Conspiracy in Canada

[John Stanton]

Laurie. I didn't forget to describe Zarvona, dressed as a French woman, I avoided it. I was writing to an informed group, and I was trying to shorten the story, to concentrate on Martin. You proved my point. I knew you knew. I hope some of you others will chip in with events not mentioned. I can't find much more. I do have a book on order from Library Loan - it is "Conspiracy in Canada" by Clayton Grey. 1957. We'll see what he has to offer.

[John Stanton]

Just read "Conspiracy in Canada" by Clayton Gray. 1957. Book is heavy on the St. Albans Raiders. He did mention Martin. He said Martin had the title of "Colonel - on detached duty" and recruited Booth to Abduct Lincoln to apease the Maryland planters. There are pics of Booth's bank account etc. but nothing that this crowd didn't know already. I doubt that we will find more on Martin

[JMadonna]

Perhaps researching Marshal Kane would help. I read that the plan John Bealle used to attack Johnson's Island was originated by Kane and Martin the year before and there is evidence that the Maryland Planters kidnapping plan originated with Kane.

[margotdarby]

For John, augmenting his post to Laurie on P.C. Martin's background:

I believe our Patrick C. Martin is the same Patrick C. Martin who was convicted and imprisoned for a mutiny on the merchant brig 'Cicero' in May 1841. Martin was part-owner of the Cicero. Suspecting some thievery, Martin stabbed his captain, who subsequently drowned.

This was in the Caribbean, near Panama/Columbia. Martin was imprisoned in Cartagena until the US Consul sent him to New York on a Navy brig. In US Circuit Court, 11 March 1842, he was sentenced to two years in state prison and a $500 fine, reduced from three years/$3000. The court received several letters requesting leniency, including one from the Vicar General of New York.

Martin's father wrote the court that his son had been raised and schooled in Baltimore, then went to sea at 16 for three years. After his return he married a girl from Oxford, PA (a hamlet near Wilmington, Delaware); and joined his father in a business called Charles Martin & Son. He was on a business voyage for the firm, with his brother-in-law, when the incident happened. Martin's imprisonment effectively ended the firm.

The foregoing mostly comes from the New York Herald, March 12, 1842, PDF here: http://bit.ly/11LGNVN
although it was covered in other newspapers and picked up in the Army & Navy Chronicle, with his name miscopied as Charles P. Martin:
http://bit.ly/16zBk7G

While searching I also turned up a book endnote mentioning "Patrick C. Martin, who sold Catholic prayer books, pictures, beads, and crucifixes for a Baltimore-based company," in the 1830s, in the Wilmington, Delaware area. If this is he, it might explain how it was he married a girl from Oxford PA in 1838. It would also suggest that the Martin family kept good relations with the Catholic hierarchy, hence the Vicar General letter.

The 'Cicero' case fills in a lot of background about Patrick Martin and his family. He had spent much of his life in merchant shipping. He was not a "liquor dealer from New York" as we sometimes read, nor did he grow up among south Maryland farmers. He was a mainly a shipowner and importer, not a tea-time captain running the blockade. He was suspected of having a dark stain in his past because in fact he did.

[JMadonna]

Margot,

This is good investigative work. How did you find it?

[margotdarby]

Thanks. Pure happenstance!

Two or three days ago I was idly Googling 'George N. Sanders' or someone else in the charmed circle. I got a link to this symposium with a mention of Patrick C. Martin, and that sent me off on this tangent. I checked out P.C. Martin on some newspaper databases, and found a lot. I didn't think the results from 1841-42 could be this fellow--very young then, only around 24--but the vital information about him dovetailed perfectly with the other sparse bits we have.

I made one factual error in recounting the brig 'Cicero' case. Captain Cox was stabbed by P.C. Martin, but he did not die. The mate, a man named Brown, did. Cox was very much alive and provided testimony. It appears that Martin's brother-in-law did so too. It all looks like a family-firm feud that blew up badly.

Minor, later, newsprint about Patrick C. Martin and family: After moving to Pittsburgh, Mr. Martin suffered some business loss in the great city fire of 1845. The family was back in Baltimore by the early 1850s. They traveled to New York a lot, by steamboat and rail. In 1853 they were in all the papers as injured survivors of a head-on collision on a single-track stretch of the Camden and Amboy Railroad in Old Bridge, New Jersey. (To judge by the news coverage, this suicide-bend was already historical and notorious in 1853, and like the overbuilt B&O stone bridges in Baltimore it's been preserved for us. The East Brunswick Historical Society website proudly informs us that "The single track train built in 1832 still passes through the village [Historic District of Old Bridge].")

Further afield, I now have pretty good hunches that a) Patrick C. Martin knew James D. Bulloch prior to 1861, and this was his main connection to the circle; and b) he didn't die in an 1864 shipwreck near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, but merely lay low for a few years, while his wife listed herself as a "widow" in the Montreal directory. I'm sure many others have chased these suspicions down with more persistence than I have, but maybe I can come up with something.

[JMadonna]

Some of the best discoveries come while looking up something else. If you find anything else about the circle feel free to share.

[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.

[JMadonna]

Laurie,
I'd love to read the book. Is it copyrighted? If not maybe it could be scanned and put on your new website.

BTW From Wikipedia: Clement Clay was born with a strong political pedigree; he was the oldest son of Clement Comer Clay, a former senator and governor of Alabama. He was also a third cousin of Henry Clay, the noted statesman from Kentucky.

[L Verge]

Okay, that disproves the book's claim that Clement Clay was the son of Henry. The book's at work, so I will double-check again to make sure I did not misquote.

I believe that it was copyrighted in Canada in 1957, and in the U.S. in 1859. I'll double-check that also. I'm working at the museum tomorrow.

[LincolnMan]

The sounds wonderful. I'd be particularly interested in operations involving Windsor-Detroit.

[Laurie Verge]

(06-07-2013 05:52 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Okay, that disproves the book's claim that Clement Clay was the son of Henry. The book's at work, so I will double-check again to make sure I did not misquote.

I believe that it was copyrighted in Canada in 1957, and in the U.S. in 1859. I'll double-check that also. I'm working at the museum tomorrow.

I double-checked the Clay mention, and the author did err in saying that Clement Clay was the son of Henry. I apologize on his behalf. I will also apologize for my typo above. The U.S. copyright on the book was 1959 - not 1859...

[Craig Hipkins]

I would have been interesting to see what side Henry Clay would have taken if he had lived to see the Civil War. He was from the border state of Kentucky so he could have gone either way. Somehow I believe that he would have decided to stay with the Union. What do you all think?

Craig

[Rogerm]

I have just finished a biography of Henry Clay, entitled HENRY CLAY; THE ESSENTIAL AMERICAN by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. To my mind there is no question that he would have supported the Union, had he lived into the 1860s. He and Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina were bitter political enemies. And, late in his life, Clay condemned succession advocates of treason.

[RJNorton]

I found this article from the August 11, 1856, edition of the New York Times.