Interesting Visit

[Susan Higginbotham]

(05-16-2017 10:51 PM)SSlater Wrote:  Someone in Canada was sufficiently skilled to be able to take decent pictures of the Raiders, at the time of their trial. There are two pictures of the Raiders - one is said to be on the Court House steps.
That same person may have provided a good picture of the women who attended to the prisoners. This shows that a decent picture could have been made of her. ("Goodole watzer name").
I should not care whether or not Sarah was recruited "to go for Documents - from Richmond or from Canada". But strange new claims, totally unsupported, annoy me. Can anyone show a source for the claim?
"

Not a strange new claim, nor an unsupported one. Sarah was certainly in the South as of January 16, 1865, when she was attempting to secure permission to pass the Confederate lines to go to New York. James Hall has the pertinent correspondence in his article on Sarah reprinted in "In Pursuit Of . . . "

At the conspiracy trial, Gus Howell testified that he took Sarah across the Potomac on about February 1, 1865, and that she went on to New York. According to Hall, Howell actually accompanied Sarah to New York, where they stayed at the European Hotel, from which Sarah went on to Montreal. She registered at the St. Lawrence Hotel there on February 15.

This is consistent with Cameron's February 15, 1865, trial testimony that on February 4, he received duplicate papers to carry to Montreal from Richmond because another messenger (presumably Sarah) had already left for Montreal with the documents: "I received the papers from Secretary Benjamin, Secretary of State, in the State Department, on the 4th of February: he affixed his signature to them in my presence; I did not part with them till I handed them to Mr. Abbott yesterday; the great seal of the Confederate States was affixed to them; Mr. Benjamin called my attention to the excellence of the impression; I volunteered to go for the prisoners; I carried a missive from Col. Thompson, who arranged with me about going, and supplied the funds; I called on Mr. Benjamin an hour after my arrival in Richmond, and was informed the requisite papers had been sent by another messenger the day before; he said everything had been sent necessary to establish their belligerent character and that they acted under orders; the following day I called on the President by appointment, and asked, in order to assure the safe delivery of the papers, if I might be entrusted with duplicates as a second messenger . . . "

I see nothing placing Sarah in Montreal prior to February 15, 1865.