Conspiracy in Canada

[Laurie Verge]

Lincoln collector and dealer, Chuck Hand of Illinois, recently donated a nice little book (only 131 pages of text plus ample source listings) to the James O. Hall Research Center at Surratt House. Entitled Conspiracy in Canada, it was written by Canadian Clayton Gray and published in 1957. The printing was limited to 250 copies.

It limits itself strictly to the St. Albans Raid, the skirmishes along the Lakes, the incendiary fires in NYC, and the Booth plots against Lincoln. It makes a very clear point that the Confederate exiles in Canada were entrenched in all the above events.

Some tidbits from the book: Both JWB and Dr. Luke Blackburn (yellow fever instigator) signed into the Confederate center in Montreal - St. Lawrence Hall - on the same day, October 18, 1864. The doctor had been staying previously at Donegana's on Notre Dame Street, and Booth had rented a room on Cote Street near the Theatre Royale. The St. Albans Raid occurred the next day.

Confederate Commissioner in Canada, Clement C. Clay, was the son of the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay. If I ever learned that previously, it sure did not stick in my head.

Powell was with Booth at the Second Inaugural, but no mention of any other conspirators. When did the Kunhardts announce their theory?

The capture of Lincoln in the theater was to include Powell seizing the President in the presidential box, O'Laughlen and Herold turning off the gaslights, Arnold mounting the stage to catch the President as he was lowered. Atzerodt and Surratt were outside the city, waiting at the far end of the Navy Yard Bridge to pilot the captive on through Southern Maryland. Anybody notice that Booth is conspicuously missing?

At the time this book was published (1957), the page from the St. Lawrence Hall registry containing Booth's and Blackburn's names was owned by a Philadelphia autograph collector and dealer by the name of Charles Brombach. He claimed that Lafayette Baker had hoped to auction off that page, but it lost its value when it was not used at the trial. After Baker's death, Brombach acquired it somehow. At one point, it was stolen; but Brombach bought it back as a simple Booth autograph in 1934.

Booth shipped his theatrical costumes south with Patrick C. Martin, but the Marie Victoria schooner floundered. There was a salvage operation that yielded his trunk(s), and the contents were auctioned off in July of 1865. They were valued at $15,000, but only brought $500.

Feel free to challenge this information because I have listed things that I learned from the book, but all of the author's statements may not be true.

I will say that there is a quote at the beginning that I love: "The newspaper presents 'the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure. A dusty volume of a newspaper carries us back to walk the streets with our fathers and forefathers, to see their manners, hear their conversation, watch their movement in politics and trade, nay, even overhear their quarrels, and observe their mistakes... An old newspaper gives us experience; it teaches wisdom.'" MONTREAL WITNESS, 1848.