Confederate Secret Service

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Confederate Secret Service is any of a number of official and semi-official secret service operations conducted by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

Overview

During the Civil War a number of secret operations sprang up, some at the direction of the government, some with its tacit approval, and some that were under only the most tenuous control, or even under no control whatsoever. Many of these operations involved acts that were considered by the Union to go beyond the normal conduct of civilized warfare. From the Confederacy's point of view, these were desperate measures necessary to compensate for the fact that, in terms of conventional warfare, they were out-manned, out-supplied, and out-gunned.

By 1864, the Confederate government was attempting to gain control over the various operations that had sprung up since the beginning of the war, but often with little success. In April 1865, most of the official papers of the Secret Service were burned by Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin just before the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, so the full story of Confederate secret operations may never be known.

In 1864, secret legislation was put before the Confederate Congress to create an official Special and Secret Bureau of the War Department. The legislation was not enacted until March 1865 and was never implemented, so no one really knows what an official Confederate Secret Service would have looked like. However, all these various bits and pieces have been referred to at one time or another as having been part of the Confederate Secret Service.

Financial records were kept in a ledger.^[1]

Military operations and officially sanctioned Secret Service activities

Agents within the United States

Rose O'Neal Greenhow and Aaron Van Camp appear to have been members of the espionage gathering ring during the formative period of the Confederate government. Greenhow was incarcerated at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, District of Columbia. Thomas Jordan recruited Greenhow and provided her with cypher code.

John Surratt was a courier and spy.

John H. Sothoron appears to have led the Confederate underground in St. Mary's County, Maryland. Col. Sothoron lived near Charlotte Hall Military Academy. His son Webster attended the school and was reputed to be a spy. Richard Thomas (Zarvona) and David Herold were also students there, although Herolds attending is disputed.

Samuel Mudd, of Charles County, Maryland, appears to have lent shelter to agents and harbored John Wilkes Booth, although his role is disputed.

Foreign Agents

The Confederacy's first secret-service agent may have been James D. Bulloch. In 1861, almost immediately after the attack on Fort Sumter, Bulloch traveled to Liverpool, England, and established a base of operations there. Britain was officially neutral in the conflict between North and South, but private and public sentiment favored the Confederacy.^{[citation needed]} Britain was also willing to buy all the cotton that could be smuggled past the Union blockade, which provided the South with its only real source of hard currency. Bulloch established a relationship with the shipping firm of Fraser & Trenholm to buy and sell Confederate cotton; Fraser & Trenholm became, in effect, the Confederacy's international bankers. Bulloch arranged for the construction and secret purchase of the commerce raider CSS Alabama as well as many of the blockade runners that acted as the Confederacy's commercial lifeline. Bulloch arranged for the exchange of cotton for hard currency, which he used to purchase war material – including arms and ammunition, uniforms, and other supplies.

Jacob Thompson was the Confederate commissioner in Canada. He distributed money, coordinated agents and may have planned covert operations. He was involved in the attempt to liberate Confederate prisoners at Johnson's Island, a Union facility which also housed political prisoners.

Thompson met with Clement Laird Vallandigham, an Ohio politician. Vallandigham, a potential presidential candidate against Lincoln, was arrested by Union General Ambrose Burnside and deported to the Confederacy. Vallandigham made his way to Canada.

Signal Corps

The Confederate Signal Corps was established in 1862. Nearly 1,200 men were in the secret service, most of whom were well-to-do and knew more than one language.

Major William Norris was their chief. Norris may have worked under Braxton Bragg. On 26 April 1865, Norris took the position of the Commissioner of Prisoner Exchange Robert Ould. Ould may have been the civilian llaison to the corps and Bragg the military llaison, with both reporting to Jefferson Davis or Judah Benjamin or both.

Thomas Nelson Conrad was a scout and spy and worked with Norris.

Torpedo Bureau

The Torpedo Bureau, authorized on October 31, 1862, and headed by Brigadier General Gabriel Rains, was charged with the production of various explosive devices, including land mines, naval mines and "coal torpedos."

Submarine Battery Service

Created at the same time as the Torpedo Bureau, the Submarine Battery Service was the Confederate Navy's group of torpedo specialists. The Submarine Battery Service primarily utilized electrically-detonated torpedoes to protect the South's waterways. Originally commanded by Cmdr. Matthew Fontaine Maury, also known as "The Pathfinder of the Seas", the reins of command were turned over to his protégé`, Lt. Hunter Davidson, when Maury was sent abroad to further his experiments involving electrical torpedoes and to procure needed supplies and ships for the Confederate Navy. The Service was found operating along the James River between Richmond and Hampton Roads, Wilmington, NC, Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA among other locales.

Espionage

The Confederacy benefited from the services of a number of "traditional" spies including Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Belle Boyd, and Catherine Virginia Baxley.

Bureau of Special and Secret Service

In November 1864, the Confederate House of Representatives in secret session referred a bill “for the establishment of a Bureau of Special and Secret Service” to their Committee on Military Affairs. The bureau was to have a “polytechnic corps”. The existing “torpedo corps” was to be incorporated into the bureau. New inventions were to be encouraged.^[2]

Secret Service operations in Canada

Confederate agents operated around Halifax, Quebec City, Niagara, Toronto, and (especially) Montreal.^[3]

Sanctioned destructionists, privateers, and licensed operators

The bounty law

The Confederacy knew it was in trouble from the beginning of war, because it didn't have a Navy. All the ships of the United States Navy naturally belonged to the Union, and the few privately owned ships that could be converted to military service were no match for the Union Navy. Privateering was essential. On May 21, 1861, the Confederate Congress enacted an amendment to their May 6, 1861 Declaration of War which provided that

the government of the Confederate States will pay to the cruiser or cruisers of any private armed vessel commissioned under said act, twenty per centum on the value of each and every vessel of war belonging to the enemy, that may be sunk or destroyed by such private armed vessel or vessels, the value of the armament to be included in the estimate.

In 1862, possibly following a suggestion, the Confederate Congress enacted a bounty of fifty percent of the value of any vessel destroyed by means of a new invention:

The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That the first section of the above entitled Act be so amended, that, in case any person or persons shall invent or construct any new machine or engine, or contrive any new method for destroying the armed vessels of the enemy, he or they shall receive fifty per centum of the value of each and every such vessel that may be sunk or destroyed, by means of such invention or contrivance,

This naturally attracted the attention of entrepreneurs. Horace Hunley put together a group of investors to finance the submarine that bears his name, hoping to make money on the bounty. Private individuals with engineering experience such as E. C. Singer, C. Williams, and Zere McDaniel developed and patented new torpedoes and fuses.

Special and detached service

The coal torpedo

Developed by Thomas Courtenay of the Confederate Secret Service, coal torpedoes were hollow metal castings resembling a lump of coal. The castings were filled with powder and then secreted in the coal bunker of enemy vessels. When the coal replicas were shoveled into the fire boxes of ship's boilers, the resulting explosions either damaged or sank the ship. A variation of the coal torpedo used against river steamers was a piece of wood, hollowed out and filled with powder, which could easily be concealed in the fuel piles of cord wood stacked along the river banks and which was capable of producing disaster to the unlucky ship that hoisted it aboard.

Active measures operations

While it is not known if the secret service was involved in the following, the likelihood is great.

On 19 October 1864, the St. Albans Raid took place in Vermont by personnel in Canada.

The attempted John Wilkes Boothe plots in the assassination of President Lincoln in August 1864 and April 1865 may have been connected. This is argued in the Edward Steers, Jr. book, Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

External links

Civil War Torpedoes