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Text originally published in 1954 under the same title.
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Publishers Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
CONFEDERATE AGENT: A DISCOVERY IN HISTORY
BY
JAMES D. HORAN
ILLUSTRATIONS
Thomas H. Hines (1864)
Group photograph of Captain Hines, General Morgan and Colonel Eastin (1863)
Captain John Breckinridge Castleman
Colonel George St. Leger Grenfel
Page from the Sons of Liberty ritual book
View of the courtyard of the Ohio Penitentiary
View of the Ohio Penitentiary
Sketch of the escape from the Ohio Penitentiary
Governor Oliver Morton of Indiana
Colonel Henry B. Carrington of Indiana
Felix Stidger, Union agent
Basil Duke, second in command of Morgans cavalry
A rare photograph of General John Hunt Morgan (1863)?
Cell block of the Ohio Penitentiary
Jacob Thompson, chief of the Confederate Mission in Canada
Clement C. Clay, member of the Confederate Mission in Canada
Cover of the New Testament containing saws which Hines sent to Castleman in prison
Pages from the Bible, showing verses marked by Hines
Poster announcing reward for arrest of fugitives from the Ohio Penitentiary
Page from the Atlantic Monthly , July, 1865
A Hines order signed by Secretary of War Seddon
Order sent by the Signal Bureau for Hines
A message written in cipher among the Hines Papers
A Confederate decoding machine
A decoded message among the Hines Papers
Dispatch from Secretary of War Seddon to General Polk
Extract from Hines first report to Seddon
Letter written by Phineas Wright, editor of the New York Daily News
Letter written by Francis Jones to his mother from Maine
A page from Francis Jones confession
A copy of Captain Castlemans expense account
One of the 13 saws concealed in the New Testament Hines sent Castleman in prison
Abraham Lincolns letter for Captain Castleman
Conspiracy charges against Harrison H. Dodd
Clement L. Vallandigham
Acting Master John Yates Beall
The U.S.S. Michigan
Lieutenant Bennet H. Young (1864)
View of the crowded prison yard of Camp Douglas
James Shanks, who betrayed Hines
The Rock Island prison camp
Nancy Sproule Hines, shortly after her marriage
Street map of Chicago used by Hines
Newspaper sketch of the arrest of Captain Cole
Street map of section of Chicago near Camp Douglas
Newspaper sketch of Colonel Vincent Marmaduke
Newspaper sketch showing prison riot
Extracts from J. J. Bettersworths letter to Hines
Hines note to his wife, written on the back of Bettersworths letter
Marriage certificate of Tom Hines and Nancy Sproule
Lieutenant John W. Headley
Colonel Robert M. Martin
Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt
The New York hotels set afire by the Confederates
Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas
A view of the entrance to Fort Jefferson, showing the moat
New York Herald account of the fire raid
Extracts from Judge Advocate General Holts report to Secretary of War Stanton
Holts signature on his report to Stanton
Secretary of State Benjamins order sending Hines back to Toronto
Colonel Ben M. Andersons expense account
Bill of sale of the Canadian Eagle
Two pages from Hines diary, written in Toronto
Letter from Hines to a friend in Kentucky
Accounting by Hines of money spent in the Northwest Conspiracy
REPORT OF AN AUTHORS SEARCH FOR SECRET HISTORY
I FIRST became acquainted with Captain Thomas H. Hines, Confederate States of America, and the Northwest Conspiracy in 1951 while examining the love letters and dispatches of Rose ONeal Greenhow, the Wild Rose of the Confederacy, among the captured Confederate correspondence, State Department Records, National Archives, in Washington, D. C.
I wanted to determine whether there was enough material for a full biography of the pretty Rebel spy. Unfortunately, her flamboyant life had to be confined to a chapter in a book about fascinatingand desperatewomen. But among these papers was the story of her death in a howling storm off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina, while trying to run the blockade. James Holcomb, who, with Horace Greeley, had attended the peace conference at Niagara Falls, was in the small lifeboat with Rose when it overturned. As the Richmond correspondent of the London Times reported, Holcomb barely escaped with his life but saved the confidential documents he was taking to the Confederate ministers Mason and Slidell in London.
Holcomb, the Wild Rose and secret dispatches from Niagara Falls...they all added up to a mystery that needed looking into. I knew something of the peace meeting at Niagara at which Greeley was hoodwinked by the smooth-talking Confederate agents. But why was Holcomb running the blockade to Richmond instead of London?
Greeleys Papers in the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library and his published memoirs mentioned the conference. A man named George N. Sanders seemed to have been pulling wires, behind the scenes, to manipulate the actions of the Confederate agents. Who was this Sanders? Who were Captains Thomas H. Hines and John Breckinridge Castleman, C.S.A.?
A reading of Castlemans memoirs, Active Service , published half a century ago in Louisville, Kentucky, and the abridged version of their adventures in the Southern Bivouac gave me my first hint of the scope of the Northwest Conspiracy. Castlemans reminiscences of his boyhood on the family plantation are vivid, but the exciting adventures he shared with Hines are curiously blurred and disjointed, as though purposely abridged. However, they did reveal that Hines was the military commander of some secret project, with the Copperheads as its core. Two definitive books on that subject, George Fort Miltons Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column and Wood Grays The Hidden Civil War, told me about the Copperhead movement. Gray, too, seemed intrigued with Captain Hines, whose wartime exploits would merit the pen of an E. Phillips Oppenheim.
