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“The British Mark on Every

Battle-field”

The plot against New York—A parting of friends—Congress retaliates—A Christmas gift—Wilmington falls—One last attempt

Despite the failure of his agents on Lake Erie and in Chicago, the Confederate leader of clandestine operations in Canada, Jacob Thompson, remained confident in his designs for a campaign of terror. He had particular faith in John Yates Beall and Bennet Burley, and believed that their new scheme—to purchase a steamer and convert it into a warship—had a far greater chance of succeeding than the ill-fated attempt to seize the Philo Parsons. Burley had been working at a foundry in Guelph, Ontario, overseeing the construction of the cannon and torpedoes that were to be fitted onto the converted steamship. “Everything is going on finely and I anticipate having the things finished early, perhaps this week,” he had reported in October.1 Beall was waiting to captain the vessel as soon as it was delivered to Canada’s Port Colborne, at the southern end of the Welland Canal on Lake Erie, some thirty miles west of Buffalo.

Beall’s plan called for the steamer, renamed CSS Georgian, to receive its battering ram and cannon at Colborne. The ram was designed to sink USS Michigan, and the cannon was to be used against the undefended cities along Lake Erie from Buffalo to Detroit. But when the Georgian sailed onto Lake Erie on November 1, it seemed as though every household within a two-hundred-mile radius of Colborne knew of her arrival. “The whole lake shore was a scene of wild excitement,” Thompson wrote to Judah P. Benjamin. “At Buffalo two tugs had cannon placed on board.… Bells were rung at Detroit.… The bane and curse of carrying out anything in this country is the surveillance under which we act.”2 To make matters worse, the Georgian’s propeller broke and a replacement had to be brought from Toronto. But the conspirators believed they were safe after the authorities searched the vessel and, since the weaponry had not yet been delivered, found nothing suspicious.

By November 16, 1864, the Georgian had been repaired and was sailing west toward Sarnia on Lake Huron to pick up the rest of her weaponry when Monck’s agents finally achieved their first success against the Confederates. They intercepted the shipment before it reached Sarnia and found a large quantity of arms in three boxes marked “potatoes.” The trail led straight back to Burley, who was arrested in Guelph the following day and taken to Toronto to face a trial for extradition to the United States. At first, the detectives thought they had captured Beall, and their confusion enabled him to go into hiding before they realized their mistake. The rest of the Georgian’s crew also scattered, leaving only Burley to take the blame for the plot. Thompson was prepared to kill civilians for the cause of Southern independence, but he was less insouciant about risking the lives of his own men. He hastily wrote to the Confederate navy secretary, Stephen Mallory, asking him to forward documents proving Burley’s naval commission so that the charge of piracy—which carried a death sentence—could not be made against the Scotsman.35.1 3

Disappointed by the sudden unraveling of the Lake Erie plan, Thompson waited anxiously for the outcome of the plot to set New York afire on November 25. There had been no word from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Martin or Captain John Headley since their aborted attempt on the seventh. But the departure of General Butler and his Federal troops on November 15 gave Thompson hope that they would still carry out the mission. The small Confederate cell was more determined than ever “to let the Government at Washington understand that the burning homes in the South might find a counterpart in the North,” as Headley recalled.4 They were planning to use a new kind of incendiary bomb based on Greek fire—a mixture of phosphorus and carbon bisulfate—which could be transported easily in small bottles and produced a powerful explosion when exposed to air. The targets were New York City’s hotels. The conspirators