Blood and Daring (39 page)

Another important witness was Louis Weichmann. He had been a regular at the Surratt house and a friend of John Surratt, Lewis Powell and Booth. He corroborated the testimony of others that the plot against Lincoln had begun with a meeting between John Surratt and Jefferson Davis in Richmond. According to Weichmann, Davis supported the plan to kidnap Lincoln, and he had Surratt take a dispatch with his authorization to Thompson in Montreal. Thompson then withdrew $184,000 from his Canadian bank account to finance the operation. This is where, according to Weichmann and a number of other witnesses, Booth had entered the picture.

Their testimony established that by late 1864, John Wilkes Booth was spending more time and energy on political matters than on the stage. Born in Baltimore, an ardent racist and a strong supporter of states’ rights and the Confederate cause, he had come to hate Lincoln and everything for which he stood. Through David Herold and John Surratt, Booth had ingratiated himself among Confederate spies with charm, boasts, manipulation and lies.

While many conflicting stories were told at the trial, investigators later established that in the second week of October Booth had indeed arrived in Montreal and taken a room at St. Lawrence Hall. He spoke with a number of Confederates, including notorious blockade runner Patrick C. Martin. On October 27, Booth and Martin visited the Bank of Ontario and exchanged $300 in gold coins for £60 gold sterling. After ten days in Montreal, dealing with spies, money and a mysterious trunk he claimed contained theatrical costumes but needed to be moved through Canada, Booth returned to the United States.

While these facts were noted at the trial, they were lost in the fog of witnesses embellishing or confusing them. Most conflated the plot to kidnap the president in March with plans to execute multiple assassinations in April. Some witnesses simply lied. Richard Montgomery and Sanford Conover, for instance, both claimed to have spoken with Thompson in Montreal after he had already left the city. On June 8, two weeks after
Conover’s testimony, the
Montreal Evening Telegraph
published an affidavit that was read into the trial record. A gentleman from Montreal argued that the man calling himself Sanford Conover was impersonating him.
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The accusation was true: the false Conover’s real name was established as Charles Durham. But his testimony was allowed to stand.

After the trial, it was proven that Judge Holt had arranged for Durham—as Conover—and other witnesses to tell the stories that he and Stanton wanted told. Money was paid to ensure that they stuck to the tales they had agreed to tell.
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A year later, Montgomery would appear before the House Judiciary Committee investigating the trial and the commission and admit that he had perjured himself.
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The committee also found that Durham/Conover had not only lied on the stand but had also instructed others to do the same, and paid them for their efforts. In November 1866, he would be arrested for committing perjury before the House committee, found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison.
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Never mentioned throughout the trial was that Confederate president Jefferson Davis had been captured on May 10, and that “Canadian Cabinet” member Clement Clay had surrendered the next day. Throughout the trial, both languished in horrid conditions at Virginia’s Fort Monroe, and Stanton and Holt elected to leave them—and the truth—behind bars.

At the time, of course, the trial’s findings were all that mattered, and its conclusions were unequivocal. Special judge advocate John Bingham said it best in his summation: “Surely no word further need be spoken to show that John Wilkes Booth was in this conspiracy; that John Surratt was in this conspiracy; and that Jefferson Davis and his several agents named, in Canada, were in this conspiracy.”
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On June 29, the long trail of witnesses finally came to an end. The commission had decided beforehand that only a majority was needed to convict and only two-thirds to sentence death. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt and David Herold were to be hanged. Sam Arnold and Mike O’Laughlen, childhood friends of Booth’s, and Dr. Samuel Mudd were sentenced to hard labour for life, and Edman Spangler
for six years. President Johnson signed off and then stopped an attempt to appeal Surratt’s sentence. On an overcast July 7 afternoon, a large crowd gathered in the courtyard outside the makeshift courtroom to witness the multiple hanging, and America’s first hanging of a woman. The spectators fell silent as the four prisoners were led past rough-hewn coffins that lay beside the red brick wall, and then up the stairs of the newly constructed gallows. At 1:26, soldiers pushed supports away and a trap door opened. With gasps from the crowd, the convicted conspirators dropped six feet to their deaths.

Few mourned their fate or questioned the commission’s conclusions. An article in July’s
Atlantic Magazine
summarized the consensus opinion:

The quick arrests, trial, executions and incarcerations could have allowed President Johnson to move the United States a step away from the horrors and costs of war and assassination. Rather than healing Southern, British and Canadian wounds, however, the controversial process and wild accusations poured salt onto them. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis and Clement Clay waited in Fort Monroe, and Johnson faced the problem Lincoln had wanted to avoid—what to do with them. At the same time, a great number of Confederate officers were fleeing north to Canada, becoming Attorney General Macdonald’s problem. But diplomacy would soon be
the least of his worries: thousands of Civil War veterans were preparing to right an injustice and promote a cause by using their newly acquired military skills to attack Canada.

On the day that the Lincoln conspirators fell to their deaths, Macdonald arrived home from London. He was welcomed by darkening economic, political and military storms. Confederation was key to responding to all three and yet, despite the gathering consensus that change was essential, the project enjoyed no momentum. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island had gone cold on the idea and Nova Scotia was rife with anti-Confederation talk led by the revitalized Joseph Howe. An anti-Confederation government held power in New Brunswick.

Then Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché died. With the death of Canada’s premier and titular leader in July 1865, Monck called on Cartier, Brown and Macdonald in turn and all three considered the top job. All had done it before and all wanted it again, but they knew if one of them became the premier, then the great coalition would be shattered. With their consent, Sir Narcisse Belleau, a non-entity from the Legislative Council, was appointed. The coalition was saved and Macdonald continued as Canada West’s attorney general, returning to his portfolio as minister of the militia while acting, and still openly recognized, as the government’s real leader.

Macdonald had controlled his drinking while in London, but upon his return home he fell off the wagon. Parliament resumed, but Macdonald was seldom in attendance. Despite reports of his being ill, Macdonald’s peers and the public knew what was meant when it was whispered that John A. was “off again.” But this time he was not off for long. Threats from America soon had him back on his feet and at his post. The new threats were galvanized by a group of angry Irish-Americans called the Fenians.

The origins of the Fenian movement date back to 1541, when Henry VIII went to Dublin to declare himself “King of Ireland, Annexed and Under the Realm of England.” Generations that followed saw England’s
attempts to render Henry’s proclamation a fact matched by the struggles of Irish nationalists to make it history. By the 1840s, Ireland was a land of tears. A blight destroyed potato crops, visiting famine on an already impoverished people. Political anger and economic desperation were wed in the Young Ireland Movement, leading to the 1848 Rebellion. It was ruthlessly crushed by British soldiers and an even harsher British rule. Hungry for freedom or simply hungry, over a million people fled the troubled isle, most for the United States and Canada.

By the outset of the Civil War, close to 1.6 million Irish had moved to the United States. About a million had come to Canada and the Maritimes, many to Halifax, but most to Toronto, Montreal and the eastern townships south of the city. Their sheer numbers were the source of significant economic and political power, and their contributions to the building of both societies was inestimable. As many Canadian and American Irish climbed ladders of success and influence, however, negative ethnic and religious stereotypes were reflected in nativist distrust and blatant discrimination. Irish newspapers, clubs and organizations teemed with resentment and a romantic yearning for a home that many had never even seen. One of those organizations was the Fenian Brotherhood.

The Fenians’ goal was simple—the end of British rule in Ireland. It was formed as a wing of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood in 1858 by Irish-American New Yorker and veteran of the ’48 Rebellion John O’Mahoney. He had adopted the name from an ancient and brave Irish militia—the Fenia. He sought to raise awareness, money and armed men.

Three years later, thousands of Irish-Americans and -Canadians enlisted in the Union army and fought bravely in the Civil War, many in specifically Irish units. In November 1863, Irish soldiers were given leave to attend a national Fenian Convention in Chicago.
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They held a second convention in Cincinnati in January 1864. Governance, fundraising and recruitment were formalized, and local groups called “circles” sprang up in every city and town with a significant Irish population.

The Canadian branch of the Fenians, called the Hibernians, was established in Montreal by Michael Murphy and W.B. Linehan.
Membership in Canadian circles grew with every anti-Irish taunt and bout of violence that accompanied annual St. Patrick’s Day parades. Hibernians were motivated by the growing power of their American compatriots. Their publication, the
Irish Canadian
, echoed many of the American groups’ goals. Young men were encouraged to take up arms to defend themselves against Irish-Catholic–hating Orangemen and to prepare for the ultimate struggle to liberate Ireland.

Hibernian leaders saw the movement toward Confederation as dangerous, for it would weld forever what they considered the undesirable link between Canada and Britain. They spoke against it and encouraged Irish throughout Canada and the Maritimes to vote for candidates pledged to oppose it.
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In November 1864, it became Hibernian policy and the editorial stance of the
Irish Canadian
, that Canada should be annexed to the United States.
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The growing militancy alarmed a number of Canadians. The
Globe
noted, “It is certain we have in our midst an armed secret organization … there can be no moral doubt these Hibernians identify with the Fenians in the neighbouring United States.”
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Many Hibernians, in fact, began referring to themselves as Fenians.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee was a pugnacious man who, at the beginning of the Civil War, was a member of the legislature for one of Montreal’s predominantly Irish ridings and a cabinet minister. While serving as a legislator, he also found time to lecture across British North America, publish poetry, write a book detailing the history of Ireland and earn a law degree. He had been part of the 1848 Rebellion, but while working at newspapers in New York and Boston he had rejected the ideas of his youth. McGee’s active and influential life, and his impassioned political stance, resulted in his becoming loved by many Irish-Canadians, who were proud of one of their own doing so well. He was also hated by many others, and certainly by the Hibernians, who saw him as a traitor to their cause. McGee faced many threats to his life and he seldom spoke in public without worrying that each appearance might be his last.
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McGee and Macdonald were good friends who saw eye to eye on Irish nationalism and the danger posed by Fenians in the United States
and Hibernians in Canada. In the fall of 1864, McGee warned of increased Fenian activities on both sides of the border, and cabinet approved the hiring of more spies to infiltrate Canadian and American circles.
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The new spies reported to Gilbert McMicken, head of the Western Frontier Constabulary Force. While Canadian spies were already tied into Hibernian networks, the new spies were soon in attendance at American Fenian meetings and informal gatherings.

The career of Henri Le Caron demonstrated the degree to which Canadian spies had successfully infiltrated Fenian ranks in America. Born Thomas Beach in England, he became so enthralled by the romanticism of the Civil War that at the age of nineteen he changed his name and sailed to New York, where he enlisted in the 8th Pennsylvania Reserves. He fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chickamauga. He ended the war as a first lieutenant and settled in Nashville. He had fought in units with a number of young Irish men and knew of the Fenians and their goals. He was shocked when, after the war, he was told by a friend he had met in the service, the prominent Fenian leader John O’Neill, of plans to attack Canada.
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Le Caron’s English patriotism stirred and he wrote to his father, who wrote to Lord Cardwell—and he soon became one of Macdonald’s spies.