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Abstract Confederate Operations in Canada During the Civil War This Thesis Investigates an 1864 Confederate Campaign Which Origi

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Abstract Confederate Operations in Canada During the Civil War This Thesis Investigates an 1864 Confederate Campaign Which Origi Abstract Confederate Operations In Canada During The Civil War This thesis investigates an 1864 Confederate campaign which originated in the neutral territory of the British provinces. Organizing the operations were Jacob Thompson of Mississippi and Clement C. Clay Jr. of Alabama, two prominent Confederates whose opposing attitudes towards war gave the Canadian campaign its complexity. The Confederate efforts were made possible by the vast discontent in the United states ., w~tt\, the war. Employing this discontent Thompson organized Confederate soldiers who had escaped from Northern prisons and, forming a coalition with anti-war anti-Lincoln forces in the United states, he attempted to disrupt the Northern war effort. Clay, on the other hand, disapproved of this policy of escalating the war. Clay was tired of bloodshed and his energy was directed primarily toward peace negotiations. Although both men failed to achieve their major objectives, the campaign exemplifies the desperate yet strategic maneuvers of the Confederacy during the last year of its struggle. McGi11 UniverSity, Department of History, August, 1968. George H. Whyte. CONFEDERATE OPERATIONS IN CANADA DURING THE CIVIL WAR by George H. Whyte, B.A A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the require­ ments for the degree of Master of Arts. Department of History McGill University August, 1968 Montreal (c) George H. \fuyte 1969 Preface Confederate operations from Canada during the Civil War have long been neglected by historians. American scholars have devoted most of their attention to the vast array of war incidents in the United States, while their Canadian colleagues have concentrated on the political history of Confederation. The 1864 raid on St. A1bans, Vermont, is perhaps the only operation of the Confederacy's Canadian campaign that has been thoroughly analysed. In the much neglected field of Canadian-American re­ 1ations, Robin Winks provided one of the few worthy studies of the era with his Canada and the United States; The Civil 1 War Years. But, although he mentioned the Confederate Com­ missioners who came to the provinces in 1864, he was primarily concerned with showing how their efforts affected relations between the two countries, and how the disjointed provinces eventually drew together to compensate for the economic and military superiority of their southern neighbour. Most other secondary accounts dealing with the Confederates in Canada are uncritical narratives by popular writers and writers of historical fiction, attracted by the mystery and intrigue of 1. R.W. Winks, Canada and the United States; The Civil War Years (Baltimore, 1960), hereafter referred to as Winks, The Civil War Years. i ii secret service work. Finally, several of the Confederate operations have been the subjects of monographs, but usually only for their significance in local history.2 The Confederate operations from Canada cannot be fully explained, however, unless they are carefully examined as an integrated campaign. By adopting this approach I hope to explain why, in 1864, the Confederacy decided to use the British provinces as a base for operations; the nature of the campaign and the aims of the men who directed it; and its consequences for the Confederacy, the Union, and Canada. The sources for such a study present particular problems. Contemporary accounts of the campaign must be used with great caution, since most were written by retired soldiers who had served under Jacob Thompson, one of the two Confederates in charge of the campaign. Between him and his fellow commissioner, Clement Clay Jr., there was a deep antagonism which has escaped the notice of subsequent historians. The result has been an uncritical acceptance of the version created by Thompsonfs followers, all of whom wrote long after the war, and usually to vindicate their own actions. Many of the primary sources are also of doubtful re­ liability because they concern secret service work. Harrassed by the effective Northern intelligence service, the Confederates 2. Such monographs include O.A. Kinchen, Daredevils of the Confederacy; The Story of the st. Albans Raiders (Boston, 1959) and C.E. Frohman, Rebels on Lake Erie (Ohio, 1965). iii often employed special methods to avoid detection: codes and pseudonyms, and sometimes misleading Ifdecoyll letters which were channeled into the hands of Union officials. When messages were carried by a trusted courier, the crucial items were often communicated verbally. III reached Toronto safely,lI wrote one such runner, "and after a week started back with my coat sleeves full of closely written white silk and my head 3 full of more important matters committed to memory." To add to the researcher's difficulties, letters were often burned soon after they were received, or else the most important parts were torn out. Clement Clay and James Holcombe, the two Confederates who differed with Jacob Thompson, were ship­ wrecked while returning south, and both lost valuable papers which might have helped them in vindicating their position, and the historian in understanding the campaign. Perhaps my only advantage over the Northern Secret Service of the 1860's is that I had access to more material in piecing together the story. Even so, it is sometimes impossible to tell which letters have false information woven into an otherwise truth­ ful account. In many cases the accounts written by ex-Con­ federates in later years provide the only clues. An account of the Confederate campaign in Canada must, 3. S.B. Davis, Escape of a Confederate Officer from Prison, what he saw at Andersonville, how he was sentenced to death and saved by the interposition of President Abraham Lincoln (Norfolk, Virginia, 1892), p. 45. iv therefore, be presented as an hypothesis, subject to correction and revision. I have attempted to give the available fragments of information a plausible interpretation. In the hope of presenting an intelligible narrative of an elusive and complex campaign, I have refrained from conjecture only when there was little or no justification for stating what might have happened. v Reference Abbreviations C.A. - Confederate Archives, Montgomery, Alabama. Duke - Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. L.C. - Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. McGill - McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. N.A. - National Archives, Washington, D.C. N.Y.P.L. - New York Public Library, New York, New York. P.A.C. - Public Archives of Canada, ottawa, Ontario. U. Ken. - University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Table of Contents Preface ·... i Reference Abbreviations ·... v Table of Contents vi Introduction ·... 1 Chapter One ·... 18 Chapter Two ·... 40 Chapter Three ·... 53 Chapter Four ·... 69 Chapter Five 97 Chapter Six ·... 117 Chapter Seven ·... 132 Chapter Eight 147 Chapter Nine ·... 164 Epilogue ·... 177 Bibliography ·... 186 ~ vi Introduction This thesis is not merely a chronicle of a Confederate campaign, but also an analysis of the men and ideas that motivated its execution. The 'gentleman's struggle, I in which one group desired independence and the other hoped to maintain a sacred union, had disappeared by 1863. The North had not only challenged the South's right ·to secede, but had also attacked the whole social structure upon which the South had developed. With the emancipation of the slaves the South's economic and social foundation had been undermined and the Confederacy was beginning to lose strength rapidly. The situ­ ation gave birth to two new ideological positions, both in the North and in the South. One group believed that w~rtothe bttterend was the only way that a victor could be declared. As the savagery of such a policy became apparent, however, another large sector of the population was drawn closer to the other extreme, the view that peace and reconciliation would be the only way to restore the nation without the com­ plete annihilation of one side or the other. A survey of the events of 1864 and 1865 shows that final victory for the North was brought about by a complete adherence to the policy of total war. General Ulysses S. Grant pushed the 'Army of the Potomac' to an extent undreamed 1 2 of in 1861. Scoffing at the idea that he was taking great risks, Grant submitted his men to repeated marches and skir­ mishes to repel General Robert E. Lee's northern thrust and begin the Richmond campaign. General William T. Sherman's march to the sea bore more resemblance to the devastation of Carthage than to the gentleman's war of three years earlier. No longer did civilians come out to picnic by the battlefield as they had at the first battle of Bull Run; the war was 'brought to the people. Sherman burned Atlanta with merciless precision while General Phillip Sheridan followed the same tactics in the once peaceful farming country of the Shenandoah Valley. Yet such a policy did not appeal to all Northerners and a peace faction grew rapidly. The recruits who had enlisted so eagerly in 1861 had long ago grown tired of army life. The road to honor and glory was too stained with the blood of com­ i/t\p.I YI"1\ rades, and a policy·",' increased brutality made many see a peaceful solution as the best one. In the North, men such as I Clement L. Vallandigham, George McClellen, and Horace Greeley 4 led a political assault on Lincoln. Although the North showed a clearer division of opinion, 4. 3 the South too had developed a cleavage in its attitude towards the war. It too had both peace advocates and men who would stop at little to achieve final victory. This basic division is no better illustrated than in the Confederate campaign from Canada. Jacob Thompson of Mississippi and Clement C. Clay Jr. of Alabama were the two men chosen to direct the Canadian campaign.
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