Devil's Game: The Civil War Intrigues of Charles A. Dunham - Hardcover

Cumming, Carman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252028902 ISBN 13: 9780252028908

Verlag: University of Illinois Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

The first book-length study of one of the Civil War's most outlandish and mysterious characters, Devil's Game traces the amazing career of Charles A. Dunham, double agent. Dunham was a spy, forger, "reptile journalist," and master of dirty tricks. Writing under different names for different newspapers, including New York's Tribune, Herald, and World, he routinely faked stories to promote the North's war aims, sometimes writing contradictory stories for rival papers. Dunham also used his journalism to create new identities and sometimes stepped into them, playing (with the help of his wife, Ophelia) at least a half-dozen such roles.
Dunham achieved his greatest infamy at the war's end. Called to testify in Washington, he was the most notorious of the witnesses who swore that Lincoln's assassination had been plotted by conspirators in Montreal and Toronto, on orders from Richmond. That testimony (later discredited but never officially challenged) helped lead to the execution of several alleged associates of John Wilkes Booth.
Dunham's postwar intrigues were almost as complex, as he continued to collect fake "evidence" of Southern war crimes. Finally convicted of perjury in these schemes, he worked in prison to produce evidence implicating President Andrew Johnson in the assassination, then reversed himself and sold out his associates to the President.
Until now many parts of Dunham's wartime (and postwar) career have remained shadowy. Carman Cumming sheds new light on numerous escapades, including Dunham's effort to sell Lincoln on plans for a raid to capture Jefferson Davis and a complex effort in Canada to plan - and then betray - cross-border raids.
Exhaustively researched, Devil's Game is a portrait of a consummate chameleon. Drawing together previous Dunham scholarship, Cumming offers the first detailed tour of Dunham's convoluted, high-stakes, international deceits. A carefully crafted assessment of Dunham's motives, personality, and the complex effects of his schemes make Devil's Game an important and original work that will change some basic assumptions about the secret operations of the Civil War.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Carman Cumming worked as a reporter and editor in Canada and the United States before becoming a journalism professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. His publications include Secret Craft: The Journalism of Edward Farrer and Sketches from a Young Country: The Images of Grip Magazine.

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Devil's Game

The Civil War Intrigues of Charles A. DunhamBy CARMAN CUMMING

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-02890-8

Contents

Preface.............................................xiAcknowledgments.....................................xv1. Chameleon........................................12. "Cheats and Forgeries"...........................203. Castle Thunder...................................354. Reptile Journalist...............................565. Southern Life....................................816. Fire in the Rear.................................957. A Message from Richmond..........................1238. "Private Business"...............................1459. School for Perjury...............................16010. Plots "Shrewd and Devilish".....................18111. Scorpions in a Bottle...........................19912. Impeachment.....................................21313. "Protean Maneuvers".............................23814. Letters from Albany.............................247Notes...............................................263Bibliography........................................291Index...............................................297

Chapter One

Chameleon

James Watson Wallace, Virginian officer recovering from war wounds, surfaced quietly in a remote corner of Canada East (Quebec) in the fall of 1864, at a time when the Civil War far to the south was coming to its bloody climax. At a time when Grant was squeezing in on Richmond, when Sheridan was scouring out the Shenandoah Valley, when Sherman was planning his savage march from Atlanta to the sea. At a time when Confederate leaders in Richmond were turning to desperate measures, among them a late effort to get at their enemies along the exposed northern frontier.

His entrance on stage could not have been more prosaic. Riding in a farmer's buggy, he showed up on November 1 in the border town of Lacolle and stepped down at the Ennis Hotel. Witnesses then and later would describe him closely, seeing him as impressively handsome, courteous, and educated, fitting the part of a convalescent Confederate officer. His clothes were well cut but worn, his bearing erect and military, his face clean-shaven and smooth. One witness spoke of an "open and frank countenance." A later profile would describe him as "tall, well-proportioned, with dark hair and dark eyes." He looked younger than his thirty-two years, and he sometimes took off a few when he had to give his age.

In the hotel saloon, Wallace struck up a conversation with a couple of pleasant Canadians and was soon spinning tales of how he had commanded the Fourth Florida Regiment under Jubal Early, in the army that had menaced Washington in midsummer. From there the talk turned to the recent fuss on the border, raised when a score of Confederates raided banks in the Vermont town of St. Albans, killing one man before escaping across the Canadian line with gold and greenbacks stuffed in their saddlebags. Wallace said he knew many of the fourteen raiders now in jail in Montreal. He was heading that way himself and was sure he could prove the men were legitimate Confederate soldiers acting under orders, who therefore should not be extradited to face a Union gallows.

At this point, his new friends told him apologetically that they were in fact plainclothes police, hunting for more raiders, and that he should consider himself under arrest. Was he carrying any weapons? He was, Wallace confirmed, taking a "six-barrel Colt's revolver" from under his coat and handing it over. The officers invited him to a private room for a more thorough search.

"He made no resistance," a short item in the Montreal Daily Witness reported, "but complimented his captors on the rather considerate and gentlemanly manner his arrest had been effected. He was brought into town by the latest train last evening, and this morning was brought up in Police Court. He now denies, we understand, what he is stated to have said to the policemen. The prisoner is a young and fine-looking man and the next step will be to see whether he can be identified."

The next step was never taken. At a court appearance next day before Judge Charles J. Coursol (whose name would soon be execrated on both sides of the border), no witnesses showed up to identify him, and he was released. But his arrest on the frontier, along with his revolver and his claim of a Confederate background, all worked in his favor. For an entrée into Montreal's Confederate community, nothing could have been more helpful than a whispered connection with St. Albans.

* * *

Montreal at this time had a curious relationship to the Civil War. In easy contact with both sides by train or ship (at least in the sailing season), the city watched the fighting in nervous detachment while sheltering a rare mix of spies, counterspies, refugees, detectives, arms buyers, and saboteurs. In the Confederate set, all who could afford it stayed at St. Lawrence Hall. In the sumptuous dining room, one could sometimes see the chief Confederate commissioner, Col. Jacob (Jake) Thompson, hard-faced Mississippi planter and former U.S. interior secretary, or his less intimidating co-commissioner, Clement C. Clay Jr., an ailing, indecisive aristocrat who had been a senator from Alabama in both the Union and Confederate Congresses. Thompson worked mainly from Toronto, while Clay preferred the Niagara border district of Canada West (Ontario), where he patronized the spas and vineyards, entertained Northern guests, and indiscreetly wrote passionate poetry for a certain Northern lady. In their absence, lesser figures vied for status. Among them was James Holcombe, a Virginia law professor who had preceded Thompson and Clay as Confederate commissioner and seemed loath to go home—perhaps because he, like Clay, had a local love interest. Much more noticeable was George N. Sanders, the bumptious and erratic political manipulator who had built, from Kentucky to New York to England, a reputation as a troublemaker. One of Sanders's sons, Lewis, was also active among Montreal Confederates. (Another had died recently in a Northern prison camp.)

While these people were among the more active rebels, they were not necessarily the top tier of Montreal's Southern elite. The more eminent men included retired general William Henry Carroll of Tennessee, former governor James D. Westcott of the Florida territory, Dr. Montrose Pallen of Mississippi, Judge Beverley Tucker of Virginia, and banker John Porterfield of Tennessee. Dr. Luke Blackburn, distinguished plague-fighting doctor from Kentucky and later the governor of that state, was an occasional visitor. At the time of Wallace's arrival, the local elite were discussing (not always with approval) the news that Blackburn was back from Cuba and the Bahamas, bringing clothing soaked with fluids from yellow-fever victims, and that he was shipping these to Union camps in hopes of infecting Northern soldiers. Judge Tucker meanwhile was said to be making high-level, and official, efforts to interest the enemy in massive trades of cotton for bacon. Pallen was also a subject of gossip: he had set up an office and a watching post across from the U.S. consulate (to the fury of the consular staff) and was said to be harboring a wounded St. Albans raider. General Carroll as well would soon be of interest. While sailing toward the South, he would be captured off North Carolina, imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, and quickly released for return to Montreal. These leading...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Illinois Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0252028902
• ISBN 13: 9780252028908
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 328
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar