Blowing up the White House

[JMadonna]

John, I wrote this a few years back about the Torpedo Plot. For various reasons I believe that BF Stringfellow was the man assigned to get Harney and the black powder into the White House basement. I believe I even found the White House basement entrance beneath the North Portico from a picture of President Ford's daughter washing her car there.

Anyway, FWIW here it is.

As the military situation surrounding Richmond worsened, Confederate agent Franklin Stringfellow was busy gathering intelligence in Washington. Stringfellow had established a number of intelligence cells throughout the war and earned a much-respected reputation for success. Although Stringfellow survived the war he never revealed the purpose of his mission at this late a date.

Most of what we know comes from bits and pieces of lectures he gave after the war along with a vague letter he wrote to Jefferson Davis at the former president’s request to help him in the writing of his memoirs. We do know that he was a marked man in the North and took a great risk to himself by operating in Washington.

Among the places he stayed at this time was the Kirkwood House because that was where the vice-president was residing. It is not known if they ever had contact with each other, but the comings and goings of important people to Andrew Johnson’s door was an opportunity for a spy to learn a great deal.

Stringfellow reported that he was “in constant communication with an officer occupying an important position about Mr. Lincoln. I made him a proposition which he said he would consider, then he thought that he would accept it, but would answer me in a few days”.

Despite being in a continuous state of war for four years, there was virtually no security for the White House or the President. Anybody who wanted could walk right into the White House and wait to speak directly to the Chief Executive.

The north side of the White House was the official and ceremonial entrance where people gathered for formal receptions, the review of troops and an occasional presidential “serenade”. The center window over the North Portico was the traditional presidential rostrum where the president made his last speech.

The White House basement was located directly beneath the North Portico with access to the basement rooms by way of doors in the two open courts on either side of the Portico.

The basement had "the air of an old and unsuccessful hotel." According to Lincoln’s secretary William O. Stoddard "the lower, or basement contains the kitchen, lumber rooms and other domestic offices, and is perennially overrun with rats, mildew and foul smells."

If Stringfellow was in the process of setting up Harney’s plot its probable that he found his way into the White House basement for a trial run.

But on April 1, Stringfellow’s luck finally ran out. His cover as a dentist who could travel throughout Maryland was exposed and he sought to escape the city. He wrote that he relied upon “a person whose name is linked in the history of those dark days, I went some twelve miles that first evening”.

Twelve miles was the distance to the Surrattsville tavern. Since Booth and John Surratt were not in Washington that day, the person who most likely aided his escape was Mary Surratt.

We know from boarder Lewis Weichmann’s memoirs that on April 1 she left the boarding house sometime after breakfast. She returned in the evening from Surrattsville with her brother and asked Weichmann to return the horse and buggy to Howard’s livery stable.

Stranded without return transportation, her brother walked home to Surrattsville the next day. Since women simply did not travel alone in those days (especially during wartime), it appears she was the one who accompanied Stringfellow out of Washington and then had her brother escort her back home.

Despite these efforts, Union cavalry captured and arrested Stringfellow the following day. Although he managed to destroy most of the incriminating evidence against him by eating it, he was unable to digest a report on the defenses of Washington sewn into his coat.

From this information, it seems evident that Stringfellow’s assignment was to lay the groundwork for Harney’s mission.

Slipping a man into a guarded city was one thing but bringing along enough ordinances to blow up a building as big as the White House was a tougher task. The black powder would have to be obtained and secured somewhere in Washington. With cavalry increasing their patrols in the Virginia countryside Stringfellow needed to find a blind spot.

There could be no other reason for Stringfellow to require information on Washington’s defenses. The Confederacy certainly had no army at this point in the war to exploit any weaknesses that he may have uncovered. Stringfellow’s failure in his last mission sealed the fate of Harney’s.