Blood and Daring (29 page)

As the preliminary hearing ground along at a glacial pace, Thompson carried on with exploits that he had been planning for weeks. His actions turned the already complex and volatile situation volcanic.

By October 1864, General Grant’s relentless assault on the South was visiting unprecedented horror upon cities, soldiers and civilians. Petersburg saw combatants dug into the mud of zigzag-shaped trenches, where they lived and fought—and many died. Cities and crops were burned. Homeless refugees wandered wide-eyed and hungry. It was total war.

The
Richmond Whig
saw the war for what it had become and called for revenge upon the civilians and cities of the North. Its October 15 editorial, printed just days before the St. Albans raid, urged:

Thompson had been planning for just such an attack. In his Toronto hotel suite, he met with three selected conspirators: Captain Thomas Hines, Colonel Robert Martin and Captain John Headley, to discuss how it could happen. They agreed that spectacular events in major Northern cities could galvanize support for the Sons of Liberty and their drive to end the war to the Confederacy’s advantage. They decided that the day of the presidential election, November 8, would be perfect to demonstrate the secret society’s power and resolve. Thompson arranged for Hines and men named Walsh and Morris to organize an attack on Chicago. The city was a natural choice, as there were already many Canadian-Confederate connections there and it was designated as the capital of the Copperheads’ new republic. They developed a plan whereby Confederates would be sprung from Camp Douglas and other Illinois prisons. Fires would be set and bombs exploded in various predetermined locations, and Chicago’s military officials would be captured or killed. With an army of 25,000 recently sprung Confederate prisoners, the state would be taken.
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Thompson believed that New York City was also ripe for attack. The city’s mayor, after all, had made a number of rabid and popular anti-war, anti-Lincoln speeches, and then the draft riots had shown popular support for those sentiments. Thompson appointed John Headley and men named McMaster, Horton and Wood to lead the assault on New York. They were convinced that twenty thousand Confederates, its Sons of Liberty members and vast numbers of others would celebrate their liberation from Lincoln and the war, and support the attack while welcoming the Canadian-based Confederates as heroes.
⁹⁸

When news of Thompson’s plans leaked out, the Chicago operation fizzled. On November 2, Seward telegraphed military commanders and told them of the Confederate raiders coming from Canada.
⁹⁹
On November 9, Chicago’s Colonel Benjamin Sweet and Brigadier General John Cook, commanding the District of Illinois, organized a dragnet that scooped up all of Thompson’s conspirators and other assorted ne’er-do-wells. The ever-resourceful Hines escaped by hiding inside a box-spring mattress upon which lay a woman friend, feigning illness.
¹⁰⁰

On October 30, eight Confederates from Toronto arrived in New York. They travelled in pairs to avoid detection and checked into a number of lower Manhattan hotels. With letters of introduction from Thompson, they met several times with New York Copperheads. Through the force of his personality and power of his contacts, James McMaster, who was the owner and editor of the
New York Freeman’s Appeal
, became the group’s chief spokesman. McMaster claimed to have met with New York’s Governor Seymour, who supported what was about to happen and promised not to send troops to stop it.
¹⁰¹
After New York was taken, McMaster insisted, Seymour would help bring the governors of New Jersey and other New England states together, secede from the United States, and form another republic akin to the Northwest republic. Emboldened by such support and grand ideas, the group made its final preparations.

As with the Chicago plot, the plans were leaked. On November 7, Major General Benjamin Butler, who had taken effective but brutal control of New Orleans after its capture by Union forces, moved five thousand troops into New York. The
New York Times
, reporting on Confederate activities in the city, applauded Butler’s arrival: “The wisdom of the Government in selecting the man who had scattered the howling rabble of New Orleans like chaff, and reduced that city to order most serene, approved itself to the conscience of every patriot and made Copperheads squirm and writhe in torture.”
¹⁰²

Obviously betrayed, the conspirators postponed their attack. Lincoln’s re-election on November 8 further deflated their élan. Contact was made with Thompson in Toronto, who encouraged the group to ignore the collapse of the greater plan and carry on.
¹⁰³
They hid and waited.

With the quiet that followed the election, Butler’s troops were withdrawn. Their departure excited the patient conspirators. Their numbers had been dwindling, but those who remained were the most passionate about their cause. They devised a new reason for the old plan. They would set fire to the city just to scare the people of the North and to let Lincoln know that there would be repercussions for burning Southern property.
¹⁰⁴
Headley purchased bottles of Greek fire from a chemist next
to Washington Square. On November 25, the group set out with ten bottles each. They checked into various hotels and waited. At 8:00 p.m., they emptied some of the bottles, lit their matches, and then moved to other pre-arranged hotels and theatres to set more fires.

Bells echoed down Broadway as nineteen hotels and several theatres simultaneously burst into flames. There were panicked screams as people dashed from burning buildings. Many jumped from first- and second-storey windows, while others scrambled down ladders. Thompson’s Confederates joined the crowds and enjoyed the chaos. The Winter Gardens was among the theatres evacuated. The audience had gathered at the opulent theatre to raise funds for the erection of a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park and to attend a performance of
Julius Caesar
featuring three of America’s most talented and respected actors: Junius Booth, his son Edwin, and the star of the family, John Wilkes Booth.

It quickly became apparent that much of the Greek fire was ineffective and many of the fires had been improperly set. Many snuffed themselves out, while others were quickly handled by alert fire brigades. Within hours, all of the hotel and theatre fires were extinguished. Despite the alarm and terror, no one was seriously hurt.

The conspirators ate a leisurely breakfast the next morning at a Broadway and 12th restaurant and read about their exploits in the morning papers. Some enjoyed an afternoon in Central Park, but when they returned downtown it was discovered that some of their co-conspirators had been arrested. The afternoon edition of the
New York Times
reported that a couple of weeks earlier, a man from Canada had told authorities in Washington about the plots to burn American cities and asked for one hundred thousand dollars in return for information regarding the perpetrators. He had named names.
¹⁰⁵
Headley and his group took a train north that evening and the next day reported to Thompson in Toronto.

It was discovered that Godfrey Hyams of Arkansas was the man who had betrayed the New York mission. He was also implicated in the selling out of other operations. Hyams had been living at the Queen’s Hotel for some time and Hines had warned Thompson about him, but
Thompson liked and trusted him. Hyams left the hotel that day, but stayed in Toronto.

A few days later, Thompson met a woman called Katie McDonald. She had travelled from New York to ask him for money to support the trials of men arrested for having abetted those who tried to burn the city, among whom was her brother, the editor of New York’s
Day Book
. Thompson agreed to consider her request, but was then told that New York detectives had arrived in Toronto, apparently having followed McDonald. Thompson advised the men who had been to New York to go into hiding.

Meanwhile, Lord Lyons had again fallen ill. He had fainted in his office on November 6, and the next day had temporarily passed his duties on to his secretary and sometime acting minister, Joseph Burnley. Five months later, Lyons was replaced by Sir Frederick Bruce, the younger brother of former Canadian governor general Lord Elgin. Bruce had served as lieutenant-governor of Newfoundland as well as in South America, Egypt and China.

Lyons’s last official meeting before returning to England was with Seward. The two had worked together for three years and both had grown to be nuanced and effective diplomats. In his final message to Seward, Lyons assured him that Monck was doing a good job in dealing with Thompson and that he needed to be patient with the Canadian efforts. Despite this assurance, Lyons had just written to Russell stating that more needed to be done to stop Thompson and his men, because the pressures being put on the American government to respond were becoming impossible to resist.
¹⁰⁶
After a month spent trying to recover in his darkened room, Lyons finally rallied sufficient strength to travel and on December 12 he left America for the last time. He would be missed.

Thompson was still not done. In late October 1864, he had persuaded his Canadian friend Lt. Col. George Denison to front the purchase of the steamer
Georgian
from Kentucky’s Dr. James Bates for eighteen thousand dollars. Captain John Beall, who had commandeered the
Philo Parsons,
returned from hiding to organize its crew. The ship was to be taken to Port Colborne on Lake Erie’s north shore, only twenty miles from Buffalo. It would be armed and outfitted, and then used to free the Johnson’s Island prisoners, some of whom would provide crew for more ships. The
Georgian
would form the core of a ghost navy working from Canadian ports and prowling the Great Lakes. It would bomb American cities and bring terror to the North.
¹⁰⁷
Final plans were made in Toronto and then the conspirators left for Port Colborne to await Beall and the
Georgian
.

As happened with so many of Thompson’s plots, an informer surrendered the plan. With telegrams already flying regarding the fallout of the St. Albans raid and the New York attacks, Monck, Seward and Burnley learned of this latest threat.
¹⁰⁸
Seward telegraphed General Dix, who wrote to Secretary of War Stanton for help. Stanton and Seward consulted with Lincoln, and General Grant was asked to take troops from his forces to augment border defences. Grant noted in a wry telegraph to Dix that all the troops he believed were needed had been sent. He added, “It seems to me that you and General Butler ought to be able to take care of Jake Thompson and his gang.”
¹⁰⁹
Dix did what he could with what he had, and alerted governors and military leaders. Buffalo’s harbour was reinforced, and guns were affixed to more tugboats. The next Sunday, news flooded Detroit that Confederates were on their way across the river from Canada on the
Georgian
. Church bells sprang people from their pews and men to the docks to defend their city—but the rumour of attack had no substance.

Monck had the
Georgian
examined but no weapons or anything untoward were found. Bates claimed he was working for a lumber company and refitting the ship to haul wood. Days later, the
Georgian
left port, moving northward past Detroit and into Lake Huron, tracked carefully throughout its journey by American ships. It eventually moored at Collingwood, far from the American border on the south shore of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. Seward sent Monck a message asking him to continue to pay special attention to the
Georgian
, as a number of American mayors along the lakes, especially at Buffalo, remained concerned that their cities would soon be bombarded.
¹¹⁰

Thompson’s plan, meanwhile, proceeded. The
Georgian
was to be outfitted with armaments from Guelph. He did not know that local authorities in the town had been growing suspicious of activity in the foundry of Adam Robertson and Son, which for some time had been casting solid shells and grape shot. They had their suspicions too about a man named Bennett Burley, or Burleigh (earlier a participant in the
Michigan
plot), who was living with the Robertsons and was often seen leaving town with wagonloads of foundry products. Their concerns landed on Monck’s desk at the same time as the governor general learned about the
Georgian
. Monck investigated and discovered that the Guelph factory had been selling armaments to the South for some time and that it was preparing to supply the
Georgian
with a cannon and ammunition.
¹¹¹
Monck had the
Georgian
put under twenty-four-hour surveillance and John A. Macdonald began an investigation into the Guelph foundry and Lt. Colonel Denison.
¹¹²

Meanwhile, a cannon that had been boxed in a Robertson and Son crate and sent to a man named Duncan Smitten was seized in Sarnia. With it were two heavy barrels, improbably marked “Potatoes.” On November 19, more ammunition in transit from the Roberston foundry was seized at Spanish River. A keen-eyed officer recognized Burley and arrested him. The ammunition runner was charged with murder for the part he had played in the seizure of the
Island Queen
in the
Michigan
incident the previous September.
¹¹³
Attorney General John A. Macdonald approved the arrest and ordered the interception of all other Robertson shipments.