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By Root 6849 0

He returned half an hour later to berate the astonished Lyons: twenty or so Confederate raiders had crossed the border from Canada and had attacked the Vermont town of St. Albans, looting more than $200,000 from its three main banks, setting fire to the square, and killing one citizen. He told Lyons that he had sent a force back across the border with orders to capture the raiders dead or alive. The news immediately conjured up in Lyons’s mind the specter of another international crisis: if the North crossed the Canadian border and invaded British soil to seize the Confederates, the British government would have to protest and demand an apology along with restitution of the prisoners. The United States would refuse, forcing the government into an ultimatum—probably followed by a declaration of war.

Lord Monck, foreseeing the same catastrophic chain of events, had ordered the Montreal police to find the Confederates before they fell into the Northerners’ hands. Thirteen raiders were caught within forty-eight hours, but the U.S. posse found their leader, Bennett Young, hiding in a farmhouse. Young—who had participated in the Chicago convention plot—might have swung from a tree were it not for the intervention of a British Army officer who happened upon the scene and persuaded the furious Northerners to escort the prisoner to the local garrison. Monck telegraphed the news to Seward, assuring him that the Confederates would remain in custody while the courts examined the case for their extradition. He hoped this swift action would forestall any thoughts of Northern retaliation.

The St. Albans raid had been organized by the Confederate commissioner Clement C. Clay without the knowledge of Jacob Thompson, who was furious that it had been kept from him. Thompson’s own plots were nearing fruition and promised to be far more destructive and violent than mere banditry against a U.S. border town. He feared that this further violation of British neutrality would lead to increased cooperation between the Canadian and Northern authorities and create more obstacles for his operatives. As far as Thompson could tell, Canadians remained broadly supportive of the South, and he wanted nothing to jeopardize their goodwill. Halifax was still “intensely Southern,” according to Georgiana Walker, who had arrived with her family on October 11. (For her, Rose Greenhow’s death overshadowed the actions of a few hotheads. “My thought flew at once to the poor little orphan at the Sacré Coeur, now bereft of Father, Mother, Friends,” she wrote, “truly [reliant] on the cold charities of the world.”)1

General Sheridan was expanding the definition of “total war” to include deliberate starvation and the destruction of civilian property. Jacob Thompson was taking it in another direction: that of terror and mass murder. He was far more systematic than any of the other Confederate agents working in Canada, and he had the men and resources to mount large-scale campaigns.34.1 2 Thompson had several schemes under way in late October, including a second attempt against USS Michigan by John Yates Beall and Bennet G. Burley, which involved the purchase and arming of a civilian steamer; but Thompson’s chief plot was an undertaking in conjunction with the Northern Sons of Liberty to start a revolution on November 8, Election Day.

Two more members from General John Hunt Morgan’s defunct brigade had been sent by Jefferson Davis to help Thompson: Lieutenant Colonel Robert Maxwell Martin and Captain John William Headley. They had originally hoped to lead the supposed uprising talked up so persuasively in June by Vallandigham, but Copperhead enthusiasm for conspiracies had subsided once Sherman and Sheridan’s victories exposed the weakness of the Confederacy. By the beginning of November, the number of cities involved in the Confederate Sons of Liberty plot had shrunk to just two: Chicago and New York. “We were told that about 20,000 men were enlisted in New York under a complete organization,” recalled Captain John Headley. “It was proposed by the New York managers to