Historicist: Confederates and Conspirators
When Jacob Thompson arrived in Toronto at the peak of the hostilities of the U.S. Civil War, in the early summer of 1864, the city was already a hotbed of espionage and counter-espionage. The prosperous lawyer and businessman from Oxford, Mississippi, had been a member of the United States Congress and Secretary of the Interior under President Buchanan. Now, he'd arrived in Toronto at the behest of Jefferson Davis , president of the Confederate States of America, on a well-funded mission to coordinate subversive activities against the North from the British North American colonies.
Thompson checked into the Queen's Hotel , the luxurious hotel located on Front Street overlooking the lake. The Queen's Hotel was—along with Toronto's American Hotel—one of the preeminent locales in British North America, Robin W. Winks writes in Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years 4th edition (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998), where "the Confederates established informal headquarters where they slept, drank, gathered to curse the North and to plot raids, and waited for someone with authority to show up to lead them."
With more than 100 Southerners renting out the entire hotel, residents included both aristocratic refugees and fugitive soldiers who'd escaped Northern prison camps. James D. Horan described the scene in Confederate Agent There was no mistaking the escaped Rebel prisoners. They hung around the lobby and bar of the Queen's, trying to appear respectable in torn gray coats and cracked jackboots or in castoff clothes they had robbed from some clothesline after climbing the board fences of Camps Chase, Morton, or Johnson's Island. They were gaunt, hollow-eyed men, with faces lined and tanned the color of old leather by the relentless sun which had scorched the treeless prison yards that rainless summer.
Southern agents operated freely and openly with little to no concern from local authorities who were governed by British North America's official policy of neutrality. Indeed, Southerners enjoyed the sympathy of most of Toronto's political, social, and business elite—although few were as enthusiastic in supporting the Confederate cause as George Taylor Denison III.
newspaper to keep the public focused on slavery as the cause of the American conflict, the majority of Canadian newspaper readers held anti-Northern sentiment. At one point in 1861, a uniformed Union soldier visiting Toronto was loudly jeered by passersby and was greeted, upon entering a saloon, by the musical accompaniment of "Dixie.St Albans Raid 1864 - News
A constant presence at the Queen's Hotel—always unkempt and disheveled—Sanders belligerently pestered his colleagues that robbing banks in Northern cities was an act of war. A raid along those lines, attacking St. Albans, Vermont, was eventually
The U.S. Civil War in October 1864 | Suite101.com
By October 1864, the tide of the war had decisively turned to the North. Federal troops ravaged the Shenandoah Valley, prompting outraged southerners to cry for revenge. As Federals under William T. Sherman occupied Atlanta, Confederates under John Bell Hood planned to disrupt Sherman’s supply lines. A famed Confederate commerce raider was captured in foreign waters, and Confederates desperately raided Missouri and even far-off Vermont.
The Georgia CampaignAs Sherman’s Federals continued securing Atlanta as a base for future military operations, Hood’s Confederates raided Sherman’s supply lines stretching all the way to Nashville, Tennessee. The forces clashed at Allatoona before Hood withdrew into northern Alabama, hopeful that Sherman would leave Atlanta and pursue him.
Meanwhile Confederates under General Nathan Bedford Forrest conducted numerous raids on Federal shipping on the Tennessee River in southern Tennessee and northern Mississippi. As Hood moved to unite with Forrest, Sherman dispatched a portion of his army under General George Thomas to stop them at Nashville.
Confederates Invade MissouriConfederate General Sterling Price led an invasion of Missouri in a desperate attempt to break the Federal occupation. As Price pushed toward St. Louis, he issued public pleas for citizens to join him and "redeem" the state. Confederates skirmished with Federals near Richwoods, Jefferson City and Sedalia. Soon Price was deep in Missouri.
However Price had not picked up the expected recruits and the skirmishing became heavier as Price became more isolated from friendly territory. As Federal commanders planned to trap the Confederates, Price frantically tried fighting his way out of the state. The forces clashed at Westport, near present-day Kansas City, in the largest battle ever fought in Missouri.
Price’s Confederates attacked two enveloping Federal forces simultaneously. After hard fighting, Price withdrew down the Missouri-Kansas state line with the Federals in pursuit. The Confederates were caught at Mine Creek and Newtonia, where they lost hundreds of prisoners and many wagon trains. Disputes among the Federal commanders allowed Price to escape into Arkansas, but the Confederate invasion was a failure and the army was virtually finished as an effective fighting force.
The Capture of C.S.S. Florida , was captured while anchored in Brazil. In her career, Florida had captured 36 prizes totaling over $4 million worth of shipping. She was captured by U.S.S. Wachusett, whose captain violated international law by seizing the ship in a foreign port without Brazilian permission.
St Albans Raid 1864 - Bookshelf
The St. Albans raid
WEDNESDAY, Dec 21, 1864, 2 p-nn Present i — Aldermen Sodden, ... by the judgment of the Judge of Sessions in the matter oi the St. Albans Raiders ? ...History of the United States from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the South in 1877
491 ; the St. Albans Raid, LN Benjamin, Montreal (1865), pp. 80, 292. Young was with Hines at Chicago in August. Hines, p. 572. * To Benjamin, Nov. 1, 1864 ...History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896: 1864-l866
491 ; the St. Albans Raid, LN Benjamin, Montreal (1866), pp. 80, 292. Young was with Hines at Chicago in August. Hines, p. 672. » To Benjamin, Nov. 1, 1864 ...General index to the published volumes of the Diplomatic correspondence and Foreign relations of the United States. 1861-1899
ST. ALBAN'S RAID (continued). '64, II, 760; Nov. 3, 1864. WH Seward. Replv to representations of October 29, 1864 (supra). '64, II, 762; Nov. 4, 1864. ...History of the St. Albans raid, Annual address before the Vermont Historical Society delivered at Montpelier, Vt., on Tuesday evening, October 17, 1876
Young was appointed on the 16th of June, 1864, by Jefferson Davis, ... for a raid upon accessible towns in Vermont, commencing with St. Albans, is approved, ...Day-after-day Posts Directory
St. Albans Raid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
St. Albans bank tellers being forced to pledge allegiance to the Confederacy ... The St. Albans Raid was the northernmost land action of the American Civil War, ...
Vermont History: The St. Albans Raid
Virtual Vermont History: The St. Albans Raid ... (October 19, 1864) Twenty-one cavalrymen, organized by Confederate agent George Sanders and led by Lieutenant Bennett Young, ...
1864 St. Albans Raid
1864 St. Albans Raid ... Seven of the rebel freebooters who invaded St. Albans have been caught, and fifty thousand dollars of the stolen money recovered. ...
Amazon.com: Saint Albans (Vt.) - History - Raid, 1864: Books
Amazon.com: Saint Albans (Vt.) - History - Raid, 1864: Books
Saint Albans Raid: Information from Answers.com
Saint Albans Raid (Oct. 19, 1864) Raid by Confederates in the American Civil War . About 25 Confederate soldiers based in Canada raided the Union town