A Stillness at Appomattox (142 page)

Grant
was
the
man
who
fought
all-out,
with
few
holds barred
and
with
the
annihilation
of
the
opposing
armies
as the
end
to
be
sought.
Yet
Grant
was
quite
able
to
see
that although
the
war
must
be
won
on
the
battlefields
it
might very
easily
be
lost
back
home—in
Chicago,
for
example. The
same
thought
had
occurred
to
many
others,
including Jefferson
Davis,
and
as
a
result
a
number
of
Confederate
spies and
military
agents
were
converging
on
Chicago
just
now
in the
hope
that
they
could
stir
up
a
great
deal
of
trouble.

The
immediate
magnet
was
the
national
convention
of
the Democratic
party,
convening
on
August
29
to
nominate
a candidate
to
run
against
Lincoln.
Broadly
speaking,
this convention
was
bringing
together
practically
everybody
who disliked
the
way
the
war
was
being
run,
with
the
single
exception
of
the
dissident
Republicans
who
felt
that
Lincoln was
not
tough
enough.
Among
the
assembling
Democrats were
stout
Unionists
who
opposed
the
forcible
abolition
of slavery
and
the
reduction
of
states'
rights;
among
them,
also, were
others
who
wanted
only
to
have
the
war
end—with a
Union
victory
if
possible,
without
it
if
necessary.
And
there were
also
men
who
saw
the
war
consuming
precious
freedoms and
creating
tyranny,
who
blended
extreme
political
partisanship
with
blind
fury
against
the
war
party
and
who
at
least believed
that
they
were
ready
to
strike
back
without
caring much
what
weapon
they
used.

So
the
waters
in
Chicago
were
very
muddy,
and
to
the Confederate
government
it
seemed
likely
that
they
might
offer
good
fishing.

For
many
months
the
Confederacy
had
been
getting
ready to
exploit
just
this
kind
of
situation.
It
had
assembled
a
large number
of
operatives
in
Toronto
under
the
general
leadership
of
Colonel
Jacob
Thompson,
who
bore
the
vague
title of
Special
Commissioner
of
the
Confederate
States
Government
in
Canada
and
who
possessed
a
letter
from
Jefferson Davis
guardedly
instructing
him
"to
carry
out
the
instructions you
have
received
from
me
verbally
in
such
manner
as
shall seem
most
likely
to
conduce
to
the
furtherance
of
the
interests
of
the
Confederate
States
of
America."
Thompson's people
were
trying
to
do
a
little
bit
of
everything.
Early
in the
summer
they
had
put
out
peace
feelers,
briefly
hoodwinking
none
other
than
Horace
Greeley
himself,
and
although
nothing
much
came
of
this
venture
the
apparatus
was hard
at
work
on
many
other
projects,
most
of
them
involving some
form
of
sabotage
in
the
Northern
states.

Thompson
had
a
wild,
devil-may-care
crowd
at
his
command.
One
of
the
most
effective
was
a
slim,
black-haired, almost
effeminate-looking
Kentuckian
named
Thomas
H. Hines,
formerly
a
captain
in
John
Hunt
Morgan's
cavalry— the
man,
in
fact,
who
had
engineered
Morgan's
spectacular and
still
mysterious
escape
from
the
Ohio
penitentiary
a
year earlier.
Hines
was
very
tough
indeed,
and
he
had
been
sent to
Canada
from
Richmond
immediately
after
the
Dahlgren raid,
his
mission
being
to
round
up
all
escaped
Confederate prisoners
of
war
who
could
find
their
way
north
of
the
border and
to
carry
out
with
them
"any
fair
and
appropriate
enterprises
of
war
against
our
enemies"
that
might
occur
to
him.

The
ideas
these
men
had
ranged
all
the
way
from
stirring up
draft
riots
in
the
Middle
West
to
the
burning
of
Northern cities,
the
capture
of
Northern
prison
camps,
and
the
seizure of
U.S.S.
Michigan,
the
Navy's
warship
which
patrolled
the
Great
Lakes.
To
a
certain
extent
their
program
was
frankly terroristic,
and
the
papers
which
supposedly
had
been
found on
Colonel
Dahlgren's
body
calling
for
the
burning
and sacking
of
Richmond
were
often
mentioned
as
full
justification
for
such
a
program.
³

Colonel
Thompson
was
an
experienced
politician
well
fitted for
his
shadowy
role,
and
in
Captain
Hines
he
had
as
cool and
capable
a
behind-the-lines
operator
as
any
fifth
columnist could
wish
to
have.
Yet
the
results
which
these
men
obtained, from
first
to
last,
add
up
to
nothing
much
more
than
a
series of
petty
annoyances.
Many
of
their
operatives
seem
to
have looked
on
the
whole
program
as
a
glorified
Tom
Sawyer lark,
with
the
sheer
fun
of
conspiring
and
risking
their
necks offering
a
welcome
outlet
for
restless
spirits
bored
by
the routine
of
ordinary
army
life.
The
whole
operation
was
so
ef
fectively
watched
by
Union
spies
that
it
had
little
chance
to accomplish
anything
very
sensational.