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Cornell University Library 1993.ANTIQUE BRONZE AND MARBLE BUST OF NERO.
Presented to the Buffalo Historical Society by Andrew Langdon,
President. See Page 497.PUBLICATIONS
OF THE
BUFFALO
Historical Society
VOLUME IX
EDITED BY
FRANK H„ SEVERANCE
SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY
BUFFALO, NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE
BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1906s

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^BuffaloOFFICERS OF THE
BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1906
President........................ANDREW LANGDON
Vice-President .	..............HENRY W. HILL
Secretary.................... FRANK H. SEVERANCE
Treasurer........................CHARLES J. NORTH
[Mr. North resigned May 3, 1906, the Secretary being elected
Treasurer for the remainder of Mr. North’s term.]
BOARD OF MANAGERS.
Lewis J. Bennett,,
Albert H. Briggs, M. D.
Robert W. Day,
Joseph P. Dudley,
Charles W. Goodyear,
Henry W. Hill,
Henry R. Howland,
Andrew Langdon,
J. N. Larned,
Ogden P. Letchworth,
J. J. McWilliams,
George B. Mathews,
Charles J. North,
Peter A. Porter,
G. Barrett Rich,
Henry A. Richmond,
Frank H. Severance,
George Alfred Stringer,
James Sweeney,
Charles R. Wilson.
The Mayor of Buffalo, the Corporation Counsel, the Comptroller,
Superintendent of Education, President of the Board of Park Com-
missioners, and President of the Common Council, are also ex-officio
members of the Board of Managers of the Buffalo Historical Society.LIST OF THE
PRESIDENTS GF THE SOCIETY
FROM ITS ORGANIZATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.
*Millard Fillmore,..............................1862 to 1867
*Henry W. Rogers,.....................................1868
*Rev. Albert T. Chester, D. D.,.......................1869
*Orsamus H. Marshall,.................................1870
*Hon. Nathan K. Hall,.................................1871
*William H. Greene,...................................1872
*Orlando Allen, ......................................1873
^Oliver G. Steele,....................................1874
*Hon. James Sheldon,.........................1875 and 1886
^William C. Bryant,................................. .	1876
*Capt. E. P. Dorr,................................... 1877
Hon. William P. Letch worth,........................1878
William. H. H. Newman,.....................1879 and 1885
*Hon. Elias S. Hawley,................................1880
*Hon. James M. Smith,.................................1881
*William Hodge,.......................................1882
^William Dana Fobes,.........................1883 and 1884
*Emmor Haines,........................................1887
*	James Tillinghast,.................................1888
^William K. Allen,....................................1889
*George S. Hazard,...........................1890 and 1892
^Joseph C. Greene, M. D.,.............................1891
*	Julius H. Dawes,...................................1893
Andrew Langdon,............................1894 to 1906
* Deceased.PREFACE
THE present volume, like its predecessors, is a histori-
cal miscellany relating chiefly to the region of Buf-
falo, the Niagara Frontier and the Lower Lakes.
Although in a sense “local history,” very little herein con-
tained is merely local. Most of the papers will be found
of distinct value as contributions to the historical literature
of several critical periods in the one broad Story of America.
Several of the papers were prepared expressly for this
volume, notably the history of “The Johnson’s Island Plot,”
by Mr. Frederick J. Shepard; the paper on “Millard Fill-
more and his part in the Opening of Japan,” by William
Elliot Griffis, D. D.; and the sketch of Louis Le Couteulx,
by Miss Martha J. F. Murray.
Mr. Shepard’s paper on “The Johnson’s Island Plot” is
ran ideal monograph on a subject which is worthy the care-
ful attention the author has given it. It may be here noted
that since this paper was put in type, there has appeared a
I)ook by John W. Headley of Louisville, Ky. (“Confederate
Operations in Canada and New York.” N. Y. and Wash-
ington: Neale Publishing Co., 1906), which gives (pp. 301-
307) a somewhat detailed account of the attempted train-
wrecking exploit near Buffalo. Col. Headley supplies the
names of ten persons as participants—his own being one—
and in some other respects varies from the story of this
affair as told by Anderson on Beall’s trial. But Headley’sVI
PREFACE.
chief contribution to the Johnson’s Island story is his con-
viction that the person who betrayed the plot to the Federal
authorities was one Godfrey J. Hyams of Little Rock, Ark.
The study of “Millard Fillmore and) his part in the
Opening of Japan,” by Dr. Griffis was originally given as
an address before the members of the Buffalo Historical
Society. All who heard the distinguished author on that
occasion, or who may read his paper in this volume, will
be pleased to learn that the interest in the subject which was
awakened by the writing of this sketch has led Dr. Griffis
to enter upon the preparation of a comprehensive life of
Millard Fillmore, a work which, singularly enough, has not
heretofore been done. The existing biographies were pub-
lished during his lifetime and were of the nature of cam-
paign documents. The one which is perhaps best known,
by W. L. Bar re of Kentucky, appeared in 1856, eighteen
years before Mr. Fillmore’s death and when he was before
the public as a candidate for the Presidency. That biogra-
phies so prepared are inadequate to the demands of the
thoughtful student of American history, is obvious.
Dr. Griffis will be grateful for any documents or per-
sonal reminiscences, especially by those who were inti-
mate with Mr. Fillmore in the latter years of his life in
Buffalo, which may enable him to make a true presentation
of Mr. Fillmore’s character and the part which he bore in
the affairs of his time. Dr. Griffis may be addressed at
Ithaca, N. Y., or in the care of the Buffalo Historical
Society.
The editor of this volume had planned to supplement
the paper by Dr. Griffis with certain reminiscences of Mr.
Fillmore by his old friends and neighbors in Buffalo, and by
a collection of his writings. As this material was broughtPREFACE.
Vll
together it grew to such proportions that it was found
impossible to include it in the present volume. A succeeding
volume of this series will therefore be largely—perhaps
wholly—devoted to the writings of Mr. Fillmore and to
related matter deemed of permanent historical value. His
messages and other executive documents are now collected
in print and easy of access. It is not proposed to reprint
these; but to gather up from many sources his letters, per-
sonal and public, his speeches on great issues, and sundry
miscellaneous writings never yet brought together. Such
a work is indeed an obligation on the part of the Buffalo
Historical Society, of which Millard Fillmore was a founder
and its first president. It is hoped the volume may be ready
early in the coming year.
One matter of peculiar local interest, touched on by Dr.
Griffis, is the destruction of Mr. Fillmore's papers by the
executors of his son's estate. The facts in the case, it is
believed, are stated in a note on page 65. However much
one may regret the loss of such rich material for the right
reading of history, yet the present editor cannot endorse
Dr. Griffis' phrase (p. 77) that it was a “wanton" destruc-
tion. The attorney, faithful in the discharge of a legal obli-
gation, had no honorable alternative, however much he may
have regretted the loss which bis act entailed.
Miss Murray's pleasant paper on Louis Le Couteulx,
and the accompanying documents, bring out for the first time
in local annals, a picturesque and worthy character. It is a
painstaking and sympathetic study, and only the lack of
material touching certain periods of Mr. Le Couteulx's
career, keeps it from being—what in all other respects it
already is—a definitive picture of one of the most attractive
figures in the early history of Buffalo. Special acknowledg-Vlll
PREFACE.
ment is herewith made, on the part of the author, of assist-
ance rendered by Mr. John McManus of Buffalo, especially
for the use of correspondence relating to Mr. Le Couteulx’s
captivity; also for assistance given by the Rev. John J.
Dillon, pastor of St. Mary’s church, Albany ; Mr. P. H.
McQuade and Miss Helen F. Moran of the Public School
Department, Albany; and the Rev. Charles Duffy, assistant
pastor, Immaculate Conception church, Buffalo.
Probably nothing in this volume will prove more wel-
come to many readers in Buffalo than the collection of pio-
neer reminiscences by Mrs. Jonathan Sidway, Mrs. Martha
St. John Skinner, Mrs. Benjamin Bidwell, William Hodge
and others who bore a part in the strenuous days of Buffalo’s
infancy. These papers were written many years ago and
deposited with the Buffalo Historical Society. At that time
the society was not able to undertake their publication; but
the wise forethought which saw to it that these papers were
penned before it was too late, now enables us to help fill in
the printed record of Buffalo’s early days, especially of the
crucial years of the War of 1812.
The editor feels that a word of explanation is due for
the use of so much of his own writing in these pages. When
the work of publishing this volume was entered upon, he
was promised for use therein, what he believed would be a
most valuable and elaborate contribution to the historical
narratives of this region ; only to learn, after waiting some
months for the manuscript, that he was not to have it. That
there should not be undue delay in issuing this volume, he
turned to his own manuscripts to fill the gap. Perhaps the
chief claim of “The Story of Joncaire” to attention is, that
it is based wholly on documentary sources, treats of a period
which heretofore has received but little attention from writ-PREFACE.
IX
ers, and sets forth for the first time numerous data of import-
ance in the history of the region. Since these chapters were
printed, the author has learned of the letter written by the
first Baron de Longueuil, April 28, 1726, appointing his son
Charles Le Moyne (then a captain, afterwards second Baron
de Longueuil) to be the first commandant of Fort Niagara
—the focal point of all our regional history under the
French. It directs him to repair to Niagara with a detach-
ment of troops, to superintend the construction of the fort;
and calls upon the officers and soldiers of the detachment,
and especially upon Lieutenant the Sieur de Joncaire, and
upon all travelers passing through the Niagara, to acknowl-
edge his authority. As this first commission of the first
commandant of Fort Niagara is a document of some conse-
quence in our local annals, it may be given here as matter
of record:
“Charles Le Moyne, Baron de Longueuil, Chevalier de
St. Louis, gouverneur de Montreal, et commandant general
pour le roy en toute la Nouvelle-France.
“It est ordonne au Sieur de Longueuil, capt. des troupes
destinees pour Niagara, de se rendre avec le plus de dili-
gence qu’il pourra au poste de Niagara, avec le detachement
que nous lui avons donne, afin d’y executer les ordres dont
nous l’avons charges pour le service de Sa Majeste.
“Enjoignons aux officiers et soldats du susdit detache-
ment et au Sieur de Joncaire, lieutenant des troupes, que
nous avons fait partir pour se rendre des premiers a Niag-
ara, de reconnaitre le dit Sieur de Longueuil pour com-
mandant et de lui obeir en tout ce qu’il leur commandera
pour le service du Roy; ordonnons pareillement aux voy-
ageurs qui passeront a Niagara, tant en montant qu’en de-
scendant, de luy obeir en tout ce qu’il pourra leur command-
der pour le service de Sa Majeste.	Longueuil/'
“Fait a Montreal, le vingt-huit Avril 1726.”X
PREFACE.
The series of Publications of the Buffalo Historical Soci-
ety now includes nine volumes. The first two are out of
print; the others can be supplied by the Society. A list of
them, with their principal contents, will be found in Appen-
dix B of this volume.	F. H. S.CONTENTS
PAGE.
Officers of the Society............................. iii
List of Presidents of the Society................... iv
Preface.................................................  y
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT . Frederick J. Shepard i
I.	The Scene of Action...................... i
II.	Treatment of the Prisoners............... 12
III.	Captain Beall's Conspiracy.................... 20
IV.	Burley, the Adventurer........................ 27
V.	The Welcome awaiting Them..................... 33
VI.	The Doom of Beall............................  41
VII.	Burley's Extradition........................  44
MILLARD FILLMORE AND HIS PART IN THE OPEN-
ING OF JAPAN ..................Wm. Elliot Griffis, D. D. 53
THE STORY OF JONCAIRE .... Frank H. Severance 81
Introduction......................................  83
I. From the Rhone to the Niagara............. 85
II.	JONCAIRE AMONG THE SENECAS—A ROYAL MISSION 94
III.	JONCAIRE WINS ENGLISH ENMITY . ........... IO7
IV.	The House by the Niagara Rapids........... 115
V.	The British covet the Niagara Trade.......... 129Xll
CONTENTS.
Page.
VI.	Visitors at Magazin Royal—The Huguenot Spy
of the Niagara......................... 131
VII.	Governor Burnet gets interested......... 139
VIII.	The Building of Fort Niagara............. 146
IX.	The Men who achieved the Work............ 158
X.	Political aspect of the Strife on the Niagara 168
XI.	Fort Niagara and the Fur Trade........... 181
XII.	Annals of the Wilderness................ 193
XIII.	Joncaire among the Shawanese—His Death at
Niagara.................................. 208
THE TALE OF CAPTIVES AT FORT NIAGARA ....
Frank H. Severance 221
PAPERS RELATING TO THE BURNING OF BUFFALO
AND TO THE NIAGARA FRONTIER PRIOR TO
AND DURING THE WAR OF 1812....................... 309
I. The Burning of Buffalo . Mrs. Jonathan Sidway 311
II. Story of the St. John House..............
Mrs. Martha St. John Skinner 337
III.	A Buffalo Boy of 1813.......William Hodge 349
IV.	In the Midst of Alarms, Mrs. Benjamin Bidwell 357
V. British General Orders, relating to the Burn-
ing of Buffalo................................. 360
VI. A Pioneer Patriot............Daniel Brayman 361
VII. A Guardsman of Buffalo, Hezekiah A. Salisbury 367
VIII.	The Affair of June 4, 1813 .... James Aigin 371
IX. A Rifleman of Queenston . . . Jared Willson 373
X. Recollections of a Pioneer Printer........
Eber D. Howe 377CONTENTS.
xiii
Page.
“THE CHARLES LAMB OF BUFFALO”—MEMOIR OF
GUY H. SALISBURY...............David Gray 407
MEMOIR OF LOUIS STEPHEN LE COUTEULX DE
CAUMONT..............Miss Martha J. F. Murray 431
Letters of Louis Le Couteulx which caused his capture 454
Letters of Louis Le Couteulx to Joseph Ellicott and others 462
Letters of Paul Busti to Joseph Ellicott.. 482
APPENDIX A.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY:
Forty-fourth Annual Meeting.......................... 485
President's Address.................................. 485
Election of Officers................................. 488
The Secretary's Report............................... 489
Announcement: A Forthcoming Volume....................... 496
The Frontispiece •....................................... 497
APPENDIX B.
Buffalo Historical Society Membership............... 499
Buffalo Historical Society Publications............. 5°7
Index.............................................   513
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.
Antique Bust of Nero............................... . Frontispiece
Map, western end of Lake Erie................. Page	3
Confederate prison, Johnson's Island .....	”	5
The De Lery Arms..............................Faces page 154XIV
CONTENTS.
Page.
Portrait: Margaret St. John...................Faces page 311
The St. John House............................ Page 331
Floor plans of St. John house................. ”	332
Portrait: Martha St. John Skinner.............Faces page 337
Homestead of Erastus Granger.................. Page 346
Portrait : Louis Stephen Le Couteulx de Caumcnt Faces	page	433
Tablet, St. Mary's church, Albany............ ”	”	4A2
Pencil portrait, Louis Le Couteulx, by Mme. Al-
phonse Le Couteulx...............................  ”	”	444
Facsimile letter: Louis Le Couteulx to Joseph
Ellicott •............................... ”	”	446
The Le Couteulx Arms . . . ...................... ”	”	44^
The Le Couteulx grave, Pine Hill, Buffalo	.	.	”	”	45°
Old stone at Le Couteulx graves.............. ”	”	452
Lincoln memorial tablet, Buffalo Historical So-
» a
CIETY BUILDING
485THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT1
AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF THE CONSPIRACY OF THE
CONFEDERATES, IN 1864, TO CAPTURE THE U. S.
STEAMSHIP MICHIGAN ON LAKE ERIE, AND
RELEASE THE PRISONERS OF WAR
IN SANDUSKY BAY.
BY FREDERICK J. SHEPARD.
I. The Scene of Action.
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1864, was a day of excitement at
Buffalo. That morning Provost Marshal William F. Rogers
received the following dispatch from the Commandant of the
depot for prisoners of war near Sandusky, O.:
Johnson's Island, Sept. 20.
Provost Marshal and Military Commander:
Rebels from Canada captured the steamers Parsons and Island
Queen near the Bass Islands yesterday afternoon and have gone
down or across the lake, disappearing from the Islands between 10
and 11 o’clock last night, probably gone for reinforcements, guns,
1. The main printed authorities for this article are the “Official Records of
the Union and Confederate Armies,” which will be referred to as O. R., the
“Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies” being designated as
O. R. (N), and the “Memoir of John Yates Beall,” which includes his diary
and the official account of his trial. The latter was published separately by
Appleton in 1865 and is summarized in O. R., ser. 2, v. 8, pp. 279-82, 398-400.2
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
and ammunition. The capturing party numbered about thirty, with
abundance of revolvers and bowie knives; no other arms were
noticed. At Middle Bass Island the captors took wood enough to
last two days. Warn all vessels and steamers and send all important
information here. We have one of the principal conspirators in
arrest.	Chas. W. Hill,
Colonel Commanding.
During the afternoon a similar dispatch was received by
Mayor William G. Fargo from Col. Lathrop, inspector-gen-
eral on the staff of Gen. Heintzleman, commanding the
Northern Department, at Columbus, O., with this additional
statement: “It is presumed that it was the intention of the
pirates to capture boats of the Michigan and release the pris-
oners on Johnson’s Island. As they were foiled in this,
they may with the two steamers commence depredations on
the lake.”
A meeting of the Board of Trade was called at 2 p. m., at
which, on the motion of David S. Bennett, it was voted to
procure and arm one or two tugs to act as pickets off Buffalo
Harbor. While the board was still in session a telegram,
supposed to be from the operator at Detroit, was received,
announcing that both the captured steamers had been re-
taken, that the Island Queen had been sunk, and that the
Parsons had been towed into Detroit Harbor in a sinking
condition. Fifteen minutes later still another dispatch was
received giving further particulars of the raid, this being
signed by Walter O. Ashley, clerk of the steamer Parsons,
who was on board at the time of the capture. The tugboat
Sarah E. Bryant was chartered and armed that evening and
placed on guard off the harbor, but the next day, the alarm
The fullest account of the raid is that by Gen. Dix in O. R., ser. i, v. 43, pt. 2,
pp. 225-47, but this is supplemented by the testimony on the trial of Beall, and
especially by that in the Burley extradition proceedings given in the Upper
Canada Law Journal, n. s., v. 1, and also printed in the Toronto Globe of Jan.
28, 1865, a copy of which is in the possession of the Buffalo Historical Society.
That the Michigan was seen by those on board the Parsons and that a Confed-
erate flag was hoisted on the latter are facts brought out only in the Toronto
proceedings. Most of the statements regarding the establishment and conduct
of the prison are from O. R., ser. 2, v. 3, 4, 5, and 6. Other data have been
gathered by interview or correspondence with participants in the events
described, as will appear from the narrative.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
3
MAP SHOWING JOHNSON’S ISLAND,
Entrance to Sandusky Bay, and other features of the western
end of Lake Erie.
having subsided, it was concluded that her further services
could be dispensed with. An occasional newspaper para-
graph afterwards marked the only local interest in the most
nearly successful of several conspiracies by Confederate
refugees in Canada to capture the United States ship Michi-
gan and release the Johnson’s Island prisoners.
The Island has recently been recalled to memory by the
rejection of its claim to designation as the place for the4
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
Great Lakes naval training station, in favor of Lake Bluffs,
near Chicago. This decision by the Washington authorities
was a grievous disappointment to Sandusky folk, who re-
garded the site offered by themselves as far and away the
best on the inland seas. Most of the harbors on the Great
Lakes consist of narrow creeks, the sheltering facilities of
which have been increased by the construction of costly
breakwaters, but Sandusky lies upon a broad bay which only
requires dredging to form a great natural harbor. Within
the bay lies Johnson’s Island2 of 300 acres, gently rising
from the surface of Lake Erie to a height of fifty feet. The
natural surroundings are very pleasing, the region salu-
brious, the climate as mild as at any point on the Great
Lakes, while the situation, hard by a thickly settled part of
the country and easily accessible but remote from the dis-
tractions of a great city, seemed to supply the ideal site foi
such an institution as was planned. The objection which
prevailed against its selection is understood to have been its
accessibility to a foreign and possibly hostile nation; and,
however unreasonable this suggestion now sounds, it must
be admitted that while the island was in use as a place of de-
tention for captured Confederate officers its contiguity to
Canada was a source of constant anxiety to the Federal
authorities. That this anxiety was not altogether without
basis will be shown in this paper, which is an attempt to
tell, coherently, a story, the usual narration of which has
involved much incoherence and more fiction.
2. The island is supposed to have been the seat of a French trading post
from 1708 to 1744, when the Wyandotte Indians killed five of the occupants
and drove the survivors to Detroit. They returned in 1749 and continued to
occupy the island until shortly before the Revolution. It was included in the
Fire Lands and came into the possession of Epaphroditus W. Bull of Danbury,
Conn., whose family owned it until the sale to L. B. Johnson. The latter had
sold a small portion just before his death, and all but twenty-four of 286 acres
which compose the island are now owned by James H. Emrich and Charles
Dick of Sandusky. Stone from quarries there was used in the construction of
the Cleveland breakwater. The Sandusky Register of June 10, 1902, contains
a brief history of the island by Mrs. Alice McK. Melville Milne. There are
some interesting pictures of prison life there with Horace Carpenter’s “Plain
Living at Johnson’s Island,” Century Magazine, n. s., v. 19, pp. 705-18,
Mar A, 1891.6
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
Col. William Hoffman, whose name is familiar to old
Buffalonians, was an officer of the Third Infantry who had
the misfortune to be surrendered by Gen. Twiggs to the
Confederates at the very beginning of the Civil War, and as
they persistently refused to release him from his parole he
was appointed Commissary General of Prisoners and held
this position under the Federal Government to the end. In
October, 1861, he selected Johnson’s Island as a depot for
prisoners of war.
An area of fifteen acres on the south shore of the island
was enclosed by a fence twelve feet high, and within were
constructed thirteen two-story barracks and a hospital, the
barracks varying in length from 117 to 134 feet and in
width from twenty-four to twenty-nine feet and being di-
vided, four into twenty-two rooms and the others into six
compartments each. The fence or palisade, which was of
pickets on the lake side and of closely-fitting boards on the
other three sides, was protected by a blockhouse at the
northeast corner, and another not far from the southwest
corner so situated that it guarded the gate and looked down
the street on either side of which stood the two rows of bar-
racks. Of all the buildings, including the dozen or so out-
side, the enclosure in which were quartered the guards, this
blockhouse at the gate alone is standing at the present time
and forms, with the Confederate cemetery and the ruins of
two earth forts, erected late in the history of the prison, the
only memorial of the island’s Federal occupation. The
cemetery is north of the former enclosure and occupies a
plot given for the purpose by Leonard B. Johnson, who
owned the island from 1852 until his death in 1898, and who
for a time maintained at his own expense a fence about the
burial place.
About 230 Confederates were buried here, and there are
now 206 graves, the rough wooden slabs, inscribed by the
survivors with penknife or pencil, having given place to
uniform marble tombstones which were erected by the people
of the South as the consequence of a visit to Sandusky by a
Southern editorial excursion. The United States Govern-SKETCH OF MILITARY PRISON ON JOHNSON'S ISLAND, O.
From Atlas accompanying the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,
1861-1865. Washington, 1895. The drawing was made in 1864 to accom-
pany an estimate for cost of waterworks, and shows water-
courses and pipe-lines relating to that work.8
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
ment provided the iron fence which now encloses them. For
years the Sandusky Grand Army men have annually deco-
rated these graves just as they do those of the Union dead on
the mainland, and they have even incurred some criticism
for so doing. Among the Confederates who lie here were
at least five prisoners executed by the order of military com-
missions. Two of these were Captains William F. Corbin
and T. G. McGraw, who had been captured early in April,
1863, m Pendleton County, Ky., had been convicted in Cin-
cinnati of recruiting Confederates within the Federal lines,
and were shot to death May 15th on the island in pursuance
of orders from Gen. Burnside.3 At a later date two pris-
oners were hanged for their atrocious treatment of Southern
Unionists. This execution, of which the writer has been
unable to find mention in the “Official Records of the Union
and Confederate Armies,” is attested by Henry C. Strong, a
respected Sandusky manufacturer, who at the time was an
assistant quartermaster on the island and had the misfor-
tune to be detailed to witness the event. It must have oc-
curred some time in 1864, f°r an official report4 in January
of that year shows that there had then been but three execu-
tions all told, although 6,415 prisoners had been received, of
whom 2,983 had been exchanged, 302 discharged on oath
of allegiance, parole, or otherwise, 363 transferred to other
prisons, and one shot dead by a sentinel, while but three had
escaped.
The insignificant percentage of escapes is notable in view
of the fact that only a narrow and shallow passage separates
3.	O. R., ser. 2, v. 5, p. 556 et passim. In retaliation for their execution
the Confederate Government ordered the hanging of two Union officers of equal
rank, who were to be selected by lot. The lot fell to Capts. Henry W. Sawyer,
First New Jersey cavalry, and John M. Flinn, 51st Indiana infantry, and they
were actually taken to the place of execution, and ropes put around their necks.
The execution was delayed by the accident that Flinn was a Roman Catholic
and had not received the rites of the church, and they would surely have been
hanged at the expiration of their reprieve of ten days, had not President
Lincoln ordered that, in case the execution - was carried out in their case, Gen.
William H. F. Lee, a son of Robert E. Lee, and another Confederate officer
should at once be hanged. In consequence these officers were finally exchanged.
The experience of Capts. Sawyer and Flinn is told dramatically by James M.
Stradling in McClure’s Magazine, v. 26, pp. 94-101, November, 1905.
4.	O. R., ser. 2, v. 6, p. 851.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
9
the island from the mainland on the west, while in winter the
frozen lake afforded some facilities for reaching Canada.
However, a ditch dug just inside the palisade to the solid
rock, which is nowhere more than a few feet from the sur-
face, proved a formidable obstacle to tunneling. A story is
told in Frank Moore’s “Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of
the War,” of a party of fugitives, two or three of whom
managed one dark, wet night to crawl under the fence. But
a stout fellow who attempted to follow them got stuck and.
unable to wriggle either back or forward, remained in his
uncomfortable position from 9 p. m. till 5.30 a. m., when the
cold forced him to call a sentinel’s attention to his predica-
ment, with the result that the other men were retaken before
they got off the island.
In the “Southern Historical Society Papers” it is related
that Lieut. Charles H. Pierce of the Seventh Louisiana In-
fantry improvised a musket from a piece of wood, fruit cans,
and the handle of a camp kettle, and, having procured a
Federal uniform from someone connected with the hospital,
tried to pass himself off as a guard, but his lack of a cart-
ridge box caused a rebuking officer to take from him the
musket, the lightness of which of course undid him.5
One man who actually succeeded in escaping, only to suf-
fer a worse fate than confinement on Johnson’s Island, was
Capt. Robert C. Kennedy of the First Louisiana Infantry,
a former West Point cadet, who in November, 1864, partici-
pated in the conspiracy to burn New York, himself attempt-
ing to set fire to Barnum’s Museum and the Belmont and
Tammany Hotels, for which he was hanged at Fort Lafay-
ette, under especially shocking conditions, March 25, 1865.
The fact that the prisoners were practically all officers made
their care more difficult; for not only were they more fertile
in expedients and more eager to escape than would have been
the case with the same number of rank and file, but they
were also more insubordinate, especially when it came to
5. V. 8, pp. 65-6, January, 1880. Lieut. M. McNamara, who tells this story,
admits that, though this was only one of repeated attempts by Pierce to escape,
Col. Hill humanely overlooked the offense and complimented the prisoner on his
courage and ingenuity, but confiscated the gun as a curiosity.10
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
requiring them to perform such necessary police duty as
the removal of garbage. That they knew of the conspiracies
to effect their release is the evidence, among others, of
Archibald S. McKennon of South McAlester, I. T., counsel
for the Seminole nation and a valued member of the Dawes
Commission, who as a captain and assistant quartermaster of
the Sixteenth Arkansas Infantry had been captured at Port
Hudson. In a communication to the writer he says of the
Beall conspiracy:
“We were organized into companies and regiments and had armed
ourselves with clubs, which were made of stove wood and other ma-
terial at hand, with which to make the fight. I think I was a captain
of the organization, for I occupied some position by which I had
information of the contemplated movement. I remember I had
several conferences with the Colonel as to my duties, and we were
in constant expectation of orders, which never came, to make the
fight. It surely would have been a pitiable affair, for the undertaking
was wholly impracticable/’
Lieut. J. W. Gamble of Catawba Island, whose battery of
light artillery was at the time stationed on Johnson’s Island
and at Cedar Point opposite, says that the prisoners ap-
peared to be anticipating a raid of some sort.
The number of prisoners averaged 788 during 1862, 1,205
during 1863, and 2,480 during 1864, running still higher in
the early months of 1865.6 The period in which we have
most interest is the latter part of September, 1864, and on
the last day of that month the number was 2,663.	I*1 the
“Collections of the Virginia Historical Society” (new series,
vol. 6), can be found the names of 2,545 prisoners who were
on the island between Nov. 22, 1862, and Sept. 5, 1864, with
their rank, military affiliations, and place of capture, to-
gether with a list of 168 others who died between May 1,
1862, and March 3, 1864, with the cause of death.7 The
6.	Whitelaw Reid’s “Ohio in the War,” v. 2, pp. 653-6.
7.	Joe Barbiere’s “Scraps from the Prison Table, at Camp Chase and
Johnson’s Island” (Doylestown, Pa., 1868), contains another roster of 1,323
prisoners confined at Johnson’s Island and exchanged in September, 1862, with
their regiments and place and date of capture and some further information
regarding them.THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
11
prison was guarded by the Hoffman Battalion, which, con-
sisting at the start of two companies recruited in Sandusky
and the neighborhood, was increased during 1862 by the
addition of two more, and in January, 1864, became, on re-
ceiving six more companies, the 128th Ohio Infantry. Many
of the officers and men had been at the front with other or-
ganizations and owed their presence on the island to wounds
or enfeebled health, and details from the regiment were fre-
quently called away to repel Confederate raids into other
parts of the state, or neighboring states, so that, with the
rather exacting duties of guarding the prisoners and fortify-
ing the island, the members of this force enjoyed their share
of hard work, even if it was not attended with much danger.
The battalion was commanded by Lieut.-Col. William S.
Pierson,8 a Sandusky lawyer belonging to a distinguished
Windsor, Conn., family and a Yale graduate of the class of
1836, who, though no soldier, conducted the affairs of the
prison with such intelligence and fidelity that at the close of
the war, on the recommendation of Gen. Hoffman, he was
brevetted a brigadier general, in spite of the fact that he had
resigned when the battalion became a regiment, to the com-
mand of which Charles W. Hill, Adjutant-General of the
state, had appointed himself. Whatever criticism Pierson’s
conduct of the prison received was generally on the ground
that he was not sufficiently severe. Inspecting officers some-
times reported that “too much lenity has been allowed the
prisoners.”9 Gen. Hoffman wrote the Commandant that
“kindness alone will not keep prisoners in subjection.” Gen.
Trimble, a prisoner, in a letter complaining of other matters,
admitted that excellent bread and coffee were furnished.
8.	He had been Mayor of Sandusky in 1861. In 1864 he returned to
Windsor and “spent the last fifteen years of his life on his father’s homestead,
in uneventful but very active attention to a wide range of business, both per-
sonal and as a trust for others, for which his integrity and judgment fitted him
in a rare degree. .	.	. He was the fifth in descent from the first Rector of
Yale College. As he had no children, and no brothers who attained maturity,
and as his father was the only son of an only son, the male line of this branch
of Rector Pierson’s descendants terminated with him, in one who was well
worthy to close the line of a worthy ancestor.”—Historical and Biographical
Record of the Class of 1836, in Yale College.
9.	O. R., ser. 2, v. 4, pp. 88-9; v. 6, pp. 900 and 902.12
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
Departing prisoners sometimes dropped hints to the officers
that a stronger guard was needed, and we even find some of
the Confederate conspirators relying on Pierson’s humanity
as a factor in favor of the success of their plans.
II. Treatment of the Prisoners.
In November, 1863, Gen. Jacob D. Cox10 made a careful
examination of the prison conditions, and he records that the
food was plain but good in quality, similar to the army ration
and at that time abundant. He was fully satisfied that the
garrison administration was honest and humane and that the
prisoners suffered only such evils as were necessarily inci-
dent to confinement in a narrow space and to life in tempor-
ary barracks of the kind used in all military camps. Un-
happily there is ample evidence that at a later period and
under the administration of Col. Hill, the treatment of the
prisoners was harsher. Horace Carpenter says in the Cen-
tury that the food was insufficient to satisfy the cravings of
hunger and left the prisoners each day with a little less life
and strength with which to fight the battle of the day to
follow, and that for months he was not free from the crav-
ings of hunger. Maj. Robert Stiles, a well-known Rich-
mond lawyer and the author of “Four Years under Marse
Robert,” testifies that the rations were at sundry times re-
duced below the amount confessedly indispensable to the
maintenance of a man in full health, and that he observed
pitiful hunger and destitution, although he acknowledges
that he did not suffer seriously in his own person.* 11 But
perhaps the most convincing evidence that harsher treat-
10.	“Military Reminiscences of the Civil War,” v. 2, pp. 57-66.
11.	“Southern Historical Society Papers,” v. 1, pp. 279-81, April, 1876.
In his book, “The Southern Side; or Andersonville Prison Compiled from
Original Documents” (Baltimore, 1876), Dr. R. Randolph Stevenson charges
(pp. 168-9) against Johnson’s Island poor quality of food, lack of medicine,
insufficient clothing, and cruel treatment. But as the surgeon in charge at
Andersonville he had personal reasons for the tu quoque argument, and he
fails to give the names of his witnesses.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
13
ment prevailed after the North had become wrought up over
the sufferings of Federate in Southern prison pens, is inci-
dentally revealed in this story, which is otherwise interesting,
told by Mr. McKennon to express his warm regard for
Lieut.-Col. Scoville, Hill’s second in command:
“I was chief of my mess of about eighty men and had
charge of the cook room on the lower floor at the north end
of Block 13. We organized a tunneling party, at first of six
men. When we were worked down we swore in six more,
then the third six, making in all eighteen men. We began
tunneling immediately under the cook room and dug a tun-
nel toward the north prison wall, as I now remember two
and a half feet in diameter and about thirty-six fleet long.
The man in the hole used an old horse rasp in digging. He
filled a pan which was drawn out by a string by a man at the
mouth of the tunnel, and a third man back under the floor
drew it back with the string and stored the dirt away. Just
before we got to the wall we were intercepted by a ditch dug
just inside of the wall about four feet deep to a solid rock,
under which we endeavored to make our way, but failed.
We abandoned the work one evening, and there was a heavy
rainfall that night, and the tunnel caved in about half wav
between the block and the ditch.
“The next morning Col. Scoville came in and told me he
wanted to investigate the tunneling business. I went
through and showed him the way and told him all about it.
Finally he asked me how many were in it. I asked him to
excuse me for not answering that question, adding that I
knew the orders which had been posted in the prison, in
which it was stated that in case of tunneling the rations
would be cut off and the chief of the mess in which it oc-
curred would be punished severely. I told him the members
of the mess were innocent, that if we had been aware that
anyone knew it and was liable to divulge the facts we would
have killed him, and that the prisoners’ rations were already
so scant and they were so thin and enfeebled for want of
sufficient food that if their rations were cut off for a day it
would prove fatal to many, and that he might as well kill
them outright.14
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
“He asked me if we were indeed hungry. I told him I
weighed normally 152 pounds and that I had gone down to
108 for want of sufficient food, but that I was in his hands
for punishment and would submit to any that he might im-
pose, only I did not want anyone else punished. My asso-
ciates were looking on, and had he taken me from the prison,
all would have gone with me.
“He said: (l believe I will not punish you. I think I
would have done the same thing, had I been in your condi-
tion/ I told him I was not wanting punishment, for I knew
I could not stand much and would be grateful if he would
excuse me. He then said he would send us something to eat,
and in a little while we received about as much food as we
usually got in two days.”
Mr. McKennon was so grateful that long afterward,
when Guiteau was tried for the murder of Garfield, thinking
that his brother-in-law and counsel, Scoville, might be his
old acquaintance, he offered to come on and remain with him
through the ordeal and give him all the assistance he could
in Guiteau’s defense; but inquiry proved that the brother-
in-law was not his old keeper. It is worth noting that the
Johnson’s Island Scoville was such a strict disciplinarian
that, according to one of his officers, he was known among
his own men as “Old Pizen.”
All of the accounts written by prisoners have much to
say of their suffering from cold during a Great Lake winter.
In one of his reports Col. Pierson described his charges as
“the coldest set he ever saw.” They were unused to weather
of the zero kind, and they were thinly clad, while it would
have been impossible to keep their roughly constructed bar-
racks comfortable under the most favorable conditions.
Probably their guards also suffered a good deal from the
same cause. It is true that the Government professed to
supply such of the prisoners as actually needed them with
overcoats, but complaint is made of the stringency of the
regulations which kept a long line of shivering men waiting
for hours out of doors while the garments were doled out to
them. It is difficult for anyone who examines the evidenceTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
15
to question that much hardship was endured during the last
years of the war.
When reports of Confederate plots to release the pris-
oners- reached the authorities, the force on the island was
hurriedly strengthened by details from the front or else-
where. During the winter of 1863-4 there arrived six com-
panies of the Twelfth Ohio Cavalry, the Twenty-fourth Bat-
tery with six guns, and two detachments of the First Ohio
Heavy Artillery with seven heavy guns. From January until
April, 1864, five regiments, forming the first brigade of the
third division of the Sixth Corps,12 were quartered, four
under Gen. Alexander Shaler on the island and one under
Gen. H. D. Terry in Sandusky. During the same year sev-
eral Ohio regiments were sent to the island for longer or
shorter periods as a place of rendezvous, equipment, and
instruction. Mr. Strong says that some of the prisoners first
became convinced of the hopelessness of their cause when,
peeping between the pickets of their palisade, they viewed
the movements of troops hurriedly summoned to prevent an
expected or imagined outbreak on their part. They knew
that every available man in the South was at the front, but
the North seemed to have an inexhaustible supply left, if
these could be brought to the island on such short notice.
Almost from the establishment of the prison there were
fears of Confederate incursions from Canada and of an out-
break on the part of the inmates. So early as June, 1862,
Col. Pierson was asking for more troops and begging that
the Michigan, which usually lay at Erie and was the only
war vessel on the lakes, might be sent to help guard the pris-
oners. It was apparently at about this time13 that the plan
was adopted of stationing her in Sandusky Bay during the
summer months, though she went back to her old Erie moor-
12.	The regiments on the island were the 65th and 67th New York and
the 23d and 82d Pennsylvania, the 1226. Ohio being in Sandusky. Gen. Terry
had command of the prison as well as the troops, and on his departure Col.
Hill’s regime began.
13.	The Michigan was used more or less for recruiting at the lake ports
for the navy, but she had been sent to Sandusky before July 10, 1862. O. R.,
ser. 2, v. 4, p. 167.16
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
ings with the approach of winter. Whether there was any
basis for the warnings of rebel raids sent from Detroit and
Windsor, Ont., in June, 1862, is not clear, but we know that
in February, 1863, Lieut. William H. Murdaugh,14 then on
board the Confederate steamer Beaufort at Richmond, laid
before his superiors a scheme for the capture of the Michi-
gan and the destruction of the lake cities. He proposed to
purchase in Canada a small steamer (of 200 tons or so) and
man her with a crew of fifty whose ostensible purpose was to
be mining on Lake Superior. The men were to be armed
with cutlasses and revolvers, and to be equipped with small
iron buoys to be used as torpedoes, and also with powder and
fuses and spirits of turpentine, to be used for starting fires in
the lake cities and for blowing up the canal locks in and near
Buffalo, the aqueduct at Rochester, the Ohio canal locks on
the shore of Lake Erie, the Illinois and Michigan locks at
Chicago, and the lock at Sault Ste. Marie. The first point to
be aimed at was Erie, where the Michigan was to be cap-
tured by boarding. Thence the smaller vessel was to be sent
back to Lake Ontario before the news of the affair had
reached the Canadians, if possible, to perform a work of
destruction along the shore of New York State, while the
Michigan proceeded to burn the shipping at Buffalo, Chi-
cago, and Milwaukee and to destroy all the canal locks near
the lakes. She was finally to be run ashore in the Georgian
Bay and destroyed.
The scheme met with the approval of the Confederate
naval authorities and Cabinet, and the sum of $100,000 was
collected for carrying it out, but, as a memorandum by Mur-
daugh says, when everything was ready for a start, Presi-
dent Davis, while deeming the enterprise practicable, caused
it to be laid aside for a time, lest such a storm should be
aroused over the violation of the British neutrality laws as
to force a stop to the building of Confederate ironclads which
were on the stocks in England. It will be noticed that the
release of the prisoners on Johnson’s Island formed no part
14. O. R. (N), ser. i, v. 2, p. 828. Murdaugh speaks with much disgust
of the final mismanagement of the affair by the Confederate naval authorities.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
17
of this plot, which had doubtless been conceived before any
large number of Confederates had been sent thither. But in
August, 1863, Secretaries Seddon and Mallory suggested to
Lieut. R. D. Minor, also of the Confederate navy, a similar
enterprise having for its main purpose the release of the men
confined at Sandusky. The proposition was eagerly em-
braced; and furnished with a fund of some $111,000, a party
of twenty-two naval officers, at the head of whom were
Lieut.-Com. John Wilkinson and Lieuts. Minor and B. P.
Loyall, successfully ran the blockade of the Cape Fear River
and by way of Halifax reached Montreal about October 21st.
Taking lodgings in private boarding-houses, the conspirators
established communications with the prisoners through the
personal column of the New York Herald, in which it was
announced that “a carriage would be at the door a few nights
after the 4th of November.”
The original plan involved going aboard a lake steamer
at Windsor, opposite Detroit, as passengers and seizing her
when fairly out on Lake Erie. The prisoners were expected
to rise on their guard, and their rescuers were simply to re-
ceive them on board for transportation to Canada. But it
was found necessary to adopt a different arrangement when
it was learned that the lake steamers seldom and only at
irregular intervals made landings on the Canadian side of
the river. The Michigan seems to have been absent from
Sandusky Bay for awhile, for she took her station before
Johnson’s Island October 24th, and possibly the discovery
that she was again on guard had something to do with the
change of plan.15 It was determined that passage should be
taken at St. Catharines on the Welland Canal aboard one of
a line of steamers running from Ogdensburg to Chicago, for
the party as mechanics and laborers bound for Chicago to be
employed on the waterworks there. The conspirators, their
number now augmented to fifty-four from escaped prisoners
found in Canada, equipped with two small nine-pounders,
15. Besides making a cruise of Lake Erie in the early summer for the pur-
pose of enlisting men, the Michigan had been summoned to Buffalo and Detroit
on account of fears of draft riots in both cities.18
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
ioo navy revolvers, butcher knives in lieu of cutlasses, and
dumb-bells in place of cannon balls, the purchase of which
in Montreal would have aroused suspicion, assembled at St.
Catharines, a private named Conelly having gone to Ogdens-
burg and paid the passage money for twenty-five of the
party, with an agreement that as many more laborers* should
be taken as he could secure. The weapons were to be boxed
up, marked “machinery,” and put on board by one of the
party who was to appear to be unconnected with the others.
The plan was to seize the steamer when she was well clear of
British jurisdiction, mount the two cannon, arrive at San-
dusky about daylight, come into collision with the Michigan
as if by accident, board and carry her, turn her guns on the
prison headquarters, and demand the surrender of the island,
Col. Pierson’s well-known humanity being one of the fac-
tors relied on to insure the success of this part of the under-
taking. With the half dozen steamers at the wharf at San-
dusky the prisoners could speedily have been landed in Can-
ada, and then the Michigan, manned by the fifty-four con-
spirators, “and some fifty of such men as the Berkeleys,
Randolphs, Paynes, and others among the prisoners,” would
have had the lake shore from Sandusky to Buffalo at their
mercy. Buffalo was especially marked out for attack.
But on November nth, Lord Monck, Governor-General
of Canada, warned the Washington authorities of the plot,
at the same time sending a representative to watch the
Welland Canal for any vessel whose passengers aroused sus-
picion and detaining at Port Colborne the Canadian Rifles,
who were usually relieved at this time of year. Two days
before Bennett H. Hill, Acting-Assistant Provost-Marshal
at Detroit, and Lieut.-Col. Smith, military commander there,
had warned the Washington and the Johnson’s Island offi-
cials that within a few days an attack on the island might be
expected.
On the strength of this Detroit message, although such
an attack was deemed “very improbable,” Gen. Jacob D. Cox,
commanding the district of Ohio, ordered to the island No-
vember ioth a detachment of 500 infantry and a six-gunTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
19
rifled battery. Lord Monck’s warning was taken much more
seriously. The Washington authorities sent a note of alarm
to all the lake cities, and Gen. Dix hastened to Buffalo, whose
undefended condition so greatly disturbed him that he
recommended the removal of the prisoners from Johnson’s
Island. He reported to Secretary Stanton that the Buffalo
militia regiments were only partially armed; that the State
arsenal, with some 3,000 stand of arms and about twenty
pieces of field artillery, was without a guard; and that the
artillery was without ammunition. He ordered a tug to be
chartered and armed, and he requested Governor Seymour to
call out the 74th Regiment for thirty days. As the only
regular troops in Buffalo consisted of about thirty men of
the invalid corps, Gen. Brooks sent thither 100 men from
Erie, where a considerable force had gathered and where
the citizens had gone at work upon a small field defense
commanding the entrance to the harbor.
At Sandusky Gen. Cox collected troops and superintended
the construction of fortifications at Cedar Point on the
mainland opposite Johnson’s Island. At the end of the
month Gen. Halleck, with his usual perspicuity, expressed
the opinion that there was “no real foundation in the pre-
tended raid,” and Gen. Dix, in spite of his previous alarm,
seems to have shared this view, but the facts regarding the
preparations here related are taken from a letter written in
February, 1864, to Admiral Buchanan by Lieut. Minor, who
attributes the failure of the enterprise wholly to its betrayal
to Lord Monck, and he charges this betrayal to one McCuaig,
a Canadian sympathizer with the South, who at the last
moment, when success seemed certain, Minor says, became
alarmed at the possible future effect on his own fortunes
and revealed the scheme to Mr. Holden, a member of the
Provincial government.16 The conspirators, who had been
awaiting hourly at St. Catharines the arrival of the steamer
they were to board, dispersed and returned south by way of
Halifax and Bermuda, a few of them lingering in Montreal
16.	0. R. (N), ser. i, v. 2, pp. 822-8. For further information regarding
Lord Monck’s message, see “Correspondence Relating to the Fenian Invasion
and the Rebellion of the Southern States,” Ottawa, 1869, pp. 75-80.20
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
five or ten days in order to give the Canadian authorities an
opportunity to arrest them, if they saw fit. It was one of the
effects of the alarm all along the Great Lakes over this at-
tempt that the Hoffman Battalion was increased to a full
regiment, Col. Charles W. Hill supplanting Lieut.-Col. Pier-
son, as already related, in command of the depot of prisoners
of war, as the island was officially designated.
III. Captain Beall’s Conspiracy.
The relation between the project of Lieut. Minor in 1863
and the actual attempt of John Yates Beall im 1864 is not
entirely clear, but the conception of the Beall enterprise is
attributed, apparently with justice, to Jacob Thompson,
President Buchanan’s Secretary of the Interior, who in the
summer of 1864 was sent to Canada, in company with Hol-
comb of Virginia and C. C. Clay of Alabama, as a Commis-
sioner of the Confederacy charged to inflict such injury on
the United States as should fall within his power. At any
rate in an account he gives of the affair to Secretary Benja-
min he says he sent Capt. Charles H. Cole, who professed to
have been appointed a lieutenant in the Confederate navy,
around the lakes as a lower deck passenger, in order to
familiarize himself with the approaches to the different har-
bors and with the depositories of coal, and especially to enable
him to learn all he could about the Michigan and to devise
some plan for her capture. On his return from this duty,
which, Thompson says, was performed very satisfactorily,
he was sent to Sandusky to ingratiate himself with the offi-
cers of the Michigan, with the idea of bribing some of them
to give up the ship. Capt. T. Henry Hines gives in Vol. 2
of the Southern Bivouac, a long account of “The North-
western Conspiracy,” in the course of which it is stated that
on July 14, 1864, Thompson appointed Cole to the service of
inspecting the lake defenses and providing for the capture of
the Michigan, on the failure of W. L. McDonald, C. S. A., toTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
21
perform this task, and that soon after Cole made a special
report, in which he said: “Buffalo is poorly protected: one
regiment and a battalion of invalids. The regiment is at
Camp Morgan, opposite Port Huron (Fort Erie), and be-
tween North and South Buffalo, and the battalion doing hos-
pital duty and guarding the stores. There is a very large
amount of government stores there, a large quantity of am-
munition in United States arsenal, and also some cannon,
mortars, and small arms. The arsenal is situated on Oak
Street.” Somewhat similar information is supplied about
other cities, especially regarding access to them from the
lakes, and the writer adds: “I have formed the acquaintance
of Capt. Carter, commanding United States ship Michigan.
He is an unpolished man, whose pride seems to be touched
for the reason that, having been an old United States naval
officer, he is not allowed now a more extensive field of opera-
tion.17 I do not think that he can be bought.” Hines fur-
ther says that Lieut. Bennett H. Young, who later was at the
head of the St. Albans raiders, was sent to Sandusky to re-
port to Cole for duty and to provide him with the necessary
funds.
Cole’s assertion to Thompson that he held a commission
in the Confederate navy was one of his numerous false-
hoods.18 At a later time, according to Maj. Stiles, there was
a report among the Confederate officers that Cole19 had been
in both the Northern and Southern armies and had deserted
from both, but the only positive statement the writer can
make about his history is that he had belonged to Gen. For-
17.	Possibly Carter’s appointment to the command of the Michigan was
due to the fact that he was a Virginian by birth; but there never seems to
have been any question of his entire loyalty. Laura G. Sanford’s “History of
Erie County, Pa.,” quotes him (p. 342) as saying:	“In early manhood my
allegiance was given to my country, not my state, and to it I earnestly adhere.”
He held the rank of Commodore on the retired list when he died in Brooklyn,
Nov. 24, 1870.
18.	Secretary Mallory said Cole was not an officer in the Confederate
navy. See Southern Bivouac, v. 2, p. 702, April, 1887.
19.	At the trial of Merrick and Rosenthal, of which more hereafter, Maj.
R. J. Persons of the Fifth Tennessee Infantry testified that Cole had been a lieu-
tenant in his regiment, that he had been cashiered in December, 1863, and that
he (Persons) always knew him to be a consummate liar. See Cleveland Leader,
June 16, 1865.22
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
rest’s command, had been taken prisoner, and had in Mem-
phis, in April, 1864, taken his parole20 not to give aid or
comfort to an enemy of the United States, swearing alle-
giance thereto and receiving in consequence permission to
proceed to Harrisburg, Pa., which he gave as the home of
his parents, on condition that he should report to the pro-
vost-marshal there. He is well remembered at Sandusky,
where he appeared accompanied by a woman whom he some-
times introduced as his wife,21 but who was recognized by
some of the officers of the Michigan as a person of dubious
reputation. He stayed at the West House and cultivated
with some success the acquaintance of army and navy offi-
cers. There appeared in the Philadelphia Press of Jan. 29,
1882, a long article by T. A. Burr—reprinted, in whole or in
part, in the22 Fire Lands Pioneer (Norwalk, O.) for June,
1882—professing to be based on Cole’s revelations, in which
he is said to have represented himself as secretary of the
Mount Hope Oil Company, of which Ex-President Fillmore
(whom he calls Judge Fillmore) was president. He also
asserts that he succeeded in getting two Confederates en-
listed as seamen on the Michigan and ten more as soldiers on
the Johnson’s Island guard. But the article embraces so
many absurdities—such as a visit to the Michigan by Jacob
Thompson disguised in petticoats—and so much self-evident
fiction, that it would not be safe to accept a word of it as true
without other support. Mr. Clark Rude of Sandusky recalls
the fact that Cole succeeded in depositing a large sum of
20. O. R., ser. 2, v. 8, p. 708.
2i# The “Official Records’* refer to her as Annie Cole; John Wilson
Murray in his “Memoirs of a Great Detective,” calls her “Irish Lize”; in the
prosecution of Merrick and Rosenthal she figures as Anna Brown, and Cole
himself, though styling her Annie Davis in the lying story he told Burr, in one
instance refers to her as Belle Brandon. See Cleveland Leader, June 16, 1865.
22. This article also forms the basis of one by Frederick Boyd Stevenson
in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly for September, 1898, but Stevenson was a
native of Sandusky and avoided a few of the absurdities in the Burr article,
such as the attempt to involve the owner of the West House in Cole’s charges.
Gen. Jubal A. Early took Burr’s article seriously enough to write a letter to the
Lynchburg Virginian contradicting many of its statements. His letter was re-
printed in the “Southern Historical Society Papers,” v. 10, pp. 154-8, April,
1882. He supposed Burr was a Confederate, but he was a Michigan cavalry-
man and had been a Detroit newsboy.I
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.	23
money in a local bank, with which Mr. Rude was connected,
with the unusual privilege of withdrawing it in gold on
demand, and that later Lieut. Burke of the regular army
was much chagrined at the ease with which he had been
taken in by Cole.
Capt. James Hunter23 of Erie, then an acting ensign on
board the Michigan, tells the writer that Cole, who was in-
troduced to him at the West House by an army officer,
offered him the command of the schooner Fremont to take
a cargo of oil to Liverpool, Hunter having been a salt water
sailor, if he would leave the Government service, even taking
him to look over the schooner. Cole so pursued Hunter with
his attentions as to arouse the latter’s suspicions, which
assumed the form that he was a counterfeiter. On two occa-
sions Cole sent cases of wine aboard the Michigan, once to
an ensign from Oswego named Pavey, with whom he was
especially intimate, and once to the wardroom officers gen-
erally. These attentions were magnified by the people
ashore, and to this day Sandusky has traditions that he really
did win over to his scheme some of the ship’s people. One
tale that was telegraphed to the New York papers, after the
exposure, represents an engineer as having been induced to
disable the steamer’s machinery, and well-informed San-
dusky people even yet believe that Cole was to give a dinner
party aboard the Michigan on the night for which her cap-
ture was planned. Possibly some of these rumors of treach-
ery or slack discipline reached naval officers elsewhere, for
when, two months after the event about to be related, Lieut.-
Com. Francis A. Roe succeeded “Jack” Carter in command
of the Michigan he was much dissatisfied with the conditions
he found aboard. Writing of those days thirty years later,24
he professes gradually to have improved the discipline and
23.	Capt. Hunter’s account of his relations with Cole was given to the
writer by word of mouth, but later, at the request of Commander Charles
Baird, U. S. N., he put it in shape, with the assistance of John Miller of Erie,
for publication in the Erie Dispatch of Feb. 19, 1905. Practically the same
article was published in the National Tribune of Washington for June 29, 1905.
24.	United Service, n. s., v. 6, pp. 544-52, December, 1891. In his article
Admiral Roe commends the humanity of the Johnson’s Island prison manage-
ment and seems impressed with the idea that Buffalo was in considerable peril.24
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
efficiency of the ship, although he does not hint that at any
time he suspected officer or man of treachery.
As a matter of fact, the writer has found no evidence
whatever for all these rumors, the “Official Records” are
silent on the subject, and the survivors, who should know
most about the matter, either scout at the stories or ignore
them. It is true that Commander Carter got rid of Pavey
before the plot was disclosed, but this was apparently in con-
sequence of the ensign’s too convivial habits. Despite Cole’s
boast of acquaintanceship with Carter, the latter25 apparently
never heard of Cole until the day he caused his arrest. The
Michigan’s commander rarely went ashore and was so far
from being the kind of a man that could be won by Cole’s
bibulous diplomacy that, as Capt. Hunter says, he was more
likely to contribute five dollars to some religious cause than
to expend it in revelry. To Hunter himself Cole became
decidedly offensive by his reflections on Carter because of
Pavey’s transfer to the coast, by his presuming manners
when they were once thrown together on a railway journey,
and especially by Cole’s presentation of Hunter to the West
Plouse woman as Mrs. Cole. This conspirator’s service at
Sandusky to the Confederacy, large as it looms in the news-
paper stories inspired by himself, seems actually to have been
confined to the expenditure of a considerable portion of its
revenue over the bar of the West House.
A man of very different character was John Yates Beall,
whom Jacob Thompson fatuously put under the nominal
command of Cole. His memoir has been written by his
roommate at the University of Virginia, Judge Daniel B.
Lucas26 of West Virginia, by whom it was published anony-
mously at Montreal in 1865. Beall belonged to an old family
in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and owned one of the
25. John Wilson Murray, now chief detective under the Ontario Govern-
ment, who was then an acting gunner on board the Michigan, is the subject of a
book by Victor Speer of Buffalo (“Memoirs of a Great Detective,” Baker &
Taylor Co., 1904), in which it is related that by Carter’s instruction Murray
followed Cole about the country, in an endeavor to unravel his plot, and ulti-
mately bore the leading part in his arrest. Not only are Murray’s names and
dates hopelessly astray, but Ensign Hunter, who actually arrested Cole, declares
that Murray had nothing whatever to do with the matter. Furthermore, thereTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
25
finest farms in that romantic region. He was an earnest,
not to say fanatical young fellow with strong religious con-
victions, one of a type that is peculiarly dangerous in times
of strife, because in such men all ordinary scruples are sub-
jected to a stern sense of duty that knows not fear and re-
jects even reasonable precautions. One gets an idea of his
seriousness from Judge Lucas’s testimony that he never
played a game of billiards in his life. He had seen some
service as a private under Stonewall Jackson and, having
been seriously wounded in October, 1861, had made his way
north to Iowa, where he had a brother and where he had
embarked in business as a miller in Cascade, Dubuque
County, under the name of Yates. The discovery that he
was a Confederate caused his departure for Canada in No-
vember, 1862, and he spent a couple of months in Dundas,
Ont., going thence south by way of Cincinnati and Balti-
more in January, 1863. His biographer thinks it was he
who, during this visit to Richmond, “in conjunction with a
gallant young officer of the Confederate army,” first sug-
gested to the authorities the scheme for releasing the pris-
oners on Johnson’s Island and destroying the cities on the
southern shores of the Great Lakes, for which Lieut. Mur-
daugh gets the credit in the “Official Records.” The project
having been temporarily laid aside, and Beall having been
discharged from military service on account of his wound,
he received a commission in the Confederate navy as an
acting master and, with two small boats and a dozen men, he
embarked in privateering operations on the lower Potomac
and York rivers and Chesapeake Bay, cutting telegraph
cables, destroying lighthouses, and capturing small trading
vessels and fishing scows. One of the exploits of the party
seems to be no reason to believe that Cole was under any suspicion of being a
Confederate agent until Commander Carter received the warning dispatches from
Detroit given in the text.
26. Judge Lucas, who has been president of the West Virginia Supreme
Court of Appeals, was in 1887 appointed to a vacancy in the United States
Senate, but before the time came for him to take his seat the Legislature elected
Charles J. Faulkner in his place. His memoir of Beall must have been pre-
pared with much care, for the developments of forty years fail to show any
serious inaccuracies of statement.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
was the capture in September near Eastville, on the Eastern
Shore of Virginia, of four schooners, one of which was
loaded with sutler’s stores.27 Their depredations became so
annoying that when in November a force of volunteers from
the Eastern Shore of Maryland succeeded in taking Beall
and fourteen men during one of their raids across Chesa-
peake Bay, the matter was considered of some importance,
and the captors were commended for good conduct in gen-
eral orders by authority of Gen. Schenck. As the prisoners
were a partisan force, receiving no pay from the Confederacy
but subsisting on what they captured from the enemy, they
were taken to. Fort McHenry in irons and so held for forty-
two days, there being some talk of putting them on trial,
either before a military commission or a civil jury of loyal
Virginians. The Confederate Government, however, retali-
ated by confining in irons two officers and seventeen men of
the Union navy, and the upshot was that Beall’s men were
placed on the footing of prisoners of war and ultimately ex-
changed, their leader reaching Richmond in May, 1864.
After a brief visit to his affianced wife in Columbus, Ga.,
refusing a lieutenancy in the Secret Service, Beall partici-
pated as a volunteer in the fighting about Mechanicsville for
some days, but soon became discouraged by the condition of
his health and the neglect of his superiors. Leaving the
camp on the Chickahominy, he crossed over from Matthews
County, the chief scene of his former maritime exploits, to
the Eastern Shore and made his way through Baltimore to
Canada. August found him in Dundas again, and his diary
says that he at once reported to Jacob Thompson in Toronto
and asked for the command of a privateer on Lake Huron.
Thompson told him of a plan to capture the Michigan and
release the Johnson’s Island prisoners, and Beall volunteered
to participate. His diary says that he also went to Sandusky
27. For the Chesapeake Bay operations of Beall and Burley, see O. R.,
ser. 1, v. 29, pt. 1, pp. i39> 639 5 v. 33, pp. 231-2; v. 37, pt. 1, p. 72; ser. 2,
v. 6, pp. 70s, 825, 979. But Col. Draper’s statement that Maxwell was killed
when Burley was captured is incorrect, for Judge Lucas informs the writer
that Maxwell occupied an official position under the Richmond municipal gov-
ernment in 1888, and the Judge presumes that he is still (1906) living.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
27
and had a consultation with Cole, betaking himself thence to
Windsor on the Detroit River. Jacob Thompson was staying
in the same neighborhood.
IV. Burley, the Adventurer.
Somewhere in Canada Beall had unexpectedly fallen in
with Bennett G. Burley, whom he had known in his Chesa-
peake Bay privateering enterprises, and he was readily
enlisted in the new undertaking, being a born adventurer,
if ever one lived. As “Bennet Burleigh” he is now a war cor-
respondent of world-wide fame, having been connected with
the London Telegraph since 1882. He was present at Tel-
el-Kebir in the first Egyptian war, with the French in
Madagascar, accompanied the desert column from Korti to
Metammah in 1884, participated in the Ashanti and Atbara
expeditions, was at Omdurman, won fame in South Africa
by securing a long interview with Gen. Joubert, and proved
himself one of the most successful of newspaper correspond-
ents in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war. An
ardent Socialist, he has several times been a labor candi-
date in Glasgow for Parliament. So abstemious that he
abjures tobacco and drinks nothing stronger than soda-
water, wonderful tales are told of his powers of physical
endurance even at his present age, such as that he has,
after spending a day watching a battle, ridden sixty miles,
written a long and brilliant dispatch, and got it first through.
It is no wonder that forty years ago his feats of vigor
attracted attention, especially when he had the telling of
them himself, and we can be confident that they lost noth-
ing of their picturesqueness in his narrative.
He was the son of a Glasgow master mechanic, and
when he appeared in Richmond, although then but twenty-
two, he had, according to the Toronto Globe?* already
28. Quoted by the Buffalo Courier, Feb. 7, 1865, p. 2.28
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
served in Italy both on the side of the Garibaldians and
against them. He brought to the Confederacy the design
for a torpedo which had to be attached to the side of the
vessel attacked with screws and then be ignited by a fuse,
and Judge Lucas says that Burley and another Scotch-
man, John Maxwell, actually did fasten such a contriv-
ance to a Federal vessel, but the fuse would not burn.
The torpedo was afterwards exhibited at the corner of
Fulton and Nassau streets, New York. Burley received
a commission as an acting master in the Confederate navy,
and Judge Lucas says he was one of the earliest recruits
secured by Beall for his privateering operations.
In March, 1864, a party of what might be described
as veritable horse marines, for they were all cavalrymen
except Burley and Maxwell and were commanded by a
cavalry officer, Capt. Thaddeus Fitzhugh, performed the
exploit of crossing Chesapeake Bay to Cherrystone, North-
ampton County, and capturing the entire guard there, a
large supply of stores, two steamers and a schooner, besides
inflicting other damage on the Union cause by cutting
cables. But in May a small force of colored infantry under
a sergeant, who were hunting for torpedoes near the mouth
of the Rappahannock, killed four of the horse marines and
captured Burley, on whose person was found a British
protection and a pass authorizing him to go beyond the
Confederate lines. As this seemed to furnish evidence
that he was expected to act as a spy, over and above the
irregularity of the service in which he was engaged, he
was taken to Fort Delaware, forty miles below Philadel-
phia, whence he and a companion escaped through a drain,
the water in which came up to the sleepers supporting the
plank covering, so that they had to dive under the sleepers
for the length of the drain, twenty-five yards, and then
swim the river in the face of a swift tide. Six prisoners
made the attempt in pairs, but Burley and his companion,
whom he had to help, were the only ones to get away, the
captain of a schooner which picked them up in mid-riverTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
29
professing to accept their story that they had been cap-
sized while on a fishing excursion and taking them to
Philadelphia. Two of the others were recaptured at the
mouth of the drain, and two were drowned in the Dela-
ware. Burley reached Canada in safety and doubtless told
this story after the war was over to Judge Lucas, who
prints it in his memoir of Beall.
Sunday evening, September 18, 1864, at Detroit, Bur-
ley stepped on board the Philo Parsons, a small steamer
plying between Sandusky and Detroit, and asked the clerk,
Walter O. Ashley, to stop the next day at Sandwich on
the Canadian side of the river to take on board three
friends of his, one of whom was lame and could not well
cross the ferry. Ashley consented on condition that Bur-
ley should himself board the boat at Detroit. Monday
morning, accordingly, Burley started with the boat from
Detroit, and at Sandwich three men, one of whom was
Beall, jumped on. Further down the river at Amherst-
burgh, which is also on the Canadian side, sixteen roughly
dressed men, with an old trunk tied with a rope, came on
board. These appeared to have no relations with the Beall
and Burley party and were taken for returning Ameri-
cans who had run away from the draft. At Middle Bass
Island Capt. Atwood, the master of the Parsons, went
ashore, his home being there, leaving the steamer in charge
of the mate and of Ashley, who was a part owner.
At about 4 p. m., a landing having just been made at
Kelly’s Island, which is well within the United States line,
being only about eleven miles from Sandusky, Beall inter-
rupted a conversation he had been conducting with the
mate at the wheel by drawing a pistol and telling that
surprised person that as a Confederate officer he took pos-
session of the steamer. At the same time three of the con-
spirators leveled their revolvers at Ashley, and Burley, com-
ing aft with a number of others, ordered the clerk on pain
of death to get into the cabin. Thither all the passengers,
numbering some twenty-five, were also driven, two armed30
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
guards stationing themselves at the door. The old trunk
was brought out and opened, its contents proving to be
hatchets and revolvers, with which the captors of the boat
proceeded to equip themselves, while Burley partially cleared
the deck by throwing overboard some freight consisting
of iron and a sulky.
The mate, Nicholls, continued to keep the steamer on
her course toward Sandusky, under the direction of Beall,
and, as he afterward testified, at about five o’clock had
reached a point from which they had a clear view into the
harbor, where the Michigan was plainly visible. In the
meantime he had been asked many questions about the
warship and had said, in reply to an inquiry, that the Par-
sons did not have enough fuel on board to take her very
far. He was therefore instructed to turn her about and
head for Middle Bass Island, and while she was lying at
the wharf there, taking on wood, Beall and Burley accom-
panied the clerk to his office and compelled him to give up
the boat’s papers and such money as he had on board,
something like $100, though they allowed him to keep
certain papers which he claimed as personal property.
Presently appeared alongside a smaller steamer, the Isl-
and Queen, which ran between Sandusky and this group
of islands, having on board a number of unarmed Federal
soldiers on their way to Toledo to be mustered out. As
she unsuspiciously moored to the Parsons some of Beall’s
men jumped on board and demanded her surrender. There
was a discharge of pistols, and Henry Haines, the Queen’s
engineer, was shot in the face, the wound causing him so
much annoyance in after years that he tried in vain to get
a pension on account of it. Several persons were knocked
down by blows from hatchets, one of which caused a pro-
fuse loss of blood, but this was the limit of physical injury
inflicted. The people on board the Queen were stowed
away, some in the cabin and some in the hold of the Par-
sons, but presently the passengers of both boats were
sent ashore, as were most of the two crews, a few menTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
31
being retained to handle the Parsons. The Union sol-
diers were paroled not to bear arms against the Southern
Confederacy until duly exchanged, and the civilians were
required to promise that they would say nothing of what
had happened for twenty-four hours. Then the two steam-
ers, lashed abreast, got under way, but when about five
miles from the island the Queen was scuttled and set adrift,
sinking on Chickanolee Reef.
The Parsons proceeded a part of the way toward San-
dusky, but there was anxiety on board over the failure to
receive an expected message or signal from Cole. Judge
Lucas, who probably got his information from Burley,
intimates that a rocket was to have been sent up from John-
son’s Island. The Sandusky people tell of some intended
signal from the cupola of the West House, which stands
only a few rods from the bay. But the most reasonable
version is that given in the report of the affair by Jacob
Thompson to Secretary Benjamin,29 according to which
Cole was to have had a messenger meet Beall at Kelly’s
Island with directions as to further movements. The later
investigations of Gen. Dix indicated that four men, one
of whom had been pretending to sell sewing machines on
Kelly’s Island, did join the conspirators when the Parsons
touched there, but evidently the desired message did not
come, for Beall’s followers lost faith in their power to
capture with hatchets and pistols even so feeble a man-of-
war as the Michigan, all except Burley and two others
refusing to carry the enterprise any further. Judge Lucas
represents Beall as furious over this mutiny, as he regarded
it, and as insisting, when he found his followers were not
to be moved by argument, expostulation, or threat, that
they should put their resolution into writing as a proof of
their own insubordination and as a vindication of himself.
29. O. R., ser. 1, v. 43, pt. 2, pp. 930-6. Reprinted in O. R. (N), ser. 1.
v. 3, p. 714. Thompson’s letter is dated Toronto, Dec. 3, 1864. It is preceded
(p. 914) by an unsigned letter from St. Catharines, dated November 1st, prob-
ably by his colleague, C. C. Clay, which, however, adds only misinformation
regarding the raid. Gen. Dix says Thompson was at Col. Steele’s house near
Sandwich so late as September 17th.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND, PLOT.
Accordingly the following30 was drawn up on the back
of a bill of lading and signed by those whose names are
appended:
On board the Philo Parsons,
September 20, 1864.
We the undersigned, crew of the boat aforesaid, take pleasure in
expressing our admiration of the gentlemanly bearing, skill, and
courage of Captain John Y. Beall as a commanding officer and a
gentleman, but believing and being well convinced that the enemy is
already apprised of our approach, and is so well prepared that we
cannot by any possibility make it a success, and having already cap-
tured two boats, we respectfully decline to prosecute it any further.
J. S. Riley, M. D.,
H. B. Barkley,
R. F. Smith,
David H. Ross,
R. B. Drake,
James Brotherton,
M. H. Duncan,
W. B. King,
Joseph Y. Clark.
Wm. Byland,
Robert G. Harris,
W. C. Holt,
Tom S. Major,
N. S. Johnston,
John Bristol,
F. H. Thomas,
J. G. Odoer,
With great reluctance on the part of Beall, who, Judge
Lucas says, maintained during the short remainder of his
life that the plot would have succeeded but for what he
styled the cowardice of the mutineers, the prow of the
Parsons was turned in the direction of the Detroit River,
and the frightened people of the islands, who were out
burying their valuables, saw her rushing past in the dark-
ness “like a scared pickerel.,,sl An incident of the journey
30.	Given in Thomas H. Hines’s account of “The Northwestern Con-
spiracy,” Southern Bivouac, v. 2, p. 700, April, 1887.
31.	In her account of the raid, Harper’s Magazine, v. 47, p. 32, June,
1873, Constance F. Woolson quotes this phrase as if used at the time. She
says the raiders asked Capt. Orr of the Island Queen if many strangers had
come to Sandusky that morning, and if there was any excitement there. This
apparently refers to the force that Cole was expected but evidently failed to
collect. The passengers are quoted as being favorably impressed by Beall, but as
describing Burley as a “perfect desperado” in appearance. But in a note to the
writer Judge Henry B. Brown says of Burley: “I was quite taken with him
when I had him in the House of Correction at Detroit and was rather glad
when he finally escaped.” This agrees with the impression he created when in
custody at Port Clinton, as will be seen later on. There was, however, a wide
difference in the point of view.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
33
was the partial hoisting by the mate, under compulsion, of
a Confederate flag for doubtless the first and last time on
a vessel plying the waters of Lake Erie. When the Par-
sons entered the mouth of the Detroit River it was inti-
mated that some vessels near by would have been boarded,
had not the party reached Canadian waters, and there was
some talk of going ashore and burning the house on Grosse
Isle of a Detroit banker named Ives. A small boat laden
with plunder from the Parsons was sent ashore about three
miles above Malden (Amherstburgh), and at Fighting Isl-
and, about 8 o’clock Tuesday morning, most of the pris-
oners still detained aboard, including Capt. Orr of the
Queen and Mate Nichols of the Parsons, were landed. At
Sandwich the steamer tied up, and a pianoforte, mirrors,
chairs, trunks, and bedclothes having been put ashore, and
the engineer having been compelled to cut the injection
pipe, so that the boat would sink, she was abandoned, and
the raiders disappeared. Two who were arrested by the
Canadian authorities were discharged by justices of the
peace after a detention of a couple of hours, though the
customs officials were sufficiently vigilant to seize some of
the American property that had been landed, on the ground
that it had paid no duty. The damage to the Parsons was
estimated at $6,000, and that to the Queen at $3,000, but
both boats were running again in about a week. The Par-
sons, however, made no more landings on the Canadian
side and naturally carried few passengers during the re-
mainder of the season.'
V. The Welcome Awaiting Them.
Just how Beall purposed to carry the Michigan has never
been satisfactorily cleared up. To approach her the Par-
sons would have had to take a course so different from
that she usually followed in entering Sandusky Bay as
to have aroused suspicion on the warship, which lay off84
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
the island for the very purpose of guarding against an
attack of this character. One of the first things she had
done on her arrival was to take the bearings of the channel
entrance so as to get the exact elevation and range for her
fifteen guns, which consisted of a 68-pounder smooth bore
Paxton mounted forward on a pivot, six 30-pounder rifled
Parrotts forward on the spar deck, six 25-pounder Dahl-
grens aft on the quarter deck, and two 12-pounder howit-
zers on the hurricane deck. Even if Cole had succeeded in
his plan of getting some of the officers ashore for a carouse
and of drugging them, there still would have been left on
board Capt. Carter himself and two of the three line
officers,32 for only one was allowed off duty at a time. Capt.
Hunter has an ingenious theory that it was intended to set
fire to the Parsons when she reached the entrance to San-
dusky Bay. The Michigan would of course have sent boats
to rescue the supposed passengers, and these Beall's men
could have captured and with them have surprised the war-
ship. Capt. Hunter even says that the Parsons had in her
cargo twenty-five barrels of coal tar, which he learned about
when the affair was investigated by a federal grand jury
of Cleveland a month later. The writer has failed to find
any reference to the tar in contemporary writings on either
side, but according to a story told a reporter by a watch-
man on board the Parsons, the latter prepared under Beall's
directions three combustible balls out of bagging, grease,
and camphene, and when Gen. Dix examined the steam-
boat a week after the raid these or something similar were
shown to him, but he supposed they were intended for use
in burning either the house of Banker Ives or the Parsons
herself when she was abandoned at Sandwich.
But there is no sort of doubt concerning the nature of
the reception which Beall actually would have met. All
night the Michigan had lain cleared for action—her guns
shotted, steam on the engine, anchor hove short, officers and
32. At one time a tug, the Gen. Burnside, manned by a crew from the
Michigan, did patrol duty in Sandusky Bay; whether she was in service in
September, 1864, does not appear.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
35
men at quarters, and all hands straining their eyes to catch
a glimpse through the darkness of the rebel Parsons. Sat-
urday, two days before Beall boarded the Parsons, Lieut.-
Col. Bennett H. Hill, commanding the district of Michigan,
had been called on at Detroit by a man purporting to be a
Confederate refugee in Canada, who gave him such infor-
mation that he sent the following dispatch33 to the Michi-
gan's commander:
Detroit, Sept. 17, 1864.
Capt. J. C. Carter:
It is reported to me that some of the officers and men of your
steamer have been tampered with, and that a party of rebel refugees
leave Windsor tomorrow with the expectation of getting possession
of your steamer.
B. H. Hill,
Lieutenant-Colonel, U. S. Army, Military Commander.
Possibly Hill's informant can be identified with one
Smith, a former Confederate who kept a hotel in Windsor
frequented by rebel refugees and who, according to Edward
A. Sowles's history of the St. Albans raid, on other occa-
sions contributed information to Federal officials. Who-
ever he was, he visited Hill again Sunday with such further
statements as to enable him to telegraph Monday:
Detroit, Sept. 19, 1864.
Capt. J. C. Carter, U. S. Navy:
It is said the parties will embark today at Malden on board the
Philo Parsons, and will seize either that steamer or another running
from Kelly’s Island. Since my last dispatch am again assured that
officers and men have been bought by a man named Cole; a few men
to be introduced on board under guise of friends of officers; an
officer named Eddy to be drugged. Both Commodore Gardner and
myself look upon the matter as serious.
B. H. Hill,
Lieut.-Col., U. S. Army, Acting Assistant Provost-Marshal General.
Hill visited the Parsons early Monday morning and,
after mature consideration, decided to let the plot proceed,
if there were any plot, in order to capture the conspirators,
rather than to frighten them off by putting an armed force
33. O. R., ser. 2, v. 7, p. 842.36
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
aboard the steamer. While this course was not unnatural,
in view of the frequent false alarms to which the Federal
authorities were subjected, it must be admitted that it might
have caused the unnecessary sacrifice of innocent lives.
Upon receiving Hill’s first message Carter had telegraphed
in reply on Sunday that he was ready, but that the sugges-
tion of treachery on board the Michigan must be unfounded.
It was doubtless on the receipt of the second dispatch that
Carter sent for Hunter, as the latter now recalls that event-
ful day, and told him that he was to be sent to Detroit.
Hunter, being an old lake mariner, and having many ac-
quaintances at the Canadian ports, had on previous occa-
sions been detailed to watch the maneuvers of rebel refugees,
and his commander must have had some design of this
sort in his mind, but while Hunter was eating his dinner
Capt. Carter adopted a different plan. He again sent for
Hunter, showed him the dispatch, and asked him about the
loyalty of the officers and men. The ensign vouched for
them all except one steward, whom he suspected of eaves-
dropping. In reply to an inquiry indicating that Carter
had never heard of Cole before, Hunter told him what he
knew of that worthy, and after going ashore and arranging
with Col. Hill to send a force to the railroad station to
arrest any conspirators that might arrive by train, Capt.
Carter instructed Ensign Hunter to arrest Cole in such a
manner as to avoid alarming any accomplices he might have
in Sandusky. Just before Hunter left the Michigan with
the barge on this errand a steward who had been ashore
that morning told him that Cole wanted to see him. On
reaching the shore Hunter had the barge’s bow turned
towards the lake and, contrary to custom, instructed her
crew to remain by her, at the same time telling the cox-
swain, Peter Turley, to follow him and be ready on a signal
to come to his assistance.
Cole was found in one of the parlors of the West House
with the woman, their trunk packed and bill paid in prepara-
tion for departure. He told Hunter that he wanted threeTHE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
37
of the Michigan’s officers, himself included, to participate
in a dinner party that night at the Seven Mile House, a
suburban resort. There were to be girls in the party. Hun-
ter begged off on the false pretense that he was to be on
duty, but on second thought suggested that Cole should go
on board with him and see if he could get leave. Hunter
was invited to take a drink out of the ever-ready demijohn,
but mindful of what the dispatch had said of drugging his
fellow ensign, Eddy, the officer made the excuse for not
swallowing his whisky that his mouth was full of tobacco;
but after seeing Cole himself drink, and making sure there
was no pretense about it, he followed his example. Then
he accompanied Cole to a bank, where the latter drew out
$900 in gold, Coxswain Turley following in their wake and
dodging from lamp post to lamp post. After a return to
the hotel and more drinks in the company of an army officer,
Hunter took his man by the arm and walked in a friendly
way to the wharf where lay the barge, on reaching which
he gave Cole a vigorous push that tumbled him into the
boat, Hunter and the coxswain following immediately, the
former shouting an order to “Give way.”
Cole, who had no notion of risking his neck aboard the
Michigan, protested vigorously and insisted on being put
ashore, but Hunter told him he was a prisoner, which Cole
would not believe, or pretended he would not, and offered
to treat the boat’s crew, counting up the eleven of them and
remarking that it would take a whole gallon of whisky. To
this Coxswain Turley, who had no business to say anything,
replied:	“You have not money enough in your pocket to
treat us today,” whereupon the prisoner seemed to lose the
courage which had hitherto supported him.
On reaching the ship Cole was taken to the Commander’s
cabin, where he offered to explain everything in five minutes
in private, but Capt. Carter refused to permit Hunter to
go away, instructing him to search the prisoner while he
covered him with Cole’s own revolver. Among the papers
found was Cole’s commission as a major in a Tennessee38
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
regiment. On the strength of other papers found on him,
as Hunter says, or of his admissions, as the “Official Rec-
ords” have it, several supposed accomplices in Sandusky
were also arrested. A young fellow named Robinson, who
was little better than half witted, was detained with Cole
until long after the war closed; of the others, Dr. Stanley;
Strain, a hardware merchant; Williams, his former partner,
and one Brown were released in a few days, and if they
had any criminal secret they carried it to their graves, but
the belief in Sandusky seems to be that they were guilty
of nothing worse than an imprudently expressed sympathy
with the South. The remaining two, J. B. Merrick and
Lewis Rosenthal, were tried on a charge of conspiracy in
June, 1865, before a United States court in Cleveland, the
principal witnesses against them being Cole, Robinson, and
the woman who had lived with Cole at the West House,
but the evidence of this precious trio was so lightly regarded
that they were acquitted.34 It is said in Sandusky that it
was afterwards discovered that Rosenthal, who was a Jew-
ish clothier, had come thither from Richmond.
The arrest of Cole was effected about 3 p. mv and while
it was in progress Acting Master Martin, the executive
officer of the Michigan, had by Capt. Carter’s command got
the ship ready for action. All night a keen watch was kept
for the Parsons, but nothing was seen of her, which is
inexplicable in view of the testimony of her mate that those
on board at one time caught a glimpse of the Michigan. At
daylight the latter got under way and began a search for
the “pirate.” At Kelly’s Island, where she touched, the
people had been so thoroughly frightened by the events of
Monday that none of them showed themselves, and there
was nobody to take the Michigan’s line until the huge form
of her pilot35 was recognized, and the people on shore were
34.	The Cleveland papers of June 14-16, 1865, contain the only informa-
tion concerning the trial of Merrick and Rosenthal that the writer has been
able to find.
35.	His name was William Hinton, and Capt. Hunter says he weighed
nearly 300 pounds and had a voice in proportion to his builk. He was pilot of
the Michigan for over twenty years and was widely known on the Great Lakes,THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
89
thus assured that she was still in the hands of her rightful
crew. The islanders 36 could give no information regarding
the Parsons, and the Michigan continued her way north-
ward, picking up in rowboats Ashley, the clerk, and a son
of John Brown of Ossawatomie, both of whom were on
their way to Sandusky to give the alarm. At the mouth of
the Detroit River nothing could be learned from vessels
which had just come down, and Capt. Carter called a con-
sultation of officers in his cabin, at which Hunter expressed
the opinion that they had left without authority the island
which it was their duty to guard and had better go back
to their station at once. Capt. Carter accepted this view,
and the Michigan proceeded toward Sandusky, catching a
sight on the way of the sunken Island Queen on Chickeno-
lee Reef. It was with a feeling of much relief that as the
Michigan entered the bay at about 3 p. m. her officers saw
the stars and stripes still waving over Johnson’s Island.37
On the arrival of Gen. Dix, commanding the Department
of the East, a few days later, Cole was sent ashore to the
In a history of the Michigan read before the Erie County (Pa.) Historical
Society March 7, 1905, by Captain William B. Brooks, U. S. N., and im-
perfectly printed in the Erie Dispatch of March 12, 1905, reference is made to
the participation of Hinton in the arrest of James J. Strang, the Mormon king
of Beaver Island, in 1853. Capt. Brooks is one of the two surviving officers of
the Michigan when she carried Strang to Detroit.
36.	Mrs. Francis C. Clark of Pacific Grove, Monterey Co., Cal., was living
on South Bass Island at the time and describes the fright of the people as ex-
treme, in a letter to Capt. Hunter. A young man came to her father’s house
about ten in the evening, exclaiming: “Oh, Doctor, come quick; my mother is
in spasms. The rebs have captured the Parsons and the Queen, and there is no
knowing how many are on the island.” She admits being frightened herself,
although she could not believe there were any Confederates on South Bass,
knowing that they had more important business elsewhere. Her husband was one
of the party that started with Capt. John Brown, Jr., for Johnson’s Island to
give the alarm. She afterwards saw Cole in custody on Johnson’s Island and
has always wondered why he was not hanged.
37.	Col. Charles W. Hill reported to the Washington authorities that the
Michigan went out at daylight and returned about 3, adding, “I have one thirty
and six twenty-pounder Parrotts and three twelve-pounder howitzers on the
island, and a six-gun light battery, New York, at Sandusky, and by calling in
my fatigue parties, extra duty men, and recruits, could have a force of near
900 available men on the island as infantry and heavy artillery.”—O. R., ser.
1, v. 39, pt. 2, p. 428.40
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
island, where for a time he was kept in a tent by himself
under guard.
The remainder of his story is soon told. At the end of
the month he was taken to Cleveland, with Robinson, who
is supposed to have been the messenger through whom he
communicated with the Canadian plotters, to be examined
before a grand jury. Hunter and others told their story to
the authorities, but no indictment seems to have been framed,
presumably from lack of other evidence than Cole’s own,
which was worthless even against himself. In the summer
of 1865 a representative of the national Department of Jus-
tice investigated his case and made a report38 thereon, the
gist of which was that he was clearly guilty of several
offenses, the least of which was a breach of his parole, but
that it would be difficult to convict him of a share in the
Confederate plot. In consequence he was transferred to
Fort Lafayette, where Major Stiles had the misfortune to
be lodged in the same casemate with him and to witness
his coaching of the half imbecile Robinson as to the lies
the latter should tell when their cases came to trial.39 The
Major had been on Johnson’s Island with Cole and had the
strongest aversion to him. In fact, he says that a greater
scoundrel and reprobate never went unhung, and he would
have remonstrated against being confined with him, had not
Robinson, who was in mortal terror of Cole, literally on his
knees besought the Major not to leave him alone with that
man. In February, 1866, Cole was released 40 on habeas cor-
pus proceedings by a Brooklyn judge, and he thenceforth
fades out of history, except that in the Philadelphia Press
article to which reference has been made he is represented
as having served under Maximilian in Mexico and as having
later become a railroad promoter in Texas; but Galveston
newspaper people, of whom inquiry was made, never heard
of him, and the Press article, being professedly based on
Cole’s own statements, is entitled to no credit when uncon-
firmed by other evidence.
38.	O. R., ser. 2, v. 8, p. 708.
39.	Communication from the late Maj. Stiles to the writer.
40.	O. R., ser. 2, v. 8, p. 881.THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
41
VI. The Doom of Beall.
A far more tragic fate was that of Beall. His move-
ments after the Lake Erie affair cannot be followed closely,
but in December he participated in repeated attempts to
wreck passenger trains on the Lake Shore Railroad just
outside of Buffalo. These exploits were conducted by Col.
Martin of the Fourteenth Kentucky Cavalry, the organizer
of the conspiracy to burn New York City, and it was after-
wards asserted that the real object was the liberation of
Gens. Cabell and Marmaduke and other prominent Con-
federate prisoners who were on their way from Johnson’s
Island to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, which might be
accepted as plausible but for the fact that three separate
attempts were made on the evenings of December ioth,
nth, and 15th. The purpose probably in view was the
robbery of the express car, and it is only fair, when Beall’s
general character is taken into consideration, to presume
that he was endeavoring to procure the means to undertake
other enterprises similar to that against the Michigan, and
that his own enrichment formed no part of his plan.
Beall was arrested on the evening of December 16th
in the railroad station at Suspension Bridge, on his way
back from Buffalo to Canada, in company with George S.
Anderson, a young Confederate soldier, a native of Pitts-
sylvania County, Va., who had been Col. Martin’s courier
in Morgan’s cavalry, and who ultimately turned state’s
evidence against Beall, although, according to Judge Lucas,
it was in consequence of Beall’s solicitude in Anderson’s
behalf that the arrest took place, the other members of the
party having at Beall’s suggestion walked across the bridge
in safety, while he himself waited with Anderson for a
train. All that the raiders had accomplished had been to
place across the track five or six miles west of Buffalo a
rail which the train had struck without injury. When
arrested Beall and Anderson were supposed to be merely
escaped Confederate prisoners and were so described in
the newspapers, but the former was speedily identified.42
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
A rather touching story about this identification is told
in Sandusky, which, however, does not appear in the offi-
cial account of Beall's trial. It seems that there had been
among the passengers of the Philo Parsons a woman with
a sick child in her arms, who, when the other passengers
were ordered into the cabin or hold, pleaded so piteously
with Beall that her baby would die if not permitted to
remain out on deck, where it could inhale fresh air, that
he yielded to her entreaties. When taken to New York,
where Beall was confined and ushered into his presence, this
woman began to thank him profusely for his consideration
on that occasion. It was in vain that poor Beall protested
that she was mistaken and that she had never before in her
life seen him. The woman insisted on expressing her grati-
tude until Beall gave up the point and asked after the
child's health. The woman need not have suffered any dis-
tress from the thought that she had unwittingly contributed
to her benefactor's doom, for without her evidence the iden-
tification of the prisoner was complete.
He was brought to trial before a military commission
February i, 1865, on charges of violation of the laws of
war and of acting as a spy. The commission, which held its
sessions at Fort Lafayette, consisted of Brigadier-Gens.
Fitz Henry Warren and W. H. Morris, Cols. M. S. Howe
and H. Day, Lieut.-Col. R. F. O'Bierne, and Maj. G. W.
Wallace, with Maj. John A. Bolles acting as Judge Advo-
cate. James T. Brady, one of the most eminent lawyers in
New York, volunteered to act as the prisoner's counsel.
The various specifications charged Beall with seizing the
Philo Parsons, with carrying on warfare as a guerilla, and
with acting as a spy in Ohio and New York, and on Feb-
ruary 8th he was convicted on all of them except one, which
charged him with acting as a spy at Suspension Bridge,
his punishment being fixed at death by hanging. Power-
ful efforts were made by Northern friends of Beall to save
his life, and if Gen. Dix could have been induced to recom-
mend a mitigation of the penalty, President Lincoln wouldTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
43
have granted it. Gen. Roger A. Pryor, who had been con-
fined at Fort Lafayette with Beall and to whom Beall be-
queathed his diary, was now at liberty and secured an
interview with the President in order to intercede for the
condemned man. Mrs. Pryor's “Reminiscences of Peace
and War," says: “Although Mr. Lincoln evinced the sin-
cerest compassion for the young man, and an extreme aver-
sion to his death, he felt constrained to yield to the assur-
ance of Gen. Dix, in a telegram just received, that the exe-
cution was indispensable to the security of the North-
ern cities—it being believed, though erroneously, that Capt.
Beall was implicated in the burning of the New York
hotels." Judge Lucas says that the President's response to
all applications from the first was:	“Gen. Dix may dis-
pose of the case as he pleases—I will not interfere." The
opinion has since been expressed that the Lake Erie offense
might have been overlooked, but that the attempt at train
wrecking put the offender beyond the reach of mercy. The
Rev. Dr. Henry J. Van Dyke of Brooklyn, father of the
present Rev. Dr. Henry J. Van Dyke, visited Beall in his
cell at Fort Columbus the day before his execution and
wrote a letter to a Southern friend in which he described
his bearing with the highest sort of praise and even called
him a martyr.41 Beall was hanged on Governor's Island,
February 24th, a respite from the 18th having been granted
to enable his mother to come North and visit him, as was
stated at the time, though Judge Lucas says the real reason
for the delay was to permit the commission which tried him
to amend its finding on some disputed point. But whatever
the purpose, the postponement did allow a final interview
with his mother. Beall met his fate manfully and in a way
that increased the respect already felt for him by his cus-
todians. It is a curious fact that the gallows used on this
occasion was that on which Gordon, the only man ever
hanged for being a slaver, had suffered. Once in awhile
a story goes the rounds of the newspapers connecting the
assassination of Lincoln with Beall's execution, and a Phila-
41. Southern Bivouac, v. 2, p. 701, April, 1887.44
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
delphia auctioneer is quoted as professing to own docu-
ments which prove that Booth was impelled to his act by
his friendship for Beall and a desire to avenge him. Beall's
friends scout the whole story. Judge Lucas does not believe
that Beall ever saw Booth and remarks that there was no
similarity of conduct between the two, Beall having no
fancy for the sports that attracted Booth, while there is
not the slightest evidence that they were in Canada at the
same time.42 Beall was buried in Greenwood Cemetery,
Brooklyn.
VII. Burley's Extradition.
After the Philo Parsons affair Burley returned to Guelph,
where he had previously stayed and where, Judge Lucas
says, he attracted attention to himself by some experiments
in ordnance or gunnery. This may be a delicate euphuism
for Greek fire, for the “Official Records" of the Rebellion
contain a letter written by him at this time, making inquiry
concerning the use of this incendiary material.43 At the
instance of the United States authorities he was arrested
and taken before the Recorder of Toronto for examination
on the question of his extradition. There had been con-
siderable deliberation on the part of the Federal officials as
to the charge which they should bring against Burley. They
hesitated to accuse him of piracy,44 because some high Brit-
42.	Communication from Judge Lucas to the writer.
43.	O. R. (N), ser. i, v. 3, p. 496.
44.	The obstacles to charging Burley with piracy were appreciated at
once and are noted by Gen. Dix in O. R., ser. 1, v. 43, pt. 2, p. 230. Not only
were the English authorities opposed to the view that the Great Lakes formed
a part of the high seas, but the earlier decisions of our own courts were on the
same line. In March, 1867, Judge Ross Wilkins regretfully discharged, for
lack of jurisdiction by a federal court, Henry Miller, who had been convicted
of wilfully procuring the setting on fire of the passenger steamer Morning
Star, plying between Cleveland and Detroit. But in 1893 the question of the
criminal jurisdiction of the federal courts over the Great Lakes came squarely
before the United States Supreme Court. Robert S. Rodgers and others had
been indicted for assaulting with a deadly weapon one James Downs on boardTHE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
45
ish authorities were pledged to the opinion that Lake Erie
was not a sea and were unwilling to admit that piracy
could be committed on its waters. While the Attorney-
General thought, with some hesitation, that Burley’s extra-
dition as a pirate might be asked, he advised that the
charge should be robbery and assault with intent to commit
murder. A twenty-dollar greenback, which was among the
bills taken from Ashley by Beall and Burley, was selected
upon which to base the accusation, most of the work of
representing the United States falling to Henry B. Brown,
then Assistant-Attorney for the Michigan District, now one
of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, who
says of the matter:45 “I had a very lively time with him
(Burley) in Toronto, which was filled with rebels, and for
a time it looked as though I should fail to get my man.”
Burley’s chief defense was his commission46 as an acting
master in the Confederate navy signed at Richmond, Sep-
the American excursion steamer Alaska while in Canadian waters in August,
1887. In this matter (U. S. vs. Rodgers, U. S., 150, sometimes absurdly called
the “Alaska piracy case”) it was decided that the United States courts had
jurisdiction, although, to the lay mind at least, the minority opinion of Judges
Brown and Gray, that the Great Lakes were not a part of the high seas because
not open to the commerce of the world, seems the more convincing. Between
the rise of this case and its final decision, however, Congress had passed, at the
instance of Senator McMillan, it is said, and probably as a result of the Rodgers
case, the law of Sept. 4, 1890, providing for the punishment by the federal courts
of crimes committed anywhere upon the Great Lakes.
45.	Communication from Judge Brown to the writer.
46.	It is a question even if this commission had not been antedated.
William Armstrong, civil engineer and artist, of Toronto, tells the writer: “I
taught one of the Southern officers photography, and an important message was
required to be sent to J. Davis. I suggested the reducing of the message by
photography on mica, which plan was adopted. I printed in large letters on a
flat paper the message and reduced it to the size of five buttons. The negatives
were then placed under the usual covering of buttons by Mr. Walker, tailor of
King Street. The messenger wore the coat and got through to J. Davis. An-
other message was sent written in the lining of a carpet bag, and when the
messenger reached the Southern lines he was told he need not proceed, as the
man with the buttons had gone ahead. I (afterwards) met J. Davis at a dinner
given by the artillery officers in his honor, and after mess I asked him if he
remembered the button message, and he seemed much pleased to meet the
author of it. No one in Toronto except Mr. Walker knew anything about the
matter. As well as I can remember, the purport of the message on the buttons
was to get Burley’s commission antedated so as to cover the P. Parsons es-
capade.”46
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
tember n, 1863, on which there was an endorsement dated
Richmond, December 22, 1864, in the form of a proclama-
tion by President Davis, declaring that the Parsons enter-
prise was a belligerent expedition ordered and undertaken
under the authority of the Confederate government and for
which that government assumed responsibility.
On January 20th Recorder Duggan committed Burley
for surrender, holding that his acts, being against a non-
combatant and involving a violation of neutral territory,
were not acts of lawful war. A writ of habeas corpus hav-
ing been granted by Justice Hagarty, there was an extended
hearing before Chief Justice Draper of the Queen’s Bench,
with whom sat Chief Justice Richards of the Common Pleas
and Justices Hagarty and John Wilson. Their unanimous
decision remanding the prisoner for extradition is treated
at considerable length in the books on the law of extra-
dition and is given in full in the Upper Canada Law Jour-
nal (New Series, Vol. 1). In brief, Judge Draper held
that, even if Burley had the sanction of the Confederate
authorities, President Davis’s manifesto forbade any vio-
lation of neutral territory, and that Burley’s acts estab-
lished a prima facie case of robbery, the matters alleged
in his defense being proper to be submitted to a jury in
the jurisdiction where the offense was committed. Judge
Wilson said that there was an obvious distinction between
an order to do a belligerent act and the recognition and
avowal of such an act after it had been done. One was
an act of war, and the other was not. “For us judicially
to give effect to the avowal and adoption of this act would
be to recognize the existence of the nationality of the Con-
federate States, which at present our government refuses
to recognize.” Judge Richards, noting that the charge
upon which Burley had been arrested was one of robbery
and that the warrant of commitment before the court was
for this crime, said: “When surrendered I apprehend that
the United States government would, in good faith, be
bound to try him for the offense upon which he is sur-
rendered.”THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
47
In view of this last statement and of the anxiety of Bur-
ley’s father lest his son should be tried in the United States
on a charge of piracy, the following passage from Sir
Edward Clark’s “Treatise upon the Law of Extradition” pos-
sesses special interest: “The minutes of the evidence taken
in 1868 by the select committee of the House of Commons
contain a very singular statement with regard to this case,
made by the Right Hon. Edmund Hammond,47 the perma-
nent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He said: Tt
was suggested that the American Government contemplated
putting him on his trial for piracy, which, however, did not
prove to have been the case; but he seems to have been
charged in the United States, though not with us, before
the Canadian authorities, with assault with intent to com-
mit murder. The question was referred to the law officers
of this country, and it was held that, if the United States
put him bona fide on his trial for the offense in respect of
which he was given up, it would be difficult to question
their right to put him upon his trial also for piracy, or any
other offense which he might be accused of committing
within their territory, whether or not such offense was a
ground of extradition or even within the treaty.’ ” Eleven
years later the officials of the British Foreign Office found
it necessary to wriggle out of this remarkable concession
the best way they could; but we are chiefly concerned here
with the evidence that our State Department had so per-
sisted in the assumption that Burley’s offense was assault
with intent to commit murder that by 1868 the British Gov-
ernment had begun to believe that he had actually been
47. Afterwards Baron Hammond of Kirk Ella, Kingston-upon-Hull. He
was a son of the first British Minister to the United States and was for fifty
years connected with the Foreign Office. The whole matter of Burley’s extra-
dition was threshed over at length in the House of Lords in 1876 in the dis-
cussion of the British refusal to give up Winslow. Lord Hammond took part
in the debate, and summaries of the speeches made by him, Lord Derby, and
others, as well as what seems to be the entire Burley correspondence between
the British and American governments, will be found in “Papers Relating to the
Foreign Relations of the United States,” 1876, p. 261 et seq. The earlier
communications are here reprinted from “Diplomatic Correspondence,” for
1864 and 1865, v. 2 in each case.48
THE JOHNSON’S ISLAND PLOT.
tried on such a charge. This was not the case, although in
1876, in the controversy over the Winslow extradition mat-
ter, Secretary Fish assured them: “In the case of Burley,
extradited from Canada on a charge of robbery, the pris-
oner was tried on assault with intent to kill.” Neither is
the statement true which Prof. John Bassett Moore quotes
in his work on “Extradition and Interstate Rendition,” from
a British parliamentary document, that when the Burley
jury disagreed he “was released on small bail, left, and did
not reappear.”
While it is a fact that in demanding the extradition of
Burley in November, 1864, Secretary Seward had referred
to him as “charged with the crimes of piracy, robbery, and
assault with intent to commit murder,” he was arrested
and extradited on a simple charge of robbery, as has al-
ready been shown. Moreover, when he was given up, Feb-
ruary 5, 1865, Lord Monck notified the home government
that in the warrant for his delivery the accused was “charged
with having committed robbery within the jurisdiction of
the United States.” Burley was detained in the Detroit
House of Correction for some time, while the authorities
were considering what steps should be taken in his case.
His father, fearing that a trial for piracy would ensue,
sought to enlist the good offices of the English Government
in his son’s behalf, with the result that the decision in the
matter already noted was reached and was communicated
by Lord John Russell to the British representative in Wash-
ington, J. Hume Burnley. Instead of informing Secretary
Seward of the true position of his Government conceding
the right to try the offender on a charge of piracy, Mr.
Burnley wrote to the Secretary of State that the British
Government, in connection with the proper law advisers
of the crown, having had the matter under consideration,
were of the opinion that if the United States, having ob-
tained the extradition on the charge of robbery, did not
put Burley on trial on this charge, but upon another, viz. :
piracy, this would be a breach of good faith, against whichTHE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
49
Her Majesty’s Government might justly remonstrate. He
added truthfully that he was instructed to protest against
any attempt to change the grounds of accusation upon
which Burley was surrendered. To this Secretary Seward
responded under date of March 20th:
“The Hon. the Attorney-General informs me that it is his pur-
pose to bring the offender to trial in the courts of the states of Ohio
and Michigan for the crimes committed by him against the munici-
pal laws of those states; namely, robbery and assault with intent
to commit murder. He was delivered by the Canadian authorities
upon a requisition which was based upon charges of those crimes,
and also upon a charge of piracy, which is triable not by states
courts, but by the courts of the United States. I am not prepared
to admit the principle claimed in the protest of Her Majesty’s Gov-
ernment; namely, that the offender could not lawfully be tried for
the crime of piracy under the circumstances of the case. Neverthe-
less, the question raised upon it has become an abstraction, as it is
at present the purpose of the Government to bring him to trial for
the crimes against municipal law only.”
It was finally decided that Burley should be tried in
Port Clinton, the capital of Ottawa County, Ohio, which
includes the waters where his offense was committed. Mon-
day, July To, 1865, he was brought from Detroit on the
Philo Parsons to Sandusky Bay, where Sheriff James Lat-
timore, who still lives to tell the story, met him with a
smaller steamer and took him to the Port Clinton jail. The
journal of the Common Pleas Court shows that at the June
term the grand jury had reported an indictment for rob-
bery against him. A week later he was brought to trial
before Judge John Fitch of Toledo, the evidence seemingly
being chiefly confined to the circumstances under which
Beall and Burley presented revolvers at Ashley and forced
him to give up what money he had in his possession. Ac-
cording to the Toledo Blade of July 18th, Judge Fitch
charged the jury that the prisoner and other persons con-
nected with him in the capture of the boat, acting for and
under orders from the Confederate Government, would not
be amenable to our civil tribunals for the offense, but that50
THE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
the taking of the money from the clerk of the boat might
or might not belong to and form a part of the expedition.
If the parties who took the money intended to take and
appropriate it to their own private use, and did not take
it for the Confederate Government, and as a part of the
military expedition, then the prisoner would be guilty of
the offense; but in carrying out the expedition the parties
had the same right, in a military point of view, to take
other articles of property, or even money, that they had
to take the boat. The jury disagreed, standing, according
to the sheriff’s recollection, six to six, though another tra-
dition is that the vote was eight to four in favor of con-
viction. Doubtless, the fact that the war was over had
much to do with the difference between the fate of Beall
and that of Burley. In lack of $3,000 bail the latter was
taken back to the Port Clinton jail with the expectation
that he would be tried again at the October term.
The jail was a very inadequate structure for its pur-
pose, for outsiders could easily communicate with the in-
mates without the knowledge of their custodians. On one
occasion the sheriff’s wife, as she was leaving the residence
part of the jail, caught a glimpse of two young women
who were talking with Burley through his window, and
although they departed too quickly to be recognized, one
of them was afterward identified by a letter found in the
jail. Burley also succeeded in getting possession of an
extra table knife which he turned into a fine saw. He made
many friends in Port Clinton who used to pass his mail
through the window to him without submitting it to the
sheriff for examination, and indeed Sheriff Lattimore found
his prisoner such an agreeable companion that he sometimes
took him down street with him. One Sunday noon in Sep-
tember the sheriff, taking with him his wife, his man ser-
vant, and his maid servant, drove into the country to inspect
his farm and visit his brother, leaving Burley, who was
the only prisoner, alone in the jail. In the evening he sent
the two servants to town to do the chores and feed theTHE JOHNSON'S ISLAND PLOT.
51
prisoner, but when they reached the jail they found the
door open and Burley gone. He had procured a key, which
let him into the sheriff’s residence, from which he had
escaped by a window. That he had help from outside was
proved by the fact that the window was propped open by
a limb from a tree that stood near. The sheriff expended
about $100 in vain efforts to secure his recapture, but the
people generally were well satisfied with the outcome, especi-
ally the County Commissioners, since they despaired of a
conviction and begrudged the expense of Burley’s main-
tenance and the cost of a second trial.48 Afterwards one
William Mulcahy of Bay township owned that he hid and
cared for the fugitive for a week or two, finally taking him
disguised to Detroit and across the river to Windsor.49
He expected to be well rewarded for his services by Bur-
ley, but never heard from him again. The sheriff, how-
ver, received a letter from his former prisoner, asking that
his books, of which he left a large number in the jail,
might be forwarded to him in Canada. This was shown
to the County Commissioners, who told the sheriff they
were glad Burley was gone and advised him to get any of
his money back that he could. So he wrote the fugitive
that if he would send him a certain amount, which he has
now forgotten, the books should be sent. In due time the
money came, and the books were boxed and expressed to
their owner, which closed Burley’s transactions with the
county of Ottawa, except that the case against him is still
supposed to be open.
In the interval between the capture of the Philo Par-
sons and the close of the war considerable alarm was ex-
cited in the Great Lakes cities over the movements of the
steamer Georgian, the control of which had been secured
by the Confederate refugees in Canada. But either as a
result of the vigilance of the Federal authorities or from
a lack of such an enterprising spirit as that of Beall, what-
ever plans of mischief had been conceived came to naught.
48.	The story of Burley’s escape was communicated to the writer by Mr.
Lattimore himself.
49.	Mulcahy admitted this to John Detlefs, now deputy auditor of Ottawa
County, who communicated it to the writer.