The Confederate Secret Service’s Secret Plot to Overthrow Lincoln—and Start a Revolution

And we returned to our American Stories. The story of April 14th, 1865 often plays out like this. John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices solely planned and then attempted to decapitate the U.S. government following the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in a desperate attempt to save the Confederacy. The real story is more complicated than that, though. To understand what happened earlier, we need to understand what happened later in American history. You are to tell the story is the best-selling author of The Unvanquished, Patrick K. O’Donnell. Let’s get into the story. We interrupt this broadcast to bring to this important bulletin from the United Press. His country is at war with Germany.

She’ll never horrendu. In the summer of 1940, the Axis powers are really on a roll, steamrolling the planet, and their shadow warfare capabilities, specifically with special operations forces, are incredibly effective. The United States doesn’t have a large standing army. It’s tiny, and it has no special operations forces or intelligence organization. And it’s the special operations component that while Bill Donovan, in particular, focuses in on. He knows that having some sort of a commando-type group that can act on intelligence that’s gathered from spies is an important part of the shadow warfare. He kind of pioneers a combined arms of shadow warfare where they look at it in its totality: its intelligence collecting, its propaganda, but it’s also operatives—special forces as we know today—that were a very big focus. And what we find in American history is, we develop things and then we lose them. It’s almost like a sign curve. And the United States has a very rich history at special operations going back all the way to the 1680s and Benjamin Church and forces that would range and attack Native Americans because they had to fight in an irregular manner. But in 1941, there were no special operations forces. So Donovan had to look back at something, and he looked back at our first modern war, the American Civil War, and he specifically looked back at three groups born in this cauldron where, through the compression of war, they had to find unique ways to fight back, and they fought back irregularly through special operations. One was Mosby’s Rangers of the 43rd, which is in Virginia. And these are men that were mounted on horses that attacked Union wagon trains and captured bridges, and, you know, most importantly, they tied down through their regular warfare tens of thousands of Union soldiers because they were constantly harassing the supply lines and causing trouble. It’s John Singleton Mosby who develops much of modern irregular warfare, and there needed to be a force to counteract that, and that is the Jesse Scouts. They are the first counterinsurgency unit in the United States Army. They go after partisans like Mosby; they also lead the federal armies. They could get out front, and they could gather intelligence on the endity they find the weak points. They’d communicate messages between the lines. They also went after high-value targets. They went after the South’s most dangerous men. They wear the uniform of their enemy. They wear Confederate uniforms, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do because if you’re caught, you’re considered a spine. Can be executed immediately, and many of these men would die. And that leads to the third group, the Confederate Secret Service. They were very good at developing spy gadgets such as time bombs, to developing underwater torpedoes, to developing land mines. But they were also the masters of propaganda, one thing after another that we see in today’s modern world. And it’s no wonder that Donovan pens a letter to President Roosevelt that says that we need to go back to our older ways—our traditions of the Scouts, Rangers, and the Secret Service—which is filled with lessons learned that the OSS, eventually in 1942, when it’s rebranded from the Coordinator of Information to the OSS, utilizes these tactics and techniques, and we see them today in the U.S. Army Green Berets and later in the CIA as well. Confederate Secret Service is this very nebulous organization that’s opaque, and it’s deliberately so. It consists of men and women that were in different departments. They had an area that was devoted to spies, for instance, and they had a department that was geared towards gadgets. This is the torpedo department. It was run mainly by the Rains Brothers. They were called the Bomb Brothers because they specialized in blowing things up. One Rains brother built the Augusta Arsenal, one of the few public works projects that the Confederacy undertook. It’s a massive gunpowder works, and it was really a modern miracle. The Confederate armies were pretty well supplied even at the end of the war. And the other brother was involved in the Confederate Secret Service building gadgets can I like the Ques Laboratory, and he built everything from time bombs that were small like, for instance, this is not a time bomb per se, but he built a small lump of coal that was hollowed out, and within the cavity they placed gunpowder. And this little harmless piece of coal would then be given to operatives, and they’d go up to a steamboat, and they would just pitch it near the boiler room where the rest of the coal was, and nobody would know any better. And, you know, one of the boiler tenders would shovel that lump of coal in with another shovelful of real coal, and before he nail at the boiler, and the entire steam bloat blew up, and, you know, hundreds of lives would be lost. They also had a diplomatic section that worked with foreign powers to influence them to change the course of the war. And in the spring of 1864, Jefferson Davis sent several men on a steamship to run the blockade from South Carolina through the Atlantic up to Canada. They were carrying certific gets worth several million dollars in gold, and they make their way to the Saint Lawrence Hotel in Montreal, and let me sort of set the stage here. This place is fascinating. The Saint Lawrence is one of the best hotels in the area. It’s opulent, but it serves mint juleps year-round to cater to the Confederates that are either expatriots, Confederate prisoners of war that somehow escaped from the North, to men like these guys. They set up a node or a branch of the Confederate Secret Service in Canada because it’s a neutral area, but also as Canada is also somewhat friendly to the Confederacy because it’s in their interest. Britain and France loves the idea of a divided United States because it’s easier to control and contain. And these guys set up shop there, and their main job is to influence anybody that’ll take the side of the Confederacy because they see that the North has a massive superiority in numbers. But if they can change things diplomatically, either getting France or England on the side of the Confederacy or changing things internally through the Democrat Party, influencing the election of 1864 that would be favorable to the South. That’s what they’re there for, and they’re very effective. There’s a number of men that are there. One is a guy by the name of Clay, who’s a former senator from the South. He’s on the dollar bill of Confederate Southern Confederacy. And then there’s George Sanders, who’s kind of my favorite character. They call him peranical, like almost like a pirate, overweight, that he’s always kind of puffing on cigars. He’s surrounded by beautiful women. He’s got this ability to influence people, but he’s also obsessed with something called the Theory of the Dagger, and that involves executing tyrants or despots. He spends much of his time in the 1850s in Europe, and it’s here that they advocate for tyrannicide or killing leaders that are so-called tyrannical. And he’s also a big-time operative within the Democratic Party. And at the time there is a rising movement within the Democrat Party called the Copperhead Movement. And this movement is a peace movement. And it’s George Sanders that is the link for the Confederate Secret Service with the Democratic Party, and that involves the Governor of New York, many others, but the main character is an Ohio congressman who has disgraced named Clement Laird Ballambia.

And when we return, more of the story of the Confederate Secret Service here on our American Stories. And we returned to our American Stories and the story of the Confederate Secret Service. Telling the story is Patrick K. O’Donnell, author of The Unvanquished. When we last left off, Patrick was telling us about the Confederate Secret Service’s attempts to disrupt the election of 1864. The man who would facilitate that attempt the most: a disgraced former senator named Clement Laird Valandium. Let’s get back to the story. You’ll also be hearing Kate Clifford.

Larsen Valandium is from Ohio, holds a massive rally that draws over 10,000 people. It’s an anti-war rally, and says things that are pro-Confederate and he’s eventually he’s exiled by Abraham Lincoln to first the South, and then he’s leaves voluntarily in gost to Canada. And Clement Laird Valandium is an asset of the Confederate Secret Service in every way. They do some extraordinary things. They craft the campaign platform for 1864 for the Democrat Party, which is a campaign platform of peace. It’s an armiscist, and it’s couch in the sense that it would be some sort of negotiation. But the Confederacy knows that once you start a ceasefire, that guns aren’t firing anytime soon. They never will. It’s a masterstroke. It also means preserving slavery, which they have a euphemism for everything, which is like, you know, “existing law must be preserved.” And it is the campaign platform that’s written by the Secret Service, and then it’s brought to Chicago. Clement Laird Valandium sneaks back into the United States under an assumed alias, and he’s at the convention in Chicago with all these other Copperheads, and they pass their campaign platform, and they also elect George McClellan as their candidate, but their vice president is a hardcore copd and Valandium’s right-hand man. And then what’s fascinating is the Secretary of War will be Clement Laird Valandium. So nobody in their right mind could ever imagine them prosecuting the war like Lincoln did. Let me just sort of go back a little bit in time, though, to March 1864. It’s in March 1864 where there’s a raid that takes place led by a guy by the name of Dahlgren, who has a, you know, he baddly lost his leg. He has a wooden leg. His father is the name the Dahlgren gun comes from him, and he is a gung-ho cavalry leader that convinces another guy, Judson Kilpatrick, that he wants to be part of a raid. This raid, though, is special. It’s a decapitation mission to go after the South. Specifically, their goal is to burn Richmond to the ground and exit cute the Confederate Cabinet, including Jefferson Davis, and they make it through multiple areas of the defense of Richmond, but ultimately they’re denied access of, you know, they had to cross a river and there’s supposed to be a ford there, but it turned out that their guide, who was African American, just didn’t anticipate the tide of the river changing because of the winter, and they’re trapped, and it’s eventually the Home Guard, in a mix of other troops that killed Dahlgren and many of the men that are in this specialized rate. Within his wooden leg were orders from the Secretary of War to do this decapitation mission that killed Jefferson Davis and burn Richmond. This has a… they get the orders, and it’s like, Oh my God, the war is now. Suddenly, it’s the black flag was raised, and they’re going all out now that the North had done that or tried to, but the South felt that they had to respond in kind. And this is where the operations to decapitate the North really originating. The origins of the Color Revolution can be tied to 1864 and something called the Northwest Conspiracy. The Confederate Secret Service’s plans to launch an insurrection. The Confederate Secret Service had kind of two plans or two faces of their plan. One was violent, and the other one was more of a use of the current political machinery. The violence side, though, they planned to have hundreds of thousands of men part of the Copperhead Movement rise up. Color Revolution is a modern term that we use for many of the insurrections that have occurred, you know, in the last 20 years, where a color is involved, like the Orange Revolution. There was a Color Revolution in Ukraine, for instance. And what you see on the surface is the population overthrowing whatever the established government is. But there is a hidden hand behind it in every case that is actually fomenting the population, funding it directly, influencing or specific key components of the current regime, whatever it is. And that’s what was going on. They were planning a massive insurrection. They also had a decapitation plan where they were going after the friendly Union governors of these states. It’s supposed to take place in Chicago 1864 at the time of the convention. In fact, it’s the Sons of Liberty, which are the main group under Valandium, the shadowy group within the Copperhead Movement that provides security at the convention but also is potentially going to work with the Confederate Secret Service, and Confederate Secret Service was sending them arms. About 40 operatives come down from Canada, and they also plan for a massive prison break, one of the P.O.W. camps, Camp Douglas, which would have tied down tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands potentially of Union troops and had succeeded, the plan is neutralized because the Copperheads are absolutely convinced that they will win the election. They back down. It fizzles, and the special operation that we now talk about that’s really profound: After the election is lost, they’re looking at a way to somehow kidnap Abraham Lincoln. The plan is really hatched in Montreal at the Saint Lawrence Hotel, at Sanders and Company and others. And, oh, by the way, John Wilkes Booth visits the hotel now.

John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors in America at the time. He was born into an acting family. His father was a famous actor. He grew up in Maryland. He had strong Southern sympathies. So he hatched this idea, and I don’t know where it came from.

The excuse is that he’s going up there for extra costumes. It’s preposterous. I think what makes this so interesting is the story that we were all told is that Booth had, you know, his kind of gang of guys. They get together down in Washington, D.C., and they decide to hatch this plan. And the reality is, it’s hundreds of people; it’s well-financed, and it’s financed by the Confederate Secret Service. It is, and Booth is a braggart. I mean, inside of the Saint Lawrence Hotel in the lower area there’s a billiards room, and you can kind of picture the smoke-filled room and the mint jewelop’s going around, and he’s in there sort of makes these references that we’re going to change the world, and it’s quite fascinating. But it’s here that he gets a lot of his planning for this operation, and he’s also given some key operatives that are also coming up to the hotel. John Sarat, for instance, is one of them. John is a youthful twenty-something that is one of their best operatives. And he comes and goes from the Saint Lawrence and goes on different missions, and he’s often accompanied by a woman by the name of, the name her, “the French Woman,” because she knows she speaks French. Typically where is a veil a fascinating story. Her husband is a Confederate soldier that’s always that war never comes home, and Jesus had enough of it and volunteers their services to become a spy booth. Then moves back to New York City by rail, meets other operatives there, which the place is teeming with them, and then comes back to Washington, D.C.

And thus was hatched the plot to kidnap Lincoln. By the way, there’s been many attempts to assassinate Lincoln, including on his journey from Springfield to Washington, D.C., way back when he first took office. We told a terrific story about that journey on the show. When we come back, more of the story of the Confederate Secret Service here on our American Stories, and we returned to our American Stories and the final portion of our story on the Confederate Secret Service and the secret plot to kidnap, as you’ll hear now, and kill Abraham Lincoln. Let’s return to the.

Story. The Confederate secret as a very elaborate plan to kidnap the president. They realize the best thing that they can do is to somehow seize him somewhere and by carriage, bring him across to Maryland and into the eastern portion of Maryland, which is all Southern.

Thirteen Confederate states in the South, separate from the Union. Maryland stays in the Union part of it by strong arming on the part of the Lincoln administration, but there was an appetite in Maryland to not be part of this sectional crisis.

They have an entire line of a rat line, if you will, of messengers and couriers and even doctors that will be utilized to secretly move the team through Maryland and then to a boat and then ultimately to the Northern Neck. And it’s here at the Northern Neck that they needed a security component.

The United States Army has posted soldiers throughout southern Maryland because as they knew that so many of those Southern Marylanders were communicating with and aiding and abetting the Confederacy across the Potomac.

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