The Montreal Link

[Barry Sheehy]

Richard Montgomery is one of at least three double agents in Montreal, the other two were Godfrey Joseph Hyams and Sanford Conover (Charles Dunham),and there were probably more. On the other hand, it's clear the CSS had a lot of powerful friends in the north beyond just copperheads. The names at SLH prove that. This was a classic Civil War with divided loyalties.

Did the Government have some advance warning on what was being cooked up in Montreal? The answer is yes but did anyone connect the dots? There was clearly pockets of information about Booth's plot inside the War Department, just look at how fast authorities closed in on the Surratt House. But what was obvious after the event may not have been entirely clear before the event. Remember, in addition to Booth's plot there were three or four other schemes afoot to kidnap or kill the President. Lincoln's cavalier attitude toward his own personal safety didn't help.

If there was advance knowledge that was fumbled, there would have been a CYA scramble in the aftermath of the assassination. One thing that appears clear to me is that no one besides Joseph Holt (not a favorite of mine) had any stomach for exploring what happened in Montreal in 1864/65. And Holt's curiosity blew up in his face. This reticence to discuss Montreal extended to both Federal and Confederate actors. No one who was there ( and there were a crowd) wanted Montreal discussed. I should add that a good many of the Union players in Montreal were there to make money buying cotton and selling contraband to the Confederacy. This was nothing to be proud of in the post war era when Lincoln was being deified. The sad truth was that much of the Union war effort had been corrupted by 1864/65 and Montreal was a venue for this corruption.

My focus is on those who had other reasons other than cotton and illicit trading for being in Montreal. For example, we know Lafayette Baker was indeed buying and selling cotton, His cotton trading partner Roswell Goodell was with him in Montreal but did the chief of the National detective Police (NDP) have any official "police" reason for being in Canada? He wrote only one report from Montreal that I can find and its primary focus was ironically illicit cotton trading. What else was he and Walter Pollack (NDP) up to in Montreal? What were copperheads and Lincoln haters Ferdinand and Benjamin Wood doing in Montreal in intimate contact with the CSS? I could list many other names and ask the same question.

Remember that a RICO case consists largely of linking names and places to an identified crime or criminal. If that was all that was required to get an indictment, then there would plenty of indictments to be handed out in this case.

Regarding the question what would happen if evidence were forthcoming that elements within the Government, including Democrats and Republicans, were to some degree aware that efforts were afoot to get Lincoln off the stage via kidnapping or other means, what would happen? I suspect the answer is very little. As the old newspaper adage holds " When reality clashes with the myth, print the myth."
Barry