The Confederate Secret Service's Secret Plot to Overthrow Lincoln—and Start a Revolution

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And you can learn more by following at What's Up With Hate. And we return to our American stories. The story of April 14th, 1865 often plays out like this.

John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices solely planned and then attempted to decapitate the US government following the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Epimatics in a desperate attempt to save the Confederacy. The real story is more complicated than that, though to understand what happened earlier, we need to understand what happened later in American history. Here to tell the story is the bestselling author of The Unvanquished, Patrick K. O'Donnell.

Let's get into the story. We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. This country is at war with Germany. We shall fight in the hills.

We shall never surrender. In the summer of 1940, the Axis powers are really on a roll, steamrolling the planet. And their shadow warfare capabilities, specifically with Special Operations Forces, are incredibly effective. The United States doesn't have a large standing army.

It's tiny, and it has no Special Operations Forces or intelligence organization. And it's the Special Operations component that Wild Bill Donovan in particular focuses in on. He knows that having some sort of a commando-type group that can act on intelligence that's gathered from spies is an important part of the shadow warfare. He kind of pioneers a combined arms of shadow warfare where they look at it in its totality, its intelligence collecting, its propaganda. But it's also operatives, special forces as we know today, that were a very big focus. And what we find in American history is we develop things and then we lose them.

It's almost like a sine curve. And the United States has a very rich history in Special Operations, going back all the way to the 1680s. And Benjamin Church and forces that would range and attack Native Americans because they had to fight in a regular manner.

But in 1941 there was no Special Operations Forces, so Donovan had to look back at something. And he looked back at our first modern war, the American Civil War. And he specifically looked back at three groups born in this cauldron where, through the compression of war, they had to find unique ways to fight back. And they fought back irregularly through Special Operations. One was Mosby's Rangers of the 43rd Battalion, which is in Virginia. These were men that were mounted on horses that attacked Union wagon trains and captured bridges. And most importantly, they tied down through their regular warfare tens of thousands of Union soldiers because they were constantly harassing the supply lines and causing trouble. It's John Singleton Mosby who develops much of modern irregular warfare. And there needed to be a force to counteract that, and that is the Jesse Scouts. They are the first counter-insurgency unit in the United States Army. They go after partisans like Mosby. They also lead the federal armies. They could get out front and they could gather intelligence on the enemy. They'd find the weak points.

They'd communicate messages between the lines. They also went after high-value targets. They went after the South's most dangerous men. They wear the uniform of their enemy. They wear Confederate uniforms, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do because if you're caught, you're considered a spy and you can be executed immediately.

And many of these men would die. And that leads to the third group, the Confederate Secret Service. They were very good at developing spy gadgets, such as time bombs, to developing underwater torpedoes, to developing land mines, but they were also the masters of propaganda. One thing after another that we see in today's modern world, and it's no wonder that Donovan pens a letter to President Roosevelt that says that we need to go back to our older ways, our traditions of the South, to our older ways, our traditions of the Scouts, Rangers, and the Secret Service, which is filled with lessons learned that the OSS eventually in 1942, when it's rebranded from the Coordinator of Information to the OSS, utilizes these tactics and techniques, and we see them today in the U.S. Army Green Berets and later in the CIA as well. Confederate Secret Service is this very nebulous organization that's opaque, and it's deliberately so. It consists of men and women that were in different departments. They had an area that was devoted to spies, for instance, and they had a department that was geared towards gadgets.

This is the Torpedo Department. It was run mainly by the Raines brothers. They were called the Bomb Brothers because they specialized in blowing things up. One Raines brother built the Augusta Arsenal, one of the few public works projects that the Confederacy undertook. It's a mass of gunpowder works, and it was really a modern miracle. The Confederate armies were pretty well supplied even at the end of the war, and the other brother was involved in the Confederate Secret Service building gadgets, kind of like the Q's laboratory, and he built everything from time bombs that were small, like for instance, this is not a time bomb per se, but he built a small lump of coal that was hollowed out, and within the cavity, they placed gunpowder. This little harmless piece of coal would then be given to operatives, and they'd go up to a steamboat, and they would just pitch it near the boiler room where the rest of the coal was, and nobody would know any better. One of the boiler tenders would shovel that lump of coal in with another shovel full of real coal, and before you know it, the boiler and the entire steam blew up, and hundreds of lives would be lost. They also had a diplomatic section that worked with foreign powers to influence them to change the course of the war. And in the spring of 1864, Jefferson Davis sent several men on a steam ship to run the blockade from South Carolina through the Atlantic up to Canada. They were carrying certificates worth several million dollars in gold, and they make their way to the St. Lawrence Hotel in Montreal.

And let me sort of set the stage here. This place is fascinating. The St. Lawrence is one of the best hotels in the area.

It's opulent, but it serves mint juleps year-round. To cater to the Confederates that are either expatriates, Confederate prisoners of war that somehow escaped from the North, to men like these guys, they set up a node or a branch of the Confederate Secret Service in Canada because it's a neutral area, but also as Canada is also somewhat friendly to the Confederacy because it's in their interest. Britain and France love the idea of a divided United States because it's easier to control and contain. And these guys set up shop there, and their main job is to influence anybody that will take the side of the Confederacy because they see that the North has a massive superiority in numbers. But if they can change things diplomatically, either getting France or England on the side of the Confederacy or changing things internally through the Democrat Party, influencing the election of 1864 that would be favorable to the South, that's what they're there for, and they're very effective.

There's a number of men that are there. One is a guy by the name of Clay, who's a former Senator from the South. He's on the dollar bill of Southern Confederacy. And then there's George Sanders, who's kind of my favorite character. They call him piratical, almost like a pirate.

Overweight, fat, he's always kind of puffing on cigars, he's surrounded by beautiful women. He's got this ability to influence people. But he's also obsessed with something called the theory of the dagger, and that involves executing tyrants or despots.

He spends much of his time in the 1850s in Europe, and it's here that they advocate for tyrannicide or killing leaders that are so-called tyrannical. And he's also a big-time operative within the Democratic Party. And at the time, there is a rising movement within the Democrat Party called the Copperhead Movement. And this movement is a peace movement. And it's George Sanders that is the link for the Confederate Secret Service with the Democratic Party. And that involves the governor of New York, many others, but the main character is an Ohio congressman who is disgraced named Clement Laird Volandian.

And when we return, more of the story of the Confederate Secret Service here on Our American Stories. Well, I've got a complicated project. I didn't realize you did that. Wow, I mean, I always thought I needed a designer to come to my home, but scheduling's always a nightmare. Well, I've got a schedule, and there's no haggling, pressure, or hidden fees either.

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Let's get back to the story. You'll also be hearing Kate Clifford Larson. Volandium is from Ohio, holds a massive rally that draws over 10,000 people. It's an anti-war rally, and says things that are pro-Confederate. And he's eventually, he's exiled by Abraham Lincoln to first the south, and then he leaves voluntarily and goes to Canada. And Clement Laird Volandium is a asset of the Confederate Secret Service in every way.

They do some extraordinary things. They craft the campaign platform for 1864 for the Democrat party, which is a campaign platform of peace. It's an armistice, and it's couched in the sense that it will be some sort of negotiation. But the Confederacy knows that once you start a ceasefire, that guns aren't firing anytime soon.

They never will. It's a masterstroke. It also means preserving slavery, which they have a euphemism for everything, which is like, you know, existing law must be preserved. And it is the campaign platform that's written by the Secret Service, and then it's brought to Chicago. Clement Laird Volandium sneaks back into the United States under an assumed alias, and he's at the convention in Chicago with all these other copperheads. And they pass their campaign platform, and they also elect George McClellan as their candidate.

But their vice president is a hardcore copperhead and Volandium's right-hand man. And then what's fascinating is the Secretary of War will be Clement Laird Volandium, so nobody in their right mind could ever imagine them prosecuting the war like Lincoln did. Let me just sort of go back a little bit in time, though, to March 1864. It's in March 1864 where there's a raid that takes place, led by a guy by the name of Dahlgren, who has a, you know, he'd badly lost his leg.

He has a wooden leg. His father is the name the Dahlgren gun comes from him, and he is a gung-ho cavalry leader that convinces another guy, Judson Kilpatrick, that he wants to be part of a raid. This raid, though, is special. It's a decapitation mission to go after the South. Specifically, their goal is to burn Richmond to the ground and execute the Confederate cabinet, including Jefferson Davis. And they make it through multiple areas of the defense of Richmond. But ultimately, they're denied access of, you know, they have to cross a river, and there's supposed to be a ford there.

But it turned out that their guide, who is African-American, just didn't anticipate the tide of the river changing because of the winter, and they're trapped. It's eventually the Home Guard and a mix of other troops that kill Dahlgren and many of the men that are in this specialized raid. Within his wooden leg are orders from the Secretary of War to do this decapitation mission, to kill Jefferson Davis and burn Richmond. They get the orders, and it's like, oh my God, the war is now suddenly the black flag was raised, and they're going all out. Now that the North had done that, or tried to, the South felt that they had to respond in kind. And this is where the operations to decapitate the North really originate. The origins of the color revolution can be tied to 1864 and something called the Northwest Conspiracy, the Confederate Secret Service's plans to launch an insurrection.

The Confederate Secret Service had kind of two plans, or two faces of their plan. One was violent, and the other one was more of a use of the current political machinery. The more violent side, though, they planned to have hundreds of thousands of men, part of the Copperhead movement, rise up. Color revolution is a modern term that we use for many of the insurrections that have occurred in the last 20 years, where a color is involved, like the Orange Revolution. There was a color revolution in Ukraine, for instance. And what you see on the surface is the population overthrowing whatever the established government is.

But there is a hidden hand behind it in every case that is actually fomenting the population, funding it, directly influencing or specific key components of the current regime, whatever it is. And that's what was going on. They were planning a massive insurrection. They also had a decapitation plan, where they were going after the friendly union governors of these states.

It's supposed to take place in Chicago, 1864, at the time of the convention. In fact, it's the Sons of Liberty, which are the main group under Volundium, the shadowy group within the Copperhead movement, that provides some of the most important security at the convention, but also is potentially going to work with the Confederate Secret Service. And the Confederate Secret Service was sending them arms. About 40 operatives come down from Canada, and they also plan for a massive prison break.

One of the POW camps, Camp Douglas, which would have tied down tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands potentially, of union troops. And it succeeded. The plan is neutralized because the Copperheads are absolutely convinced that they will win the election. They back down.

It fizzles. And the special operation that we now talk about that's really profound is after the election is lost, they're looking at a way to somehow kidnap Abraham Lincoln. The plan is really hatched in Montreal at the St. Lawrence Hotel.

It's Sanders and company and others. And oh, by the way, John Wilkes Booth visits the hotel. Now, John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors in America at the time. He was born into an acting family. His father was a famous actor. He grew up in Maryland.

He had strong southern sympathies. So he hatched this idea, and I don't know where it came from. The excuse is that he's going up there for extra costumes. It's preposterous. I think what makes this so interesting is the story that we were all told is that Booth had, you know, his kind of gang of guys. They get together down in Washington, D.C., and they decide to hatch this plan. And the reality is it's hundreds of people.

It's well-financed, and it's financed by the Confederate Secret Service. It is. And Booth is a braggart. I mean, inside of the St. Lawrence Hotel, in the lower area, there's a billiards room. And you can kind of picture the smoke-filled room and the mint juleps going around. And he's in there and sort of makes these references that we're going to change the world. And it's quite fascinating. But it's here that he gets a lot of his planning for this operation. And he's also given some key operatives that are also coming up to the hotel. John Surratt, for instance, is one of them. John is a, you know, youthful 20-something that is one of their best operatives. And he comes and goes from the St. Lawrence and goes on different missions. He's often accompanied by a woman by the name of, they name her the French woman because she knows, she speaks French, typically wears a veil. Fascinating story. Her husband is a Confederate soldier that's always at war, never comes home, and she's just had enough of it. And volunteers her services to become a spy. Booth then moves back to New York City by rail, meets other operatives there, which the place is teaming with them, and then comes back to Washington, D.C. And thus was hatched the plot to kidnap Lincoln. By the way, there'd been many attempts to assassinate Lincoln, including on his journey from Springfield to Washington, D.C., way back when he first took office. We told a terrific story about that journey on the show.

When we come back, more of the story of the Confederate Secret Service here on Our American Stories. Hi, I'm Matt. And I'm Leah, and we're from the Grown Up Stuff podcast. And just in time for tax season, on this week's episode, we're chatting with CPA Lisa Green Lewis about how small businesses can tackle their taxes using TurboTax business.

A Forbes study mentioned that a whopping 93 percent of small businesses overpay their taxes, and 17 percent of Gen Z-ers believed that you could write off any expense as a business expense. So it's really important to do your taxes right. Listen to Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

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Visit addii.com to learn more about Addi. Addi.com Addi.com Addi.com Addi.com Addi.com The Confederate Secret Service has a very elaborate plan to kidnap the president. They realize the best thing that they can do is to somehow seize him somewhere and by carriage bring him across to Maryland and into the eastern portion of Maryland, which is all southern.

13 Confederate states in the south separate from the Union. Maryland stays in the Union, part of it by strong arming on the part of the Lincoln administration, but there was an appetite in Maryland to not be part of this sectional crisis. They have an entire line of a rat line, if you will, of messengers and couriers and even doctors that will be utilized to secretly move the team through Maryland and then to a boat and then ultimately to the northern neck. And it's here at the northern neck that they needed a security component. The United States Army has posted soldiers throughout southern Maryland because they knew that so many of those southern Marylanders were communicating with and aiding and abetting the Confederacy across the Potomac. They needed a security component to bring the men through not only Maryland, but also through the northern neck.

Mosby's Rangers. What we find is in the winter of 1864, Mosby splits his command almost in half and mysteriously hundreds of men in multiple companies go down the northern neck. Ostensibly it's to get fodder for their horses because there's none up here.

It's a nonsense argument. They're there to provide security for the potential kidnapping operation. The next main component is none other than one of the South's most dangerous men, Lewis Powell, who is a sort of hulking Ranger, that silver tongue that can get his way out of anything, great with a gun, has this amazing charisma, and they depart with other Rangers to Richmond. And he connects with the Confederate Secret Service. And he then deserts. Or at least that's the story.

But it's preposterous. He deserts to Baltimore and joins the most dangerous special operation of the war, which is the plot to kidnap the president, makes his way to Baltimore. He's handled entirely by the Signal Corps and Confederate Secret Service.

I've got all the receipts on this. And then he gets a telegram to arrive at Mary Surratt's house in Washington, D.C. He shows up and there's all these other sort of older women and there's a piano in the main room. He comes in kind of this dashing figure. He's very attractive and handsome. And he claims he's a preacher.

He sits down and he starts to play the piano. And he's charming the women. And they're like, this is the most handsome preacher I've ever seen.

And just has this electric kind of presence. And he then sort of fits into the group. And they start to plot to kidnap the president. The first is a sort of harebrained plot where he's, they find out Lincoln's near a federal building a few miles away from the house and they attempt to seize his carriage.

It doesn't work out. And then they plot and scheme. Lincoln makes an announcement and he's out in the open air near the White House. Booth actually encourages Powell, who's an expert shot with a pistol, to try to kill the president right then and there. And Powell demurs. And then another event takes place.

One of the stories that I don't think has ever really been told. And that is a plan to blow up the White House. Mosby's Rangers are utilized to conduct ostensibly a raid to seize some supplies.

But it makes no sense at all near Burke Station. But their plan was to confuse the Union forces nearby and allow another man or a few men that had detonators. They were from the Confederate Torpedo Works to then infiltrate to Washington, D.C., where they would attempt to blow up the White House.

But the plan was foiled by the 8th Illinois Cavalry. And Booth somehow gets word that that operation failed. And it's at that point that they believe, many believe, that it was the French woman that infiltrated back into Washington, D.C., and gave Booth and his team the orders to execute the president.

It's a classic decapitation mission. There's also another man that's assigned to the vice president. Interestingly enough, the secretary of war, who's one of the most powerful men, isn't targeted. But the plan is kicked off at Ford's Theater. The other elements of the plan also occur. The man that was the operative that was sent after the vice president drinks heavily and just gets cold feet and doesn't do it. But Powell goes after Secretary Seward, who's very sick at this point, bedridden, and they have a plan to infiltrate his house.

It's quite clever. He poses as a pharmacist that is delivering medicine to him. And one of the other conspirators actually worked as a pharmacist mate. He had all the right packaging and everything to say, gets to the door and said, I'm here to deliver the medicine.

And they don't believe it at first. And he keeps saying over and over, I have to deliver this medicine. Then he sticks his foot in the door and bursts in and kind of does a, you know, checks his, one of Seward's bodyguards and charges up to the room and pulls out his pistol. And at point blank range, fires at Seward, but it misfires. Then he pulls out a dagger and starts to just, you know, hack the Secretary of State practically to death. And he's, you know, somehow able to dodge even as he's getting knifed.

None of his vital organs are hit, but he's just turned into a Swiss cheese, basically. But then they get Paul, somebody gets him off him and he flees down in the middle of the night and goes on the run, basically. And for several days, he tries to escape Washington, D.C., but he's not able to do it. And he goes back to the boarding house and he goes back at exactly the wrong time because Northern investigators are inside the house.

And he's immediately questioned and the story doesn't check out. He's arrested and there's a massive and sweeping manhunt to try to find Booth. Coincidentally, several of Mosse's men find him and he is escorted to another safe house and he hides in a barn.

The North is able to put pieces of information together through one thing or another. One of Mosse's men is rounded up and that leads back to the barn. The barn is surrounded and they try to get Booth to come out willingly and they set fire to the barn. And there's orders not to shoot, but a sort of deranged member of the Union Cavalry by the name of Boston Corbett, a man that is literally a Mad Hatter, fires into the barn and it hits Booth and he's mortally wounded. What's interesting is they pull out his diary, which is fascinating.

It includes maybe 100 or so pages. And in those pages, it talks about how he went up to Montreal to kidnap the president. They eventually round up the conspirators, all of them, and there's a trial and it's a quick trial. I mean, they want justice. Mysteriously, Booth's diary is never entered into evidence and the Northern judges and authorities attempt to convict the other conspirators and Lewis Powell. And they also try to connect Jefferson Davis and the Secret Service to the entire plot, but it fails miserably. The prosecution utilizes witnesses that are tainted. They provide evidence that is false, demonstrably provable false, which destroys the entire case. We find out later is that George Sanders, one of his last actions was to coach these men on how to perjure themselves brilliantly to blow up the entire federal case. And that is exactly what happens. They're convicted, but the Confederate Secret Service is off the hook, so to speak.

They don't link it to them. They link it to Booth as a madman, as a kind of a lone gunman theory, right? I think it's interesting. I mean, one thing that is out there that we must consider is what if they were convicted and that the Confederate Secret Service was tied to them? It's interesting because it would have meant a continuation of the war, you know, instead of the reconciliation that takes place. That's one possibility.

It's unmistakable. The organization and the money that was needed to pull this off is something that only could have been done by like a state actor, which would be the Confederacy, versus a lone wolf like John Wilkes Booth, as he's portrayed. The story again of the Confederate Secret Service here on Our American Stories. It's tax season, and by now, I know we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's an important one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Here's another, 20%. That's the overall increase in identity theft related to tax fraud in 2024 alone.

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