The Montreal Link

[John Fazio]

(07-08-2018 06:15 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  

(07-08-2018 01:54 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  

(07-07-2018 10:30 PM)Barry Sheehy Wrote:  

(07-07-2018 09:31 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Susan, Barry, Steve, Laurie, John, et al.:

Ficklin got around. He even fought in the Mexican War. During the Civil War he served as a Confederate purchasing agent in Europe, a blockade runner and an agent of the Confederate Secret Service. He was implicated in an earlier plot to assassinate Lincoln. It is known that he was absent from Washington from 1861 through April, 1865, but that he was in the capital on the fateful day of April 14. It is also known that while he was in Washington he had contact with George Atzerodt and that he stayed in the Kirkwood House on the 14th, the residence, at the time, of Vice President Johnson. Atzerodt, too, had a room at the Kirkwood. Ficklin was arrested on April 16 with a whistle upon his person, whistles being a means of communication apparently used by Confederates in the city (Secret Service Agents and Mosby men). He denied complicity and had to be released on June 16 because of lack of evidence despite the fact that Lafayette C. Baker and Major James O'Beirne were personally convinced of his complicity.


What is not commonly known is that he played a major role in trying to direct shipments of Montana gold to the Confederacy in 1863 and 1864 after gold was discovered in the Big Sky country in 1862, 1863 and 1864. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, the trans-shipment point for both the Confederacy and the Union, he received shipments from the gold fields from operatives such as the notorious Jack Slade, who then returned to Montana with wagons full of dry goods, which found a ready market in the mining communities. Very little of the Montana gold, however, found its way into Confederate coffers. Credit for this belongs to Sidney Edgerton and his nephew Wilbur Fisk Sanders, Lincoln's men in Montana, who resorted to vigilantism to assure that the gold went North, and this despite the Confederate sympathies of a majority of the inhabitants of the mining districts. The Vigilantes of Montana hanged some 21 men from January through October, 1864. without trial, before matters came under their control.

John

John,
I am learning so much as a member of this forum. I knew about Ficklin and Finney being in Canada and the former being involved in cotton trading for Brown Brothers (today's Brown Brother Harriman). What sources or info is available regarding Baker's view of Ficklin in Washington in April 1865 ? Also did not know about the Montana link, which is fascinating.

Baker is an enigmatic character I am struggling to figure out. He and his brother-in law Walter Pollack are all over Montreal from the Spring of 1864 through March of 1865. Baker was clearly involved in cotton trading which would have brought him into contact with the CSS in Canada but he and Pollack were also involved in some legitimate police work in Montreal. I am struggling with untangling these two conflicting agendas.
B

Barry:

Please see pp. 335 and 355 of Decapitating the Union. See also p. 233 of Tidwell, Hall and Gaddy's Come Retribution and the following pages in Edwards and Steers The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence: 212 for a relevant statement of Samuel K. Brown and a footnote re contraband cotton; 260 re Ficklin's whistle; 491 for a letter written by Ficklin and footnote 1 re O'Beirne and Atzerodt; and 990-993 for a letter from O'Beirne and a statement from Ficklin, which makes reference to Salt Lake City. In addition, Lafayette Baker's History of the United States Secret Service, self-published in 1867, contains a wealth of information relative to undercover work during the war, including cotton speculations (Chapter XXVI and speculation and fraud (Chapter XXVII). The book suffers, however, from the absence of an index, so one has to rely heavily on the table of contents and then read your tail off. There may well be references to Ficklin in this book, but, frankly, I haven't the time to look for them. I hope this helps you.

Incidentally, Baker probably knew more than anyone else in the country about human perfidy and all the shenanigans that were going on when no one was looking. I believe it is quite likely that his encyclopedic knowledge of wrongdoing had a lot to do with his sudden and mysterious death.

John

---

(07-08-2018 09:06 AM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  I have seen it stated in several places that Ficklin had contact with Atzerodt, but what is the source for that?

Personally, I doubt that Ficklin was involved in the assassination. His primary interest in April 1865 seems to have been to get his cotton out of the South, with the help of Browning and Singleton, and a dead Lincoln wouldn't have helped in that regard. Mary's sister Emily Helm was also trying to get her cotton at that time, and Ficklin brought some papers to Washington for her that she had left in Richmond.

Susan:

See my reply to Barry for references to sources re Ficklin and Atzerodt.

I am inclined to disagree with you about Ficklin's complicity. Recall that Baker and O'Beirne were convinced of his complicity and released him only because of a lack of evidence and the intervention of Browning, who had his own agenda. Recall, too, that he was implicated in a previous attempt on Lincoln's life; that he absented himself from Washington from 1861 through the spring of 1865, but just happened to show up in that city on April 14, 1865; that he stayed at the same hotel that Johnson stayed in and that Atzerodt had a room in; that he was apprehended with a whistle on his person, whistles being the favorite means of communication used by Mosby and his Rangers and put to extensive use on the night of the assassination (see pp. 354-356 of Decapitating the Union); that he had devoted his entire life, during the war years, to serving the interests of the Confederacy in many and various ways; and that by April 14, 1865, there was virtually nothing left to the Confederate leadership, to stave off the catastrophe that was upon them and that they had fought so fiercely to prevent, except multiple assassinations, for which purpose they would pull out every stop they had. The stew is simply too thick to come to any conclusion other than that Ficklin was part of the conspiracy that was to have put "some 15 of the Yankee leaders" in their graves if everything had gone according to plan.

John

He actually returned to Washington on April 1, 1865 (Browning in his diary mentions seeing him and Mr. Bibb of Alabama on that date). "The Evidence" also includes a letter from Ficklin to a friend deploring the assassination and predicting the harsh consequences it would bring upon the South. This could have been a ruse, I suppose, but it's notable that Ficklin didn't flee Washington after the assassination, but remained there until his arrest.

I would think that a whistle would have come in handy when he was running the blockade.

Above all, Ficklin strikes me as a pragmatist and a realist, who wasn't inclined to sigh for the lost cause once it was well and truly lost and who wouldn't have had much use for Booth's scheme. He certainly bounced back quickly enough after his release from prison. And whatever Baker and O'Beirne thought of Ficklin's guilt, their opinion doesn't seem to have been shared by Stanton.

Susan:

I hear you, but come to a different conclusion.

April 1 is also the date McClellan left for Europe, to join August Belmont, who was already there. Coincidence? Maybe. And maybe the conspiracy had more tentacles than is commonly realized. I read Ficklin's letter. I am not impressed with it. It carries about as much weight as all the intentionally planted perjury in the trial of the conspirators (by Montgomery, Merritt and Dunham), the gratuitous exculpations of the Confederate government by major players---Booth, Arnold, Surratt, Conrad and Edwin Lee-- and the florid denials of complicity made by the big guns in Canada--Clay, Tucker, Sanders, Surratt, Thompson and Cleary. As for staying in Washington, fleeing would have been far worse for him. Innocent men do not flee. As for the whistle, Mosby always wore a metal fox whistle on a ribbon around his neck, and there is substantial evidence of their use in and around Ford's on the night of the assassination.

Wouldn't have had much use for Booth's scheme? To begin with, it wasn't
Booth's scheme; he was just an agent following orders. Secondly, the hard-bitten and superb fighter known as the Gray Ghost is reported to have said of Booth: "By God, I could take that man in my arms". (See Alford's Fortune's Fool, p. 422, Note 85). If a man of his caliber was smitten by Booth, why do you suppose that the slick and equally dedicated Ficklin would feel differently?

I believe Stanton was influenced by Browning, though this is only an intelligent guess. There is much we don't know. In the end, all we have to go with are probabilities, because possibilities are infinite and certainties are as rare as hen's teeth.

John