March 13, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Wild Bill Donovan penned a letter to President Roosevelt expressing the need for the United States to have special forces units in WWII (which would eventually become the OSS and later the CIA), he looked back at America’s first modern conflict—the Civil War—and the group that attempted the first color revolution in history: the Confederate Secret Service. Patrick K. O'Donnell, author of The Unvanquished, tells the story of this secretive group that could have easily altered the course of the Civil War.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. The story of
April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five often plays out like this.
John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices solely planned and then
attempted to decapitate the US government following the surrender of
Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in a desperate attempt to
save the Confederacy. The real story is more complicated than that, though.
(00:35):
To understand what happened earlier, we need to understand what
happened later in American history. You are to tell the
story is the best selling author of The Unvanquished, Patrick K. O'Donnell.
Let's get into the story. We interrupt this broadcast to
bring to this important bulletin from the United Press. His
country is at war with Germany.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
She'll never horrendu. In the summer of nineteen forty, the
Axis powers are really on a roll, steamrolling the planet,
and their shadow warfare capabilities, specifically with special operations forces,
(01:20):
are incredibly effective. The United States doesn't have a large
standing army. It's tiny, and it has no special operations
forces or intelligence organization. And it's the special operations component
that while Bill Donovan in particular focuses in on He
knows that having some sort of a commando type group
(01:42):
that can act on intelligence that's gathered from spies is
an important part of the shadow warfare. He kind of
pioneers a combined arms of shadow warfare where they look
at it in its totality, it's intelligence collecting its propaganda,
but it's also operatives special forces as we know today
that were a very big focus. And what we find
(02:07):
in American history is we develop things and then we
lose them. It's almost like a sign curve. And the
United States has a very rich history at special operations
going back all the way to the sixteen eighties and
Benjamin Church and forces that would range and attack Native
Americans because they had to fight in an irregular manner.
But in nineteen forty one, there was no special operations forces.
(02:29):
So Donovan had to look back at something, and he
looked back at our first modern war, the American Civil War,
and he specifically looked back at three groups born in
this cauldron where through the compression of war, they had
(02:49):
to find unique ways to fight back, and they fought
back irregularly through special operations. One was Mosby's Rangers of
the forty third, which is in Virginia. And these are
men that were mounted on horses that attacked Union wagon
trains and captured bridges, and you know, most importantly, they
tied down through their regular warfare tens of thousands of
(03:13):
Union soldiers because they were constantly harassing the supply lines
and causing trouble. It's John Singleton Mosby who develops much
of modern irregular warfare, and there needed to be a
force to counteract that, and that is the Jesse Scouts.
They are the first counterinsurgency unit in the United States Army.
(03:35):
They go after partisans like Mosby, they also lead the
federal armies. They could get out front and they could
gather intelligence on the endity they find the weak points.
They'd communicate messages between the lines. They also went after
high value targets. They went after the South's most dangerous men.
(03:55):
They wear the uniform of their enemy. They wear Confederate uniforms,
which is an incredible dangerous thing to do because if
you're caught, you're considered a spine. Can be executed immediately
and many of these men would die. And that leads
to the third group, the Confederate Secret Service. They were
very good at developing spy gadgets such as time bombs,
(04:20):
to developing underwater torpedoes, to developing land mines. But they
were also the masters of propaganda, one thing after another
that we see in today's modern world. And it's no
wonder that Donovan pens a letter to President Roosevelt that
says that we need to go back to our older ways,
(04:40):
our traditions of the Scouts, rangers, and the Secret Service,
which is filled with lessons learned that the OSS, eventually
in nineteen forty two, when it's rebranded from the Coordinator
of Information to the OSS, utilizes these tactics and techniques,
and we see them today in the US Army Green
(05:00):
Berets and later in the CIA as well. Confederate's Secret
Service is this very nebulous organization that's opaque, and it's
deliberately so. It consists of men and women that were
in different departments. They had an area that was devoted
(05:21):
to spies, for instance, and they had a department that
was geared towards gadgets. This is the torpedo department. It
was run mainly by the Rains Brothers. They were called
the bomb Brothers because they specialized in blowing things up.
One Rains brother built the Augusta Arsenal, one of the
few public works projects that the Confederacy undertook. It's a
(05:44):
massive gunpowder works and it was really a modern miracle.
The Confederate armies were pretty well supplied even at the
end of the war. And the other brother was involved
in the Confederate Secret Service building gadgets can I like
the Ques Laboratory, and he built everything from time bomb
that were small like, for instance, this is not a
time bomb per se, but he built a small lump
(06:05):
of coal that was hollowed out, and within the cavity
they placed gunpowder. And this little harmless piece of coal
would then be given to operatives and they'd go up
to a steamboat and they would just pitch it near
the boiler room where the rest of the coal was,
and nobody would know any better. And you know, one
of the boiler tenders would shovel that lump of coal
(06:26):
in with another shovelful of real coal, and before he
nail at the boiler and the entire steam bloat blew up,
and you know, hundreds of lives would be lost. They
also had a diplomatic section that worked with foreign powers
to influence them to change the course of the war.
And in the spring of eighteen sixty four, Jefferson Davis
(06:47):
sent several men on a steamship to run the blockade
from South Carolina through the Atlantic up to Canada. They
were carrying certific gets worth several million dollars in gold,
and they make their way to the Saint Lawrence Hotel
in Montreal, and let me sort of set the stage here.
(07:11):
This place is fascinating. The Saint Lawrence is one of
the best hotels in the area. It's opulent, but it
serves mint juleps year round to cater to the Confederates
that are either expatriots, Confederate prisoners of war that somehow
escaped from the North, to men like these guys. They
set up a node or a branch of the Confederate
(07:33):
Secret Service in Canada because it's a neutral area, but
also as Canada is also somewhat friendly to the Confederacy
because it's in their interest. Britain and France loves the
idea of a divided United States because it's easier to
control and contain. And these guys set up shop there
and their main job is to influence anybody that'll take
(07:55):
the side of the Confederacy because they see that the
North has a massive superiority in numbers. But if they
can change things diplomatically, either getting France or England on
the side of the Confederacy or changing things internally through
the Democrat Party, influencing the election of eighteen sixty four
(08:15):
that would be favorable to the South. That's what they're
there for, and they're very effective. There's a number of
men that are there. One is a guy by the
name of Clay who's a former senator from the South.
He's on the dollar bill of Confederate Southern Confederacy. And
(08:36):
then there's George Sanders, who's kind of my favorite character.
They call him peranical, like almost like a pirate, overweight
that he's always kind of puffing on cigars. He's surrounded
by beautiful women. He's got this ability to influence people,
but he's also obsessed with something called the theory of
(08:57):
the Dagger, and that involves executing tyrants or despots. He
spends much of his time in the eighteen fifties in Europe,
and it's here that they advocate for tyrannicide or killing
leaders that are so called tyrannical. And he's also a
big time operative within the Democratic Party. And at the
(09:19):
time there is a rising movement within the Democrat Party
called the Copperhead Movement. And this movement is a peace movement.
And it's George Sanders that is the link for the
Confederate Secret Service with the Democratic Party, and that involves
the Governor of New York many others, but the main
(09:40):
character is an Ohio congressman who has disgraced named Clement
Laird Ballambia.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And when we return more of the story of the
Confederate Secret Service here on our American Stories. And we
(10:09):
returned to our American stories and the story of the
Confederate Secret Service. Telling the story is Patrick K. O'Donnell,
author of The Unvanquished. When we last left off, Patrick
was telling us about the Confederate Secret Services attempts to
disrupt the election of eighteen sixty four. The man who
would facilitate that attempt the most a disgraced former senator
(10:32):
named Clement Laird Valandium. Let's get back to the story.
You'll also be hearing Kate Clifford.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Larsen Vallandium is from Ohio, holds a massive rally that
draws over ten thousand people. It's an anti war rally,
and says things that are pro Confederate and he's eventually
he's exiled by Abraham Lincoln to first the South, and
then he's leaves voluntarily in gost to Canada. And Clement
(11:02):
laired Valandium is a asset of the Confederate Secret Service in
every way. They do some extraordinary things. They craft the
campaign platform for eighteen sixty four for the Democrat Party,
which is a campaign platform of peace. It's an armiscist
and it's couch in the sense that it would be
some sort of negotiation. But the Confederacy knows that once
(11:23):
you start a ceasefire that guns aren't firing anytime soon.
They never will. It's a masterstroke. It also means preserving slavery,
which they have a euphemism for everything, which is like,
you know, existing law must be preserved. And it is
the campaign platform that's written by the Secret Service, and
then it's brought to Chicago. Clement laired Valandium sneaks back
(11:44):
into the United States under an assumed alias, and he's
at the convention in Chicago with all these other copperheads,
and they pass their campaign platform, and they also elect
George McClellan as their candidate, but their vice president is
a hardcore copd and Valandium's right hand man. And then
what's fascinating is the Secretary of War will be Clement
(12:07):
laired Valandium. So nobody in their right mind could ever
imagine them prosecuting the war like Lincoln did. Let me
just sort of go back a little bit in time
though to March eighteen sixty four. It's in March eighteen
sixty four where there's a raid that takes place led
(12:31):
by a guy by the name of Dahlgren who has
a you know, he baddly lost his leg. He has
a wooden leg. His father is the name the Dohlgren
gun comes from him, and he is a gung ho
cavalry leader that convinces another guy, Judson Kilpatrick, that he
wants to be part of a raid. This raid, though,
(12:51):
is special. It's a decapitation mission to go after the South. Specifically,
their goal is to burn Richmond to the ground and
exit cute the Confederate cabinet, including Jefferson Davis, and they
make it through multiple areas of the defense of Richmond,
(13:12):
but ultimately they're denied access of you know, they had
to cross a river and there's supposed to be a
ford there, but it turned out that their guide, who
was African American, just didn't anticipate the tide of the
river changing because of the winter, and they're trapped and
it's eventually the Home Guard, in a mix of other
troops that killed Dagren and many of the men that
(13:32):
are in this specialized rate within his wooden leg are
orders from the Secretary of War to do this decapitation
mission that killed Jefferson Davis and burn Richmond. This has
a they get the orders and it's like, oh my god,
the war is now. Suddenly it's the black flag was
raised and they're going all out now that the North
(13:55):
had done that or tried to, but South felt that
they had to respond in kind. And this is where
the operations to decapitate the North really originating. The origins
of the Color Revolution can be tied to eighteen sixty
(14:17):
four and something called the Northwest Conspiracy. The Confederate Secret
Services plans to launch an insurrection. The Confederate Secret Service
had kind of two plans or two faces of their plan.
One was violent and the other one was more of
a use of the current political machinery. The violence side, though,
(14:37):
they planned to have hundreds of thousands of men part
of the Copperhead movement rise up. Color revolution is a
modern term that we use for many of the insurrections
that have occurred, you know, in the last twenty years,
where a color is involved, like the Orange Revolution. There
(14:59):
was a color revolution in Ukraine, for instance. And what
you see on the surface is the population overthrowing whatever
the established government is. But there is a hidden hand
behind it in every case that is actually fomenting the population,
funding it, directly, influencing or specific key components of the
(15:24):
current regime whatever it is. And that's what was going on.
They were planning a massive insurrection. They also had a
decapitation plan where they were going after the friendly Union
governors of these states. It's supposed to take place in
Chicago eighteen sixty four at the time of the convention.
(15:44):
In fact, it's the Sons of Liberty, which are the
main group under Valendium, the shadowy group within the Copperhead
movement that provides security at the convention but also is
potentially going to work with the Confederate Secret Service, and
Confederate Secret Service was sending them arms. About forty operatives
come down from Canada, and they also plan for a
massive prison break one of the pow camps, Camp Douglas,
(16:07):
which would have tied down tens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands potentially of Union troops and had succeeded, the plan
is neutralized because the Copperheads are absolutely convinced that they
(16:27):
will win the election. They back down. It fizzles, and
the special operation that we now talk about that's really profound.
After the election is lost, they're looking at a way
to somehow kidnap Abraham Lincoln. The plan is really hatched
(16:48):
in Montreal at the Saint Lawrence Hotel, at Sanders and
Company and others, And oh, by the way, John Wilkes
Booth visits the hotel now.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors
in America at the time. He was born into an
acting family. His father was a famous actor. He grew
up in Maryland. He had strong Southern sympathies. So he
hatched this idea and I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The excuse is that he's going up there for extra costumes.
It's preposterous. I think what makes this so interesting is
the story that we were all told is that Booth had,
you know, his kind of gang of guys. They get
together down in Washington, d c. And they decide to
hatch this plan. And the reality is it's hundreds of people,
it's well financed, and it's financed by the Confederate Secret Service.
(17:46):
It is and Booth is a braggart. I mean inside
of the Saint Lawrence Hotel in the lower area there's
a billiard's room and you can kind of picture the
smoke filled room and the mint jewelop's going around and
he's in there sort of makes these references that we're
going to change the world, and it's quite fascinating. But
(18:06):
it's here that he gets a lot of his planning
for this operation, and he's also given some key operatives
that are also coming up to the hotel. John Sarat,
for instance, is one of them. John is a youthful
twenty something that is one of their best operatives. And
he comes and goes from the Saint Lawrence and goes
on different missions, and he's often accompanied by a woman
(18:30):
by the name of the name her the French Woman,
because she knows she speaks French. Typically where is a
veil a fascinating story. Her husband is a Confederate soldier
that's always that war never comes home, and Jesus had
enough of it and volunteers their services to become a
spy booth. Then moves back to New York City by rail,
(18:54):
meets other operatives there, which the place is teeming with them,
and then comes back to Washington.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
D C.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
And thus was hatched the plot to kidnap Lincoln. By
the way, there's been many attempts to assassinate Lincoln, including
on his journey from Springfield to Washington, DC, way back
when he first took office. We told a terrific story
about that journey on the show. When we come back
more of the story of the Confederate Secret Service here
(19:24):
on our American stories, and we returned to our American
stories and the final portion of our story on the
Confederate Secret Service and the secret plot to kidnap as
(19:46):
you'll hear now and kill Abraham Lincoln. Let's return to the.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Story the Confederate secret as a very elaborate plan to
kidnap the president. They realize the best thing that they
can do is to somehow seize him somewhere and buy carriage,
bring him across to Maryland and into the eastern portion
(20:13):
of Maryland, which is all southern.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Thirteen Confederate states in the South separate from the Union.
Maryland stays in the Union part of it by strong
arming on the part of the Lincoln administration, but there
was an appetite in Maryland to not be part of
this sectional crisis.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
They have an entire line of a rat line, if
you will, of messengers and couriers and even doctors that
will be utilized to secretly move the team through Maryland
and then to a boat and then ultimately to the
Northern Neck. And it's here at the Northern Neck that
they needed a security component.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
The United States Army has posted soldiers throughout southern Maryland
because as they knew that so many of those Southern
Marylanders were communicating with and aiding and abetting the Confederacy
across the Potomac.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
They needed a security component to bring the men through
not only Maryland, but also through the Northern Neck. Mostby's rangers.
What we find is in the winner of eighteen sixty
four Mosby splits his command almost in a half, and mysteriously,
hundreds of men in multiple companies go out of the
(21:30):
Northern Neck. Ostensibly it's to get fodder for their horses,
because there's none up here. It's a nonsense argument. They're
there to provide security for the potential kidnapping operation. The
next main component is none other than one of the
South's most dangerous men, Lewis Powell, who is a sort
(21:54):
of hulking ranger that's silver tongue, that can get his
way out of anything great with the gun, has this
amazing charisma, and they to part with other rangers to Richmond,
and he connects with the Confederate Secret Service and he
then deserts, or at least that's the story, but it's preposterous.
(22:21):
He deserts to Baltimore and joins the most dangerous special
operation of the war, which is the plot to kidnap
The President makes his way to Baltimore. He's handled entirely
by the Signal Corps in Confederate Secret Service. I have
all the receipts on this. And then he gets a
telegram to arrive at Mary Sarat's house in Washington, d C.
(22:45):
He shows up and there's all these other sort of
older women and there's a piano in the main room.
He comes in kind of this dashing figure. He's very
attractive and handsome, and he claims he's a preacher, and
it doesn't you know, he gets He sits down and
he starts to play the piano and he's charming the
(23:07):
women and they're like, this is the most handsome preacher
I've ever seen, and just has this electric kind of presence.
And he then sort of fits into the group and
they start to plot to kid at the president. First
(23:27):
is a sort of hair brain plot where he's They
find out Lincoln is near a federal building a few
miles away from the house, and they attempt to seize
his carriage. It doesn't work out, and then they plot
in scheme. Lincoln makes an announcement and he's out in
the open air near the White House booth actually encourages Powell,
(23:49):
who's an expert shot with a pistol, to try to
kill the president right then and there, and Powell demurs,
and then another event takes place. One of the stories
that don't don't think has ever really been told, and
that is a plan to blow up the White House
(24:09):
Mosby's Rangers are utilized to conduct ostensibly a raid to
seize some supplies, and it makes no sense at all
near Burke Station. But their plan was to confuse the
Union forces nearby and allow another man or a few
men that had detonators. They were from the Confederate Torpedo
(24:33):
Works to then infiltrate to Washington, d C. Where they
would attempt to blow up the White House. But the
plan was foiled by the eighth Illinois Cavalry, and Booth
somehow gets word that that operation failed, and it's at
that point that they believe. Many believe that it was
the frenchwoman that infiltrated back into Washington, d C. And
(24:56):
gave Booth and his team the orders to execute the press.
It's a classic decapitation mission. There's also another man that's
assigned to the vice President. Interestingly enough, the Secretary of War,
who's one of the most powerful men, isn't targeted, but
(25:16):
the plan is kicked off at Ford's Theater. The other
elements of the plan also occur. The man that was
the operative that was sent after the Vice President drinks
heavily and just gets cold feet and doesn't do it.
But Powell goes after Secretarius, who who's very sick at
this point, bedridden, and they have a plan to infiltrate
his house. It's quite clever. He poses as a pharmacist
(25:39):
that is delivering medicine to him, and one of the
other conspirators actually worked as a pharmacist mate he had
all the right packaging and everything to say. Gets to
the door and said, I'm here to deliver the medicine,
and they don't believe it at first, and he keeps
saying over and over, I have to deliver this medicine.
(26:02):
And then he sticks his wood in the door and bursts
in and kind of does a you know, checks his
one of Seward's bodyguards and charges up to the room
and pulls out his pistol and at point blank range
fires at Seward, but it missfires. And then he pulls
out a dagger and starts to just you know, hack
(26:23):
the Secretary of State practically to death. And he's you know,
somehow able to dodge even as he's getting knifed. None
of his vital organs are hit, but he's just turned
into a Swiss cheese basically. But then they get Paul.
Somebody takes and gets him off him and he flees
down in the middle of the night and goes on
(26:44):
the run basically, and for several days he tries to
escape Washington, d c. But he's not able to do it,
and he goes back to the boarding house, and he
goes back at exactly the wrong time because Northern investigators
are inside the house, and he's immediately questioned and the
(27:04):
story doesn't check out. He's arrested and there's a massive
and sweeping man hunt to try to find Booth. Coincidentally,
several of Moses's men find him and he is escorted
to another safe house and he's hides in a barn.
The North is able to put pieces of information together
through one thing or another, and one of moses menace
(27:26):
is rounded up and that leads back to the barn.
The barn is surrounded and they try to get Booth
to come out willingly, and they set fire to the
barn and there's orders not to shoot, but a sort
of deranged member of the Union Cavalry by the name
(27:47):
of Boston Corbett, a man that is a literally a
mad hatter, fires into the barn and it hits Booth
and he's he's mortally wounded. Interesting is they pull out
his diary, which is fascinating. It includes maybe one hundred
or so pages, and in those pages it talks about
(28:08):
how he went up to Montreal to kidnap the president.
They eventually round up the conspirators, all of them, and
there's a trial and it's you know, it's a quick trial.
I mean, they want justice. Mysteriously, Booth's diary has never
entered into evidence, and the Northern judges and authorities attempt
(28:33):
to convict the other conspirators and Lewis Powell, and they
also try to connect Jefferson Davis and the Secret Service
to the entire plot, but it fails miserably. The prosecution
utilizes witnesses that are tainted. They provide evidence that is false,
(28:55):
demonstrably provable false, which destroys the entire case. We find
out later is that George Sanders, one of his last
actions was to coach these men on how to perjure
themselves brilliantly to blow up the entire federal case. And
that is exactly what happens. They're convicted, but the Confederate
(29:18):
Secret Service is off the hook, so to speak. They
don't link it to them. They link it to Booth
and is as a madman, as a kind of a
lone gunman theory. Right. I think it's interesting. I mean,
one thing that is out there that we must consider
is what if they were they were convicted, and that
(29:39):
the Confederate Secret Service was tied to them. It's interesting
because it would have meant a continuation of the war,
you know, instead of the reconciliation that takes place. That's
one possibility. It's unmistakable the organization and the money that
was needed to pull this off is something that only
(29:59):
could have been done by like a state actor, which
would be the Confederacy versus a lone rolf like John
Wilkes Booth as he's portrayed
Speaker 1 (30:11):
The story again of the Confederate Secret Service here on
our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. The story of
April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five often plays out like this.
John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices solely planned and then
attempted to decapitate the US government following the surrender of
Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in a desperate attempt to
save the Confederacy. The real story is more complicated than that, though.
(00:35):
To understand what happened earlier, we need to understand what
happened later in American history. You are to tell the
story is the best selling author of The Unvanquished, Patrick K. O'Donnell.
Let's get into the story. We interrupt this broadcast to
bring to this important bulletin from the United Press. His
country is at war with Germany.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
She'll never horrendu. In the summer of nineteen forty, the
Axis powers are really on a roll, steamrolling the planet,
and their shadow warfare capabilities, specifically with special operations forces,
(01:20):
are incredibly effective. The United States doesn't have a large
standing army. It's tiny, and it has no special operations
forces or intelligence organization. And it's the special operations component
that while Bill Donovan in particular focuses in on He
knows that having some sort of a commando type group
(01:42):
that can act on intelligence that's gathered from spies is
an important part of the shadow warfare. He kind of
pioneers a combined arms of shadow warfare where they look
at it in its totality, it's intelligence collecting its propaganda,
but it's also operatives special forces as we know today
that were a very big focus. And what we find
(02:07):
in American history is we develop things and then we
lose them. It's almost like a sign curve. And the
United States has a very rich history at special operations
going back all the way to the sixteen eighties and
Benjamin Church and forces that would range and attack Native
Americans because they had to fight in an irregular manner.
But in nineteen forty one, there was no special operations forces.
(02:29):
So Donovan had to look back at something, and he
looked back at our first modern war, the American Civil War,
and he specifically looked back at three groups born in
this cauldron where through the compression of war, they had
(02:49):
to find unique ways to fight back, and they fought
back irregularly through special operations. One was Mosby's Rangers of
the forty third, which is in Virginia. And these are
men that were mounted on horses that attacked Union wagon
trains and captured bridges, and you know, most importantly, they
tied down through their regular warfare tens of thousands of
(03:13):
Union soldiers because they were constantly harassing the supply lines
and causing trouble. It's John Singleton Mosby who develops much
of modern irregular warfare, and there needed to be a
force to counteract that, and that is the Jesse Scouts.
They are the first counterinsurgency unit in the United States Army.
(03:35):
They go after partisans like Mosby, they also lead the
federal armies. They could get out front and they could
gather intelligence on the endity they find the weak points.
They'd communicate messages between the lines. They also went after
high value targets. They went after the South's most dangerous men.
(03:55):
They wear the uniform of their enemy. They wear Confederate uniforms,
which is an incredible dangerous thing to do because if
you're caught, you're considered a spine. Can be executed immediately
and many of these men would die. And that leads
to the third group, the Confederate Secret Service. They were
very good at developing spy gadgets such as time bombs,
(04:20):
to developing underwater torpedoes, to developing land mines. But they
were also the masters of propaganda, one thing after another
that we see in today's modern world. And it's no
wonder that Donovan pens a letter to President Roosevelt that
says that we need to go back to our older ways,
(04:40):
our traditions of the Scouts, rangers, and the Secret Service,
which is filled with lessons learned that the OSS, eventually
in nineteen forty two, when it's rebranded from the Coordinator
of Information to the OSS, utilizes these tactics and techniques,
and we see them today in the US Army Green
(05:00):
Berets and later in the CIA as well. Confederate's Secret
Service is this very nebulous organization that's opaque, and it's
deliberately so. It consists of men and women that were
in different departments. They had an area that was devoted
(05:21):
to spies, for instance, and they had a department that
was geared towards gadgets. This is the torpedo department. It
was run mainly by the Rains Brothers. They were called
the bomb Brothers because they specialized in blowing things up.
One Rains brother built the Augusta Arsenal, one of the
few public works projects that the Confederacy undertook. It's a
(05:44):
massive gunpowder works and it was really a modern miracle.
The Confederate armies were pretty well supplied even at the
end of the war. And the other brother was involved
in the Confederate Secret Service building gadgets can I like
the Ques Laboratory, and he built everything from time bomb
that were small like, for instance, this is not a
time bomb per se, but he built a small lump
(06:05):
of coal that was hollowed out, and within the cavity
they placed gunpowder. And this little harmless piece of coal
would then be given to operatives and they'd go up
to a steamboat and they would just pitch it near
the boiler room where the rest of the coal was,
and nobody would know any better. And you know, one
of the boiler tenders would shovel that lump of coal
(06:26):
in with another shovelful of real coal, and before he
nail at the boiler and the entire steam bloat blew up,
and you know, hundreds of lives would be lost. They
also had a diplomatic section that worked with foreign powers
to influence them to change the course of the war.
And in the spring of eighteen sixty four, Jefferson Davis
(06:47):
sent several men on a steamship to run the blockade
from South Carolina through the Atlantic up to Canada. They
were carrying certific gets worth several million dollars in gold,
and they make their way to the Saint Lawrence Hotel
in Montreal, and let me sort of set the stage here.
(07:11):
This place is fascinating. The Saint Lawrence is one of
the best hotels in the area. It's opulent, but it
serves mint juleps year round to cater to the Confederates
that are either expatriots, Confederate prisoners of war that somehow
escaped from the North, to men like these guys. They
set up a node or a branch of the Confederate
(07:33):
Secret Service in Canada because it's a neutral area, but
also as Canada is also somewhat friendly to the Confederacy
because it's in their interest. Britain and France loves the
idea of a divided United States because it's easier to
control and contain. And these guys set up shop there
and their main job is to influence anybody that'll take
(07:55):
the side of the Confederacy because they see that the
North has a massive superiority in numbers. But if they
can change things diplomatically, either getting France or England on
the side of the Confederacy or changing things internally through
the Democrat Party, influencing the election of eighteen sixty four
(08:15):
that would be favorable to the South. That's what they're
there for, and they're very effective. There's a number of
men that are there. One is a guy by the
name of Clay who's a former senator from the South.
He's on the dollar bill of Confederate Southern Confederacy. And
(08:36):
then there's George Sanders, who's kind of my favorite character.
They call him peranical, like almost like a pirate, overweight
that he's always kind of puffing on cigars. He's surrounded
by beautiful women. He's got this ability to influence people,
but he's also obsessed with something called the theory of
(08:57):
the Dagger, and that involves executing tyrants or despots. He
spends much of his time in the eighteen fifties in Europe,
and it's here that they advocate for tyrannicide or killing
leaders that are so called tyrannical. And he's also a
big time operative within the Democratic Party. And at the
(09:19):
time there is a rising movement within the Democrat Party
called the Copperhead Movement. And this movement is a peace movement.
And it's George Sanders that is the link for the
Confederate Secret Service with the Democratic Party, and that involves
the Governor of New York many others, but the main
(09:40):
character is an Ohio congressman who has disgraced named Clement
Laird Ballambia.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And when we return more of the story of the
Confederate Secret Service here on our American Stories. And we
(10:09):
returned to our American stories and the story of the
Confederate Secret Service. Telling the story is Patrick K. O'Donnell,
author of The Unvanquished. When we last left off, Patrick
was telling us about the Confederate Secret Services attempts to
disrupt the election of eighteen sixty four. The man who
would facilitate that attempt the most a disgraced former senator
(10:32):
named Clement Laird Valandium. Let's get back to the story.
You'll also be hearing Kate Clifford.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Larsen Vallandium is from Ohio, holds a massive rally that
draws over ten thousand people. It's an anti war rally,
and says things that are pro Confederate and he's eventually
he's exiled by Abraham Lincoln to first the South, and
then he's leaves voluntarily in gost to Canada. And Clement
(11:02):
laired Valandium is a asset of the Confederate Secret Service in
every way. They do some extraordinary things. They craft the
campaign platform for eighteen sixty four for the Democrat Party,
which is a campaign platform of peace. It's an armiscist
and it's couch in the sense that it would be
some sort of negotiation. But the Confederacy knows that once
(11:23):
you start a ceasefire that guns aren't firing anytime soon.
They never will. It's a masterstroke. It also means preserving slavery,
which they have a euphemism for everything, which is like,
you know, existing law must be preserved. And it is
the campaign platform that's written by the Secret Service, and
then it's brought to Chicago. Clement laired Valandium sneaks back
(11:44):
into the United States under an assumed alias, and he's
at the convention in Chicago with all these other copperheads,
and they pass their campaign platform, and they also elect
George McClellan as their candidate, but their vice president is
a hardcore copd and Valandium's right hand man. And then
what's fascinating is the Secretary of War will be Clement
(12:07):
laired Valandium. So nobody in their right mind could ever
imagine them prosecuting the war like Lincoln did. Let me
just sort of go back a little bit in time
though to March eighteen sixty four. It's in March eighteen
sixty four where there's a raid that takes place led
(12:31):
by a guy by the name of Dahlgren who has
a you know, he baddly lost his leg. He has
a wooden leg. His father is the name the Dohlgren
gun comes from him, and he is a gung ho
cavalry leader that convinces another guy, Judson Kilpatrick, that he
wants to be part of a raid. This raid, though,
(12:51):
is special. It's a decapitation mission to go after the South. Specifically,
their goal is to burn Richmond to the ground and
exit cute the Confederate cabinet, including Jefferson Davis, and they
make it through multiple areas of the defense of Richmond,
(13:12):
but ultimately they're denied access of you know, they had
to cross a river and there's supposed to be a
ford there, but it turned out that their guide, who
was African American, just didn't anticipate the tide of the
river changing because of the winter, and they're trapped and
it's eventually the Home Guard, in a mix of other
troops that killed Dagren and many of the men that
(13:32):
are in this specialized rate within his wooden leg are
orders from the Secretary of War to do this decapitation
mission that killed Jefferson Davis and burn Richmond. This has
a they get the orders and it's like, oh my god,
the war is now. Suddenly it's the black flag was
raised and they're going all out now that the North
(13:55):
had done that or tried to, but South felt that
they had to respond in kind. And this is where
the operations to decapitate the North really originating. The origins
of the Color Revolution can be tied to eighteen sixty
(14:17):
four and something called the Northwest Conspiracy. The Confederate Secret
Services plans to launch an insurrection. The Confederate Secret Service
had kind of two plans or two faces of their plan.
One was violent and the other one was more of
a use of the current political machinery. The violence side, though,
(14:37):
they planned to have hundreds of thousands of men part
of the Copperhead movement rise up. Color revolution is a
modern term that we use for many of the insurrections
that have occurred, you know, in the last twenty years,
where a color is involved, like the Orange Revolution. There
(14:59):
was a color revolution in Ukraine, for instance. And what
you see on the surface is the population overthrowing whatever
the established government is. But there is a hidden hand
behind it in every case that is actually fomenting the population,
funding it, directly, influencing or specific key components of the
(15:24):
current regime whatever it is. And that's what was going on.
They were planning a massive insurrection. They also had a
decapitation plan where they were going after the friendly Union
governors of these states. It's supposed to take place in
Chicago eighteen sixty four at the time of the convention.
(15:44):
In fact, it's the Sons of Liberty, which are the
main group under Valendium, the shadowy group within the Copperhead
movement that provides security at the convention but also is
potentially going to work with the Confederate Secret Service, and
Confederate Secret Service was sending them arms. About forty operatives
come down from Canada, and they also plan for a
massive prison break one of the pow camps, Camp Douglas,
(16:07):
which would have tied down tens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands potentially of Union troops and had succeeded, the plan
is neutralized because the Copperheads are absolutely convinced that they
(16:27):
will win the election. They back down. It fizzles, and
the special operation that we now talk about that's really profound.
After the election is lost, they're looking at a way
to somehow kidnap Abraham Lincoln. The plan is really hatched
(16:48):
in Montreal at the Saint Lawrence Hotel, at Sanders and
Company and others, And oh, by the way, John Wilkes
Booth visits the hotel now.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors
in America at the time. He was born into an
acting family. His father was a famous actor. He grew
up in Maryland. He had strong Southern sympathies. So he
hatched this idea and I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The excuse is that he's going up there for extra costumes.
It's preposterous. I think what makes this so interesting is
the story that we were all told is that Booth had,
you know, his kind of gang of guys. They get
together down in Washington, d c. And they decide to
hatch this plan. And the reality is it's hundreds of people,
it's well financed, and it's financed by the Confederate Secret Service.
(17:46):
It is and Booth is a braggart. I mean inside
of the Saint Lawrence Hotel in the lower area there's
a billiard's room and you can kind of picture the
smoke filled room and the mint jewelop's going around and
he's in there sort of makes these references that we're
going to change the world, and it's quite fascinating. But
(18:06):
it's here that he gets a lot of his planning
for this operation, and he's also given some key operatives
that are also coming up to the hotel. John Sarat,
for instance, is one of them. John is a youthful
twenty something that is one of their best operatives. And
he comes and goes from the Saint Lawrence and goes
on different missions, and he's often accompanied by a woman
(18:30):
by the name of the name her the French Woman,
because she knows she speaks French. Typically where is a
veil a fascinating story. Her husband is a Confederate soldier
that's always that war never comes home, and Jesus had
enough of it and volunteers their services to become a
spy booth. Then moves back to New York City by rail,
(18:54):
meets other operatives there, which the place is teeming with them,
and then comes back to Washington.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
D C.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
And thus was hatched the plot to kidnap Lincoln. By
the way, there's been many attempts to assassinate Lincoln, including
on his journey from Springfield to Washington, DC, way back
when he first took office. We told a terrific story
about that journey on the show. When we come back
more of the story of the Confederate Secret Service here
(19:24):
on our American stories, and we returned to our American
stories and the final portion of our story on the
Confederate Secret Service and the secret plot to kidnap as
(19:46):
you'll hear now and kill Abraham Lincoln. Let's return to the.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Story the Confederate secret as a very elaborate plan to
kidnap the president. They realize the best thing that they
can do is to somehow seize him somewhere and buy carriage,
bring him across to Maryland and into the eastern portion
(20:13):
of Maryland, which is all southern.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Thirteen Confederate states in the South separate from the Union.
Maryland stays in the Union part of it by strong
arming on the part of the Lincoln administration, but there
was an appetite in Maryland to not be part of
this sectional crisis.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
They have an entire line of a rat line, if
you will, of messengers and couriers and even doctors that
will be utilized to secretly move the team through Maryland
and then to a boat and then ultimately to the
Northern Neck. And it's here at the Northern Neck that
they needed a security component.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
The United States Army has posted soldiers throughout southern Maryland
because as they knew that so many of those Southern
Marylanders were communicating with and aiding and abetting the Confederacy
across the Potomac.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
They needed a security component to bring the men through
not only Maryland, but also through the Northern Neck. Mostby's rangers.
What we find is in the winner of eighteen sixty
four Mosby splits his command almost in a half, and mysteriously,
hundreds of men in multiple companies go out of the
(21:30):
Northern Neck. Ostensibly it's to get fodder for their horses,
because there's none up here. It's a nonsense argument. They're
there to provide security for the potential kidnapping operation. The
next main component is none other than one of the
South's most dangerous men, Lewis Powell, who is a sort
(21:54):
of hulking ranger that's silver tongue, that can get his
way out of anything great with the gun, has this
amazing charisma, and they to part with other rangers to Richmond,
and he connects with the Confederate Secret Service and he
then deserts, or at least that's the story, but it's preposterous.
(22:21):
He deserts to Baltimore and joins the most dangerous special
operation of the war, which is the plot to kidnap
The President makes his way to Baltimore. He's handled entirely
by the Signal Corps in Confederate Secret Service. I have
all the receipts on this. And then he gets a
telegram to arrive at Mary Sarat's house in Washington, d C.
(22:45):
He shows up and there's all these other sort of
older women and there's a piano in the main room.
He comes in kind of this dashing figure. He's very
attractive and handsome, and he claims he's a preacher, and
it doesn't you know, he gets He sits down and
he starts to play the piano and he's charming the
(23:07):
women and they're like, this is the most handsome preacher
I've ever seen, and just has this electric kind of presence.
And he then sort of fits into the group and
they start to plot to kid at the president. First
(23:27):
is a sort of hair brain plot where he's They
find out Lincoln is near a federal building a few
miles away from the house, and they attempt to seize
his carriage. It doesn't work out, and then they plot
in scheme. Lincoln makes an announcement and he's out in
the open air near the White House booth actually encourages Powell,
(23:49):
who's an expert shot with a pistol, to try to
kill the president right then and there, and Powell demurs,
and then another event takes place. One of the stories
that don't don't think has ever really been told, and
that is a plan to blow up the White House
(24:09):
Mosby's Rangers are utilized to conduct ostensibly a raid to
seize some supplies, and it makes no sense at all
near Burke Station. But their plan was to confuse the
Union forces nearby and allow another man or a few
men that had detonators. They were from the Confederate Torpedo
(24:33):
Works to then infiltrate to Washington, d C. Where they
would attempt to blow up the White House. But the
plan was foiled by the eighth Illinois Cavalry, and Booth
somehow gets word that that operation failed, and it's at
that point that they believe. Many believe that it was
the frenchwoman that infiltrated back into Washington, d C. And
(24:56):
gave Booth and his team the orders to execute the press.
It's a classic decapitation mission. There's also another man that's
assigned to the vice President. Interestingly enough, the Secretary of War,
who's one of the most powerful men, isn't targeted, but
(25:16):
the plan is kicked off at Ford's Theater. The other
elements of the plan also occur. The man that was
the operative that was sent after the Vice President drinks
heavily and just gets cold feet and doesn't do it.
But Powell goes after Secretarius, who who's very sick at
this point, bedridden, and they have a plan to infiltrate
his house. It's quite clever. He poses as a pharmacist
(25:39):
that is delivering medicine to him, and one of the
other conspirators actually worked as a pharmacist mate he had
all the right packaging and everything to say. Gets to
the door and said, I'm here to deliver the medicine,
and they don't believe it at first, and he keeps
saying over and over, I have to deliver this medicine.
(26:02):
And then he sticks his wood in the door and bursts
in and kind of does a you know, checks his
one of Seward's bodyguards and charges up to the room
and pulls out his pistol and at point blank range
fires at Seward, but it missfires. And then he pulls
out a dagger and starts to just you know, hack
(26:23):
the Secretary of State practically to death. And he's you know,
somehow able to dodge even as he's getting knifed. None
of his vital organs are hit, but he's just turned
into a Swiss cheese basically. But then they get Paul.
Somebody takes and gets him off him and he flees
down in the middle of the night and goes on
(26:44):
the run basically, and for several days he tries to
escape Washington, d c. But he's not able to do it,
and he goes back to the boarding house, and he
goes back at exactly the wrong time because Northern investigators
are inside the house, and he's immediately questioned and the
(27:04):
story doesn't check out. He's arrested and there's a massive
and sweeping man hunt to try to find Booth. Coincidentally,
several of Moses's men find him and he is escorted
to another safe house and he's hides in a barn.
The North is able to put pieces of information together
through one thing or another, and one of moses menace
(27:26):
is rounded up and that leads back to the barn.
The barn is surrounded and they try to get Booth
to come out willingly, and they set fire to the
barn and there's orders not to shoot, but a sort
of deranged member of the Union Cavalry by the name
(27:47):
of Boston Corbett, a man that is a literally a
mad hatter, fires into the barn and it hits Booth
and he's he's mortally wounded. Interesting is they pull out
his diary, which is fascinating. It includes maybe one hundred
or so pages, and in those pages it talks about
(28:08):
how he went up to Montreal to kidnap the president.
They eventually round up the conspirators, all of them, and
there's a trial and it's you know, it's a quick trial.
I mean, they want justice. Mysteriously, Booth's diary has never
entered into evidence, and the Northern judges and authorities attempt
(28:33):
to convict the other conspirators and Lewis Powell, and they
also try to connect Jefferson Davis and the Secret Service
to the entire plot, but it fails miserably. The prosecution
utilizes witnesses that are tainted. They provide evidence that is false,
(28:55):
demonstrably provable false, which destroys the entire case. We find
out later is that George Sanders, one of his last
actions was to coach these men on how to perjure
themselves brilliantly to blow up the entire federal case. And
that is exactly what happens. They're convicted, but the Confederate
(29:18):
Secret Service is off the hook, so to speak. They
don't link it to them. They link it to Booth
and is as a madman, as a kind of a
lone gunman theory. Right. I think it's interesting. I mean,
one thing that is out there that we must consider
is what if they were they were convicted, and that
(29:39):
the Confederate Secret Service was tied to them. It's interesting
because it would have meant a continuation of the war,
you know, instead of the reconciliation that takes place. That's
one possibility. It's unmistakable the organization and the money that
was needed to pull this off is something that only
(29:59):
could have been done by like a state actor, which
would be the Confederacy versus a lone rolf like John
Wilkes Booth as he's portrayed
Speaker 1 (30:11):
The story again of the Confederate Secret Service here on
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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