floor. By 1862, he had been defeated when his district was gerrymandered away, but he continued to speak his mind at well-attended peace rallies throughout the North. His speeches became increasingly popular and radical—and, to some, treasonous.
On May 1, 1863, after an especially passionate speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, Vallandigham returned to his home in Dayton. That night, with orders from Union general Ambrose Burnside, soldiers pounded on his front door. He jumped from his bed to a window and fired two pistol shots over the soldiers’ heads. Men burst through a side door and, amid his wife’s screams, he was dragged out and to jail. Vallandigham was charged with treason and there was talk of execution. Lincoln became involved and decided that the political costs and constitutional questions involved in proceeding were not worth the noose, so he arranged to have Vallandigham escorted under a flag of truce to Murfreesboro, where he was released to Confederate general Braxton Bragg. Lincoln quipped that Vallandigham’s head could go where his heart already was. 24
Not really needing this new problem, Bragg arranged papers and transport for Vallandigham, who made his way to Wilmington, North Carolina, boarded a blockade runner to Bermuda, and then took a transport to Nova Scotia. Word had leaked of his arrival, and a crowd welcomed him to the Halifax docks with three cheers to Jefferson Davis and another round to the Confederacy. 25
Vallandigham received an equally kind reception at Quebec City. At a dinner in his honour at the prestigious Stadacona Club, he was introduced to Canada’s political and business elite, including John A. Macdonald. On July 15, Vallandigham arrived in Niagara Falls and checked into a two-room suite at Clifton House, just blocks from the town’s natural wonder. The hotel had become the centre of Confederate activity in the lively border town. The next day he met with several Americans, including Joseph Warren of the Buffalo Courier, well-known Illinois Copperhead Richard Merrick and Indiana congressman Daniel Voorhees.26 Vallandigham gave them copies of a speech in which he accepted his nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the governor of Ohio. He would run his campaign from Canada and use it to promote the Copperhead agenda.
Over the next few weeks, hundreds of American politicians and Copperhead leaders, as well as American and Canadian newspaper reporters, sat with America’s most notorious candidate. His presence in Canada and his incendiary views split public opinion. The Toronto Leader spoke highly of Vallandigham and his Copperhead goals, calling him “intelligent, amiable and a martyr to his cause.”27 George Brown, on the other hand, set out in his Globe to insult and vilify Vallandigham for a project designed to hurt the United States. Brown argued that his presence and actions in Canada threatened to bring American troops across the border. Vallandigham wrote harsh letters in response, and the ensuing duel of words lasted for weeks.28
Among the Canadians who visited Vallandigham was influential Montreal member of the legislature Thomas D’Arcy McGee. The short, stocky, hard-drinking and charismatic McGee, who had a brother serving in the Union army, was on a speaking tour of the Maritimes and Canada, promoting the idea of unifying Britain’s colonies into a single union in order to build railways and offer greater protection from aggressive American expansionism.29 At McGee’s invitation, Vallandigham travelled to Drummondville, Canada East, where on August 16 he addressed a crowd of about two thousand. A few days later, McGee introduced him from the floor of the Canadian legislature. The next day, Vallandigham took a chair to the speaker’s left, an honour rarely bestowed, to hear passionate speeches relating to Canada’s position on America and the Civil War. Most notably, he heard McGee warn about United States’s preparations to send one hundred thousand troops to invade Canada, with the goal of splitting Canada East and West as the first step to annexation.30
Back in Niagara Falls, Vallandigham continued his gubernatorial campaign by employing the well-established Confederate communication network. Routes from Wilmington to Bermuda to Halifax, and overland routes through Canada East and West had been used from the outset of the war by Confederate officials to communicate with Europe and each other. Codes had been created. In a number of cities, drop spots had been established for the exchange of documents and messages. Couriers such as Robert E. Lee’s uncle, Cassius Lee, for example, lived in Hamilton and moved freely throughout Canada and the Maritimes, helping to provide the lifeblood of communications to the Confederacy.
Vallandigham soon discovered that the owner of Clifton House had become annoyed by the number of men tramping through his establishment and tired of the negative attention that his famous guest was bringing to his business. The Copperhead leader was asked to leave. On August 24, Vallandigham and his family moved to a two-room suite at Hirons House in Windsor. On the day of their arrival, the Detroit River teemed with politicians, newspapermen and admirers plying its waters to meet with the famous candidate-in-exile.
Secretary of State Seward’s spies reported on Vallandigham’s words and actions, and Lincoln and the Republican political establishment did all they could to frustrate his electoral bid. Money was forwarded to Ohio and other states with credible Copperhead candidates. Anti-Copperhead, pro-Republican ralli
es were organized, with the largest taking place at Madison Square Garden. Lincoln approved fifteen-day furloughs for soldiers wanting to return home to vote.
Lincoln spent much of October 13, 1863 pacing the floor, awaiting word on the mid-term election results. Finally, news arrived that Republican John Brough had defeated Vallandigham in Ohio by more than one hundred thousand votes. Lincoln was ecstatic and rushed off a telegram exclaiming, “Glory to God in the highest. Ohio has saved the Nation.”31 Copperhead candidates lost in every state but New Jersey. Vallandigham and the Copperheads were defeated but not beaten—they would be back. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis had a Canadian trick up his sleeve.
JACOB THOMPSON AND THE CANADA PLAN
For Jefferson Davis, the Johnson’s Island and Chesapeake incidents, along with Vallandigham and his Copperhead movement, offered sparks of opportunity amid the dark desperation of the spring of 1864. They led him to wonder if the Confederate presence in Canada and Canadian sympathies for the South could be used to establish a “second front” that could operate from Canadian cities and hurt the North—irritate it, distract it, and cost it time, energy and money.32 Perhaps agents could continue attempts that had already been made to gather Confederate soldiers who had escaped Northern prisons and were living in Canadian and Maritime cities, and bring them back to active duty. Confederate agents in Canada could encourage support from secret societies and Copperheads to make Lincoln a one-term president. They could help coordinate efforts to create a separate northwest republic that could negotiate an end to the war, with the Confederacy and slavery intact. They might even instigate a Union invasion of Canada, which could lead to an American-British war with all the benefits that happy event would accrue to the South.
Davis consulted broadly and earned cabinet and congressional support for the secret second front. The Confederate Congress approved five million dollars. If the Canada Plan were to work, a special man would need to lead it. Davis and Secretary of War James Sedden and Secretary of State Judah Benjamin agreed that Jacob Thompson fit the bill perfectly.33
Jacob Thompson was born in Leaside, North Carolina, on May 15, 1810. He was a smart, witty, ambitious and ruggedly handsome man who had graduated from the University of North Carolina, taught at the university for two years, and then earned a law degree. His brother was a doctor who moved west to exploit the excitement and opportunities of the opening frontier. Thompson joined his brother in Mississippi and established a thriving law practice. At twenty-eight, he married sixteen-year-old Catherine Jones, whose father was a wealthy plantation owner. With his savings and Catherine’s huge dowry, they built a large estate near Oxford, about seventy miles south of Memphis. It soon grew to three estates that together earned them a substantial annual income.
Thompson was always interested in politics and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1835 and then re-elected four times. In 1856 Thompson volunteered to put his ambitions for the Senate aside to allow fellow Mississippian Jefferson Davis to run. The two became friends as he helped Davis win his seat. In 1857, Thompson was plucked from private life to serve as President James Buchanan’s secretary of the interior. While working in Washington, he came to know Lincoln, Stanton, Seward and many of the others with whom he would later struggle. With Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Thompson became increasingly outspoken in his support of Southern causes, and two months later he resigned.
In 1863, Thompson was elected to the Mississippi legislature. He also served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, fought at Shiloh as one of General Beauregard’s dispatch riders and then served as inspector general for General Pemberton. In the summer of 1863, a Union regiment at Vicksburg was working just above the mouth of the Yazoo River when it was interrupted by a boatload of Confederates that floated into them beneath a white flag. Thompson was recognized and taken to a Union ship, and General Grant was summoned. Grant briefly interviewed Thompson, quite correctly concluded that he was a spy, but also that nothing of value had been learned. Grant ordered him and the others released.34
Thompson had maintained a regular and warm correspondence with Jefferson Davis, offering unsolicited advice on a number of matters. In late March 1864, Davis asked Thompson to meet him in Richmond. With Secretary of State Benjamin in attendance, Davis outlined the mission and its overall goals, but made it clear that specific tactics would be up to Thompson himself. Davis told him that University of Virginia law professor James Holcombe had been sent to Halifax in February to test the viability of the Canada Plan and to see if arrangements could be made to help Confederates wishing to return south. Upon his arrival, Holcombe had informed Monck of what he was up to, and affirmed that he would be careful to observe British neutrality.35 He got word to Confederates in the Maritimes, Toronto and Montreal, and arranged for several to get home before he returned to Richmond with the advice that Davis’s idea for the establishment of a larger Confederate presence in Canada was a good one.
Davis arranged for Thompson to have one million dollars in cash to use at his discretion. In an intentionally vague letter dated April 27, Davis wrote to him: “Confiding special trust in your zeal, discretion and patriotism, I hereby direct you to proceed at once to Canada; there to carry out the instruction you have received from me verbally, in such manner as shall seem most likely to conduce the furtherance of the interests of the Confederate States of America which have been entrusted to you.”36
With the understanding that Thompson would lead the mission, Davis appointed Holcombe and former Alabama senator Clement Clay as co-commissioners. Holcombe left first; Thompson and Clay departed on May 3. The two ran the Union blockade from Wilmington to Bermuda and then boarded a British ship for Halifax. Thompson and Clay stopped at the city’s Saverly House, where Southern sympathizers congregated with Confederate soldiers who had either deserted or escaped from Northern prisons. There were similarly well-known spots around the Maritimes, including Hesslein’s in Saint John and Fredericton’s Barker House. Young Southern patriots mixed openly with adventurers, opportunists, prostitutes and spies.
Spies had been a part of the conflict between the North and South from the day Fort Sumter’s cannon had announced the war’s arrival. Many were efficient and provided information that altered polices and battles, while others were bumblers who were easily fooled, offered information that could be gleaned from newspapers, or simply got in the way. Many were women. All were amateurs, for no professional intelligence agencies existed in North America. As the war progressed, more spies openly walked the streets of Richmond and Washington and, as demonstrated by the exploits of Sarah Emma Edmonds, passed through enemy lines with relative ease. Spies also plied their trade with varying degrees of success in London, Paris and Canadian cities and towns.
As early as June 1861, Lyons and the Duke of Newcastle had been firm with Governor General Head and Seward in stating that the use of “secret agents” in Canada was intolerable. Newcastle told Head that he should never meet with such people and that he should do all he could to find them and get rid of them.37 As the George Ashmun case revealed, Seward ignored the warning. That American spying continued was made evident on November 14, 1861, when Lyons wrote to recently appointed governor general Monck, warning that “a perfectly reliable source” had informed him that three parties were in Canada making drawings of fortifications and naval defences. The spies had visited Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City, and Monck was to find and deport them and all other spies he could find.38 However, Monck was as flummoxed as Head in his attempts to shut down the clandestine American activities.
Part of the spy operation involved a rapid increase in the number of American consuls in Canada and the Maritimes and their expanding mandates. Until the war, consuls had primarily handled trade issues and assisted American citizens while promoting emigration to America. In January 1862, Seward responded to a letter from Congress admitting that consuls had been ordered also to ferret out Confederate activities and report on sympathy for and assistan
ce to the South.39
Seward’s forthright admission of his government’s secret operations drew a predictable reaction. Monck had just approved new consular openings at Kingston and St. Catharines and held a list of requests for more at small border towns.40 Seward continued to request the establishment of even more consuls, arguing through Lyons that they were needed to stop smuggling. Lyons reported to London and Monck that he knew that Seward was not being truthful.41 New consuls were nonetheless opened.
It was in the midst of this intrigue, on May 30, 1864, that Thompson and his co-commissioner, Clay, arrived in Montreal. Thompson established headquarters at the St. Lawrence Hall—a large, ornate and well-appointed hotel that offered great service, tremendous meals and a discreet staff. It was so openly pro-Confederate that it bragged of having the only bar in the city that served mint juleps. Montreal’s Donegana Hotel was home to hundreds of other Confederates. Many nearby boarding houses also became acquainted with the warmth of Southern charm. Thompson opened a bank account at Montreal’s Bank of Ontario and left Clay there with $93,000 to organize operations. Clay had fallen ill on the trip north. His health and a sad yearning to be home with his wife was already limiting his effectiveness, so Holcombe remained in Montreal to help him while Thompson moved on to Toronto.
Thompson took a suite of rooms at Toronto’s Queen’s Hotel. The Queen’s was the city’s most luxurious hotel, boasting an elevator, a large dining room offering fine wines and cuisine, running water in all of its well-appointed rooms, and from its Front Street location a stunning view of the harbourfront.* By the spring of 1864, the Queen’s had become infamous as the centre of Confederate activity in Canada West. Thompson was welcomed by the hundred or so Confederates who had rooms at or near the grand hotel. He quickly learned to spot local officials and Union detectives and newly arrived Confederates, conspicuous with their leathery tans, worn clothes and distinctive accents.