Fled Rebel
As you may have heard, what became the American Civil War was initially expected to be a short affair, but somehow turned into a fratricidal conflict of unforeseen viciousness. The leaders of the two sides were no less dedicated to each others’ destruction—the greater the violence, the better.
While much of the rebel leadership had been a part of the previous federal government in Washington, D.C., many had hated their fellow politicians from the northern states. The animosity was mutual. And as the war entered what would turn out to be its final months, southern officials uncovered what they believed had been a Northern plot to murder the Confederate leadership in their homes in the capitol city of Richmond. As the story goes, this served as an inspiration for reprisal.
All of which serves to introduce a fascinating story about how the Confederate secretary of state—a southern lawyer, plantation owner, slaveholder, and Jew—may have been involved in the plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. After losing his country, he managed to use his network of spies that spanned the Atlantic to flee to Great Britain, where he enjoyed a second life as a lawyer for the Crown. It is quite a tale.
The text version of the story is relayed in “The Hunt for Judah P. Benjamin, the Spy Chief of the Confederacy” by Jay Solomon and Jane Singer in Tablet Magazine online. An audio version is in the podcast The Re-Education with Eli Lake, wherein the host interviews Jay Solomon. Either version is worthwhile.
Here is a snippet from the Tablet article as a teaser:
But it was in the final two years of the Civil War where Benjamin’s espionage operations took a particularly dark turn. Desperate to fend off the collapse of the Confederacy, the Southern secretary of state put in place an elaborate network of spies and soldiers in British-controlled Canada to seek to destabilize the North. Benjamin’s agents robbed banks, attempted to burn down Manhattan hotels and devised ways to conduct chemical warfare in Washington. They also sought to upend the 1864 Republican Party convention and swing the vote against the incumbent president, Abraham Lincoln, in favor of a peace candidate who sought an immediate end of the Civil War.
And Benjamin’s agents in Canada also hosted in Montreal a famous actor from Maryland, John Wilkes Booth, during the final months of the war, and provided him monies and contacts to conduct a plot that initially focused on kidnapping Abraham Lincoln.
Were we still betting on how things ended for Pregozhin? It wasn’t exactly a window!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733
I've shared this story before, but one of my ancestors played a pivotal role in the Civil War. John Janney (he would have been Harrison's Veep, had he voted for himself at the convention) was chairing the VA secession committee. He opposed secession, and gently lobbied and eldered the delegates away from secession. A straw poll at the end of march was 2:1 opposed to secession. But he didn't handle the rabble rousers well, continuing to give them time to speak. A few weeks later, Ft. Sumpter's battle began, and a romanticized secession fever swept through the delegates like Covid through a NY nursing home. The new straw poll was almost unanimous in favor of secession. John Janney eldered the few who still opposed to support it, so it would be unanimous. He changed his vote as well to secession.
Had John Janney shown more leadership, and had he wrapped the committee's work up before Ft. Sumpter, VA would not have seceded, and the civil war would have been very different. How many lives lost as a result?