Home : America At War : The Civil War : The Civil War On The Fringe :Timothy Webster, Union Spy (1821-1862)
After Lincoln's inauguration and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the new president realized that the Union was hopelessly uninformed about Confederate activities. In fact, Confederate spies were everywhere and contributed greatly — as did Mrs. Rose Greenhow, the southern belle in Washington — to the early victories of the South. It was Greenhow who sent information to General P. G. T. Beauregard that enabled the Confederates to sweep the field at the first battle of Bull Run. To establish an effective Union counterintelligence and espionage, Lincoln sent for the celebrated detective Allan Pinkerton, making him chief of Union intelligence. Pinkerton selected the best detectives in his service to work with him, especially those who had helped him smuggle Lincoln to Washington for his inauguration after an assassination plot against him was uncovered. The most conscientious and dedicated agent Pinkerton had was Timothy Webster, who had been born in London and immigrated to America with his family when he was a small boy. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, receiving scant education. He became a laborer before joining the New York police department. He was assigned to handle security at the World's Fair of 1853 and it was here that he met a visitor, Allan Pinkerton, who had a year earlier established the Pinkerton National Dectective Agency in Chicago. The following year, Webster was hired by Pinkerton and became one of his top agents. When Pinkerton began the Union's secret service he kept Webster and his other best agents busy with tracking down draft dodgers (a hopeless task in that there were literally tens of thousands of these shirkers in the North), and exposing corrupt suppliers of military goods and foodstuffs. The Pinkertons exposed and brought to trial meat packers who had shipped tainted or rotten meats to General McClellan's troops. They unearthed short-changing cotton brokers and robbery rings that looted military storehouses. Much of the time, the federal government did not honor Pinkerton's operating expenses, causing him to send for money from his own lucrative detective agency in Chicago to support his newly formed secret service Not until late 1861 did Pinkerton energetically begin to send his men into Confederate territory to learn the enemy's positions, strengths, and plans. Webster was one of the first of these, going into Maryland and Virginia, where he passed himself off as a Southern sympathizer who lived in Washington. He offered his services to Southern military commanders and was sent on missions to Washington, returning with what these commanders believed to be valuable information. The information Webster provided, however, was misleading and doctored by Pinkerton himself Thus, as a convincing double agent, Webster first installed himself in Miller's Hotel in Baltimore, passing himself off "as a gentleman of means and leisure." Pinkerton provided Webster with a handsome team of horses and a resplendent carriage, as well as considerable cash to give small fetes and buy all the drinks necessary in the Baltimore bars while cadging information from secessionists. John Scully, another Union spy, served as Webster's courier, taking his messages to Pinkerton in Washington. Webster made sure that Scully could always get past Southern sentries with a simple trick. He and Scully went to a Baltimore photographic gallery where they posed smiling, holding a Confederate flag between them. Both men kept this photo in their wallets at all times and when Confederate soldiers or agents searched them and found the photo they immediately released them, believing them to be staunch Southern sympathizers Webster then shifted his operations to Richmond where he again was welcome as a Southern sympathizer. He sent on his messages to Baltimore and from there the coded letters went to Pinkerton in Washington. On one occasion, Webster personally took important messages to Pinkerton, leaving Richmond for Baltimore and from there going on to Richmond. He was stopped by a Northern agent in Baltimore who held him captive in a hotel room until Pinkerton arrived. Rather than expose his double agent, Pinkerton arranged for Webster to escape from the two guards Pinkerton assigned to escort Webster to Fort McHenry for internment. When news of this spectacular escape was learned in the South, Webster became a hero in Richmond. He was lionized and feted by important Southern leaders. Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of War, was so impressed by Webster that he made him his personal courier. As such, he could freely move between Confederate and Union lines, delivering Benjamin's personal mail (making copies, which were given to Pinkerton), as well as scouting through the Southern military installations and forces. When returning to Baltimore in late 1861, Webster learned of a secret Southern organization called the Knights of Liberty, a Southern fifth column whose leaders boasted that they could muster 7,000 armed men to attack and seize Washington. Webster not only joined this group but became a leader, addressing its members at secret meetings. Pinkerton was appraised of the group's activities and even added two more of his agents to the secret Knights society. Both of these Union agents were unknown to Webster and he to them to avoid any compromise. Pinkerton then arranged for a large-scale raid in Baltimore against the Knights. Union forces battered down the door of the meeting place while Webster himself was thundering threats against Lincoln on the platform. As the Southern sympathizers scurried about in panic, Webster escaped through a window and fled to Richmond. Almost all of the secret society members were arrested and imprisoned. Two of those caught in the raid were leading newspapermen, Frank Key Howard, editor for the Baltimore Exchange, and T. W. Hall, editor for The South. Both men, along with about two dozen others, were imprisoned and held without bail. A large cache of rifles and ammunition was also discovered and confiscated. These weapons were later distributed to McClellan's troops. Webster, meanwhile, took up permanent residence at the Spotswood Hotel in Richmond, where he worked with a courier, Hattie Lawton. He continued to carry Benjamin's mail and befriended many Confederate dignitaries and leaders such as John Beauchamp Jones, whose Civil War diary later became a literary classic. Webster wrote some of his own espionage classics, reports so detailed that it took Pinkerton and his aides several days to decode the lengthy messages. One report was thirty-seven pages long and contained the smallest details on Richmond's defense works, its seventeen Enfield guns, the height of its breastworks and that they were constructed of "split pine logs." It reported on the illnesses spreading through the Confederate army, the percentage of soldiers who were without shoes, the price of corn and hay. In February 1862, however, Webster's messages stopped altogether. He was by then very ill, suffering from inflammatory rheumatism, an affliction he had endured for some years. Hattie Lawton was nursing him and this left Pinkerton without a spymaster in Richmond or any flow of vital information from the Southern capital. To correct that problem he sent two men, Pryce Lewis and John Scully, to Richmond. The mission to Richmond began badly. Lewis and Scully found it difficult dodging their own Union patrols and the skiff in which they were rowing across the Potomac was overturned in a fierce storm. They had to swim to the Virginia shore. They somehow managed to avoid the many Confederate cavalry patrols around Richmond and enter the capital, where they made their way to the ailing Webster. Both men then took rooms at the Ballard House on February 26, 1862. They waited for Webster to painfully complete his final report. The next afternoon they went to visit Webster and were suddenly surprised to see a Confederate officer and several soldiers enter Webster's rooms. The officer was Captain Sam McGubbin, who headed the counterintelligence department of General John H. Winder's intelligence service. Both Scully and Lewis froze but soon relaxed when McGubbin appeared to be making a social call on Webster, inquiring after his health. At that moment, ironic fate entered the room in the form of the son of former Senator Jackson Morton. The youth looked at Scully and Lewis closely. Both agents lowered their heads, knowing they had been recognized as the two guards Pinkerton had placed on the Morton family when they had been detained as Southern sympathizers. Both Lewis and Scully mumbled their goodbyes and left the room but they were seized and arrested before they left the hotel. Both Scully and Lewis were tried separately and found guilty of espionage, both refusing to admit anything. They were sentenced to be hanged on April 4, 1862. A priest came to take Scully's confession before execution and at that time Lewis desperately wrote a note to the British consul in Richmond, demanding the protection of the British government and stating that both he and Scully were English subjects (this was true). He gave the note to the priest, who promised to deliver it. Judge Crump, the magistrate who had presided at the trials of Lewis and Scully, then visited the spies and asked them some routine questions, then left, mumbling: "I wish you were Yankees!" That night Lewis huddled in a blanket, expecting death. He would later write: "I had no fear of dying. I felt sure the physical pain would not be greater than an instant's toothache, as to hereafter, I believed in a just God. I was in his power. If he was not just I could not help it. I was 27, strong as a lion, and physically without nervousness." Then a "fussy little man" named John Frederick Cridland entered Lewis' cell. He was the British consul in Richmond. He said that he had gotten Lewis' note but felt that he had little ability to save him even though he admitted that he had not seen the evidence presented against him and Scully in their trials. At the time, however, the intervention of Cridland on behalf of England would mean much, as Lewis knew. The Confederacy had desperately courted England to intervene in the war on the Southern side and, Lewis reasoned, the execution of two British-born Union spies would not sit well with English politicians and public alike. Cridland said he would demand to see the evidence in the trials and departed. Lewis began to have hope that his ploy might bring about a reprieve. Then he noticed Scully weeping and told him to have courage. Scully sobbed that he had sent a message with the priest, too, one to General Winder saying that he would confess everything. Lewis flew into a rage but before he could vent his anger on his fellow spy, he was dragged to another cell and watched as Winder and Randolph Tucker, Virginia's state attorney, entered Scully's cell to hear his confession. The next morning, while Lewis peered from the window of his cell to the street below, he saw a carriage draw up in front of the prison. Out of it stepped two of Winder's agents and following them was a well-dressed but enfeebled man. He was Timothy Webster, who was followed by Hattie Lawton. Lewis now knew that John Scully had betrayed the great Union spy in Richmond to save his own life. Though Winder and others urged Lewis to confess, he remained silent. Meanwhile, Cridland had examined the trial transcripts and then confronted Secretary of War Benjamin with the fact that Scully and Lewis had been tried and convicted before they could obtain evidence for their defense, which, Cridland pointed out, caused the trial to be tainted with a "reversible error." This argument carried great weight with the keen legal mind of Benjamin, who prided himself on upholding justice and adhering to the law. He overruled the court-martials of both Lewis and Scully and postponed their executions. Timothy Webster by then had been charged with espionage and was tried at the Richmond courthouse. Lewis was brought to testify against him but he refused to implicate him, saying that he had learned from a gossip that Webster sometimes carried mail beyond the Yankee lines and that he had gone to see Webster simply to have him take a letter to a friend in Baltimore. Scully testified separately and later admitted to Lewis in their cell that he had compromised Webster. Webster was condemned to be hanged; Hattie Lawton, his faithful courier and nurse, was sentenced to serve a prison term of one year and one day. Allan Pinkerton begged McClellan to send a messenger under a flag of truce to Richmond, asking that the three men be exchanged. McClellan shook his head, saying that such an act was impossible, that it would appear to be a tacit admission that the three men were spies and seal the deaths of all of them, instead of merely Webster. Next, Pinkerton went to Lincoln, who convened a special cabinet meeting. Iron-fisted Edwin McMasters Stanton, the Union Secretary of War, promised he would do all he could to save Webster's life but that he would do nothing for Lewis and Scully "who betrayed their companion to save their own lives." Stanton sent an envoy under a flag of truce to Richmond to see President Jefferson Davis. His message to Davis was that Washington had not mistreated Confederate spies and had hanged none of them. It asked that Webster be spared. But typical of the rigid Stanton, the note also cautioned that if the South hanged Union spies, the North could do the same. This was just enough of a threat to the proud Davis for him to refuse clemency to Webster. The death sentence would be carried out. Webster begged General Winder from his deathbed that he be shot, not hanged. He felt that he deserved an honorable end. Winder refused. Hattie Lawton then begged for Webster's life but her pleas were ignored. On April 29, 1862, Webster was helped to a carriage, with Lawton at his side. He was driven through the streets to the fairgrounds at Camp Lee, where thousands milled about a high scaffold. Webster and Lawton were shocked to learn that it was to be a public execution, such was the wrath President Davis felt for Stanton's undiplomatic threat. Among the crowd were many Richmond belles, their dresses flaring over delicate hoops. They wore black gloves for the occasion, tightly buttoned about small wrists, and finely woven shawls over their shoulders to ward off the crisp spring morning wind. Webster was helped from his carriage and up the scaffold stairs to face an executioner named Kapard, the jailer at Castle Thunder, a man not well experienced in hanging. Actually, Timothy Webster would be the first American spy to be hanged on his own native soil since Nathan Hale was similarly executed in 1776. When the trap was sprung, however, he fell to the ground, since Kapard had placed the hangman's noose too loosely about Webster's neck. In great pain, Webster lay on the ground for some minutes until two guards picked him up and carried him back up the gallows stairs to stand him once more on the trapdoor. This time the nervous Kapard adjusted the noose so tightly that Webster's face turned dark red. He gasped: "Strangled! I suffer a double death!" Again the body shot downward through the open trapdoor but this time the rope held. Hattie Lawton was allowed to accompany the corpse to a Richmond funeral parlor, where the body was placed in a metal coffin. That night the body was buried in the paupers' section of Richmond cemetery. His grave was unmarked and the earth trampled flat by slaves at the order of Confederate jailers. When Pinkerton heard that his finest agent had been buried in an unmarked grave he vowed to find it and return the body "to Northern soil" following the war. He was able to do this thanks to another courageous Union spy, a woman named Elizabeth Van Lew.
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| Links & Recommended Sites | Oneliners, Stories, etc. |
| Questions? Anything Not Work? Not Look Right? My Policy Is To Blame The Computer. |
| About The Military And Wars | Link To Us | Site Navigation | Site Map |