Phillip Henson the Southern Union Spy

[RJNorton]

The late Rick Stelnick used to maintain a Dixie Reckoning website. The site no longer exixts, but here is what Mr. Stelnick wrote on the site's first page:

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What if a man, came to possess information, which, if made public, would change the historical record concerning the circumstances of the death of one of America’s legendary leaders? As a result of his investigation into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Philip Henson, a scout and spy during the Civil War, and a special secret service agent afterwards for General and President U.S. Grant, became that man. In the case of the murder of Lincoln at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, an actor turned assassin, the telling of the tale, including Booth’s own demise twelve days later, began immediately. Needless to say, examination of the event has been extensive. But, Lincoln scholars haven't been able to come up with an answer to a nagging question: What was Booth's connection to certain characters from New York City in the months, weeks, and days leading up to his act on the evening of Good Friday April 1865? For his part, Henson tracked a trail of blood money through a literal labyrinth of Northern treachery and treason and Southern deceit and dishonor. In the course of his inquiry he would uncover an organization older than U.S. Congress itself, its mercantile membership comprised of the storied seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch American settlers of New Amsterdam.

Following up the clues and leads of 1988’s groundbreaking book Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln & 1995’s April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War, including the uncovering of an ethereal name, Demill & Co. and a spectral address, 178½ Water Street, N.Y.C., Dixie Reckoning: A Reassessment Of The Lincoln Assassination & Lost Confederate Treasury unmasks the shadowy Northern and the sinister Southern individuals who were John Wilkes Booth's benefactors. The very same figures who behind the scenes pushed and shoved the actor front and center stage for the performance of his life. They would also prove to be the men whose daring and derring-do inadvertently egged on a desperate man to dare and to do what an accomplished actor does automatically, if and when, he forgot his lines before a standing room only audience - improvise. A slight re-write of the script here, a small change in a scene there. Depressed but determined, he devised a dramatic and didactic development, whereupon a kidnapping became a killing. Destined and doomed to die demonized and disgraced, a disheartened and disillusioned Booth would discover to his distress that his last act martyred, immortalized, and anointed Lincoln as an American deity, and elevated him to equal status shared by Washington, Jefferson and Roosevelt. Additionally, readers will discover, as regards what historians and history buffs alike have labeled “the crime of the century”, that there were, in fact, actually two crimes; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the disappearance of the Confederacy’s treasury. Dixie Reckoning brings to light what has been hidden in plain sight for 150 years. Further, it will also reacquaint Americans with an unsung hero of the Civil War epoch, Philip Henson, whose own true tale lends itself and serves as an unvarnished companion guide.


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Another page in the website included Mr. Stelnick's bibliography. Gene, the book you mentioned is listed.

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Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln. William A. Tidwell with James O. Hall and D.W. Gaddy © University Press of Mississippi 1988 and April ‘65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. William A. Tidwell © Kent State University Press 1995

Benjamin Brief, DeMille Files and Reford Folder used with kind permission of Mr. Bernard Stein.

Flight Into Oblivion. Dr. Alfred Jackson Hanna © Johnson Publishing Company 1938

Gotham: A History Of New York City To 1898. E. G. Burrows & M. Wallace © Oxford U. Press 1999.

Lincoln and New York. Edited by Harold Holzer © New-York Historical Society 2009

My Secret Mother: Lorna Moon. Richard de Mille © Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998

National Archives Microfilm Publications Microcopy M-599. Investigation and Trial Papers Relating To The Assassination Of President Lincoln. Washington, D.C. 1965.

Philip Henson Papers & Photos used with kind permission of Ms. Grace Henson White.

Philip Henson, The Southern Union Spy: The Hitherto Unwritten Record of a Hero of the War of the Rebellion. George Sibley Johns © Nixon-Jones Printing Co., St. Louis 1887

Sic Semper Tyrannis. Dr. William L. Richter © iUniverse 2009

Slow Train To Paradise: How Dutch Investments Helped Build American Railroads. Dr. Augustus J. Veenendaal, Jr. © Stanford University Press 1996

The Foundation and the Superstructure: Or the Faith of Christ and the Works of Man. Richard Mead Demill, Esq. © G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1908

The Last Years of the Life of General and President Ulysses S. Grant and the Writings of His Memoirs. Dr. Marie Ellen Kelsey © The College of St. Scholastica 2006

The Lost Confederate Treasure. Dr. William Rawlings, Jr. © Splash magazine 2005

The New York Times Archives © The New York Times a.k.a. The Gray Lady 1851-1901

The War of the Rebellion. A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Additions and Corrections. Washington: G.P.O. 1902

Traders or Traitors: Northern Cotton Trading During The Civil War. Dr. David G. Surdam © University of Northern Iowa 1999

Victory Or Repudiation: The Probability Of The Southern Confederacy Winning The Civil War. Marc D. Weidenmier & Kim Oosterlinck © Claremont McKenna College 2007



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Back in 2013 Betty posted this sketch of Henson: