He may have prayed,--he is a praying man,--and there was need of prayer,
for the torch was ready to burn millions of property, the knife whetted
to take thousands of lives. At the end of the two hours, a stranger was
ushered into the apartment where the Commandant was still pacing the
floor. From the lips and pen of this stranger I have what followed, and
I think it may be relied on.
He was a slim, light-haired young man, with fine, regular features, and
that indefinable air which denotes good breeding. Recognizing the
Commandant by the eagle on his shoulder, he said, "Can I see you alone,
Sir?"--"Certainly," answered the Union officer, motioning to his
secretary to leave the room. "I am a Colonel in the Rebel army," said
the stranger, "and have put my life into your hands, to warn you of the
most hellish plot in history."--"Your life is safe, Sir," replied the
other, "if your visit is an honest one. I shall be glad to hear what you
have to say. Be seated."
The Rebel officer took the proffered chair, and sat there till far into
the morning. In the limits of a magazine article I cannot attempt to
recount all that passed between them. The written statement the Rebel
Colonel has sent to me covers fourteen pages of closely written
foolscap; and my interview with him on the subject lasted five hours, by
a slow watch. He disclosed all that Judge Holt has made public, and a
great deal more. Sixty days previously he had left Richmond with verbal
dispatches from the Rebel Secretary of War to Jacob Thompson, the Rebel
agent in Canada. These dispatches had relation to a vast plot, designed
to wrap the West in flames, sever it from the East, and secure the
independence of the South. Months before, the plot had been concocted by
Jeff Davis at Richmond; and in May previous, Thompson, supplied with two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sterling exchange, had been sent
to Canada to superintend its execution. This money was lodged in a bank
at Montreal, and had furnished the funds which fitted out the abortive
expeditions against Johnson's Island and Camp Douglas. The plot embraced
the order of "American Knights," which was spread all over the West, and
numbered five hundred thousand men, three hundred and fifty thousand of
whom were armed. A force of twelve hundred men--Canadian refugees, and
bushwhackers from Southern Illinois and Missouri--was to attack Camp
Douglas on Tuesday night, the 8th of November, liberate and arm the
prisoners, and sack Chicago. This was to be the signal for a general
uprising throughout the West, and for a simultaneous advance by Hood
upon Nashville, Buckner upon Louisville, and Price upon St. Louis.
Vallandigham was to head the movement in Ohio, Bowles in Indiana, and
Walsh in Illinois. The forces were to rendezvous at Dayton and
Cincinnati in Ohio, New Albany and Indianapolis in Indiana, and Rock
Island, Chicago, and Springfield in Illinois; and those gathered at the
last-named place, after seizing the arsenal, were to march to aid Price
in taking St. Louis. Prominent Union citizens and officers were to be
seized and sent South, and the more obnoxious of them were to be
assassinated. All places taken were to be sacked and destroyed, and a
band of a hundred desperate men was organized to burn the larger
Northern cities not included in the field of operations. Two hundred
Confederate officers, who were to direct the military movements, had
been in Canada, but were then stationed throughout the West, at the
various points to be attacked, waiting the outbreak at Chicago. Captain
Hines, who had won the confidence of Thompson by his successful
management of the escape of John Morgan, had control of the initial
movement against Camp Douglas; but Colonel Grenfell, assisted by Colonel
Marmaduke and a dozen other Rebel officers, was to manage the military
part of the operations. All of these officers were at that moment in
Chicago, waiting the arrival of the men, who were to come in small
squads, over different railroads, during the following three days. The
Rebel officer had known of the plot for months, but its atrocious
details had come to his knowledge only within a fortnight. They had
appalled him; and though he was betraying his friends, and the South
which he loved, the humanity in him would not let him rest till he had
washed his hands of the horrible crime.
The Commandant listened with nervous interest to the whole of this
recital; but when the Southern officer made the last remark, he almost
groaned out,--
"Why did you not come before?"
"I could not. I gave Thompson my opinion of this, and have been watched.
I think they have tracked me here. My life on your streets to-night
wouldn't be worth a bad half-dollar."
"True; but what must be done?"
"Arrest the 'Butternuts' as they come into Chicago."
"That I can do; but the leaders are here, with five thousand armed
Illini to back them. I must take them. Do you know them?"
"Yes; but I do not know where they are quartered."
At two o'clock the Commandant showed the Rebel officer to his bed, but
went back himself, and paced the floor until sunrise. In the morning his
plan was formed. It was a desperate plan; but desperate circumstances
require desperate expedients.
In the prison was a young Texan who had served on Bragg's staff, and
under Morgan in Kentucky, and was, therefore, acquainted with Hines,
Grenfell, and the other Rebel officers. He fully believed in the theory
of State Rights,--that is, that a part is greater than the whole,--but
was an honest man, who, when his word was given, could be trusted. One
glance at his open, resolute face showed that he feared nothing; that he
had, too, that rare courage which delights in danger, and courts heroic
enterprise from pure love of peril. Early in the war, he had encountered
Colonel De Land, a former commandant of the post, on the battlefield,
and taken him prisoner. A friendship then sprang up between the two,
which, when the tables were turned, and the captor became the captive,
was not forgotten. Colonel De Land made him chief clerk in the medical
department, and gave him every possible freedom. At that time it was the
custom to allow citizens free access to the camp; and among the many
good men and women who came to visit and aid the prisoners was a young
woman, the daughter of a well-known resident of Chicago. She met the
Texan, and a result as natural as the union of hydrogen and oxygen
followed. But since Adam courted Eve, who ever heard of wooing going on
in a prison? "It is not exactly the thing," said Colonel De Land; "had
you not better pay your addresses at the lady's house, like a
gentleman?" A guard accompanied the prisoner; but it was shrewdly
guessed that he stayed outside, or paid court to the girls in the
kitchen.
This was the state of things when the present Commandant took charge of
the camp. He learned the facts, studied the prisoner's face, and
remembered that he, too, once went a-courting. As he walked his room
that Friday night, he bethought him of the Texan. Did he love his State
better than he loved his affianced wife? The Commandant would test him.
"But I shall betray my friends! Can I do that in honor?" asked the
Texan.
"Did you ask that question when you betrayed your country?" answered the
Commandant.
"Let me go from camp for an hour. Then I will give you my decision."
"Very well."
And, unattended, the Texan left the prison.
What passed between the young man and the young woman during that hour I
do not know, and could not tell, if I did know,--for I am not writing
romance, but history. However, without lifting the veil on things
sacred, I can say that her last words were, "Do your duty. Blot out your
record of treason." God bless her for saying them! and let "Amen" be
said by every American woman!
On his return to camp, the Texan merely said, "I will do it," and the
details of the plan were talked over. He was to escape from the prison,
ferret out and entrap the Rebel leaders. How to manage the first part of
the dangerous programme was the query of the Texan. The Commandant's
brain is fertile. An adopted citizen, in the scavenger line, makes
periodical visits to the camp in the way of his business, and him the
Commandant sends for.
"Arrah, yer Honor," the Irishman says, "I ha'n't a tr-raitor. Bless yer
beautiful sowl! I love the kintry; and besides, it might damage me good
name and me purty prefession."
He is assured that his name will be all the better for dieting a few
weeks in a dungeon, and--did not the same thing make Harvey Birch
immortal?
Half an hour before sunset the scavenger comes into camp with his wagon.
He fills it with dry bones, broken bottles, decayed food, and the
rubbish of the prison; and down below, under a blanket, he stows away
the Texan. A hundred comrades gather round to shut off the gaze of the
guard; but outside is the real danger. He has to pass two gates, and run
the gauntlet of half a dozen sentinels. His wagon is fuller than usual;
and the late hour it is now after sunset will of itself excite
suspicion. It might test the pluck of a braver man; for the sentries'
bayonets are fixed, and their guns at the half-trigger; but he reaches
the outer gate in safety. Now St. Patrick help him! for he needs all the
impudence of an Irishman. The gate rolls back; the Commandant stands
nervously by, but a sentry cries out,--
"You can't pass; it's agin orders. No wagins kin go out arter
drum-beat."
"Arrah, don't be a fool! Don't be afther obstructin' a honest man's
business," answers the Irishman, pushing on into the gateway.
The soldier is vigilant, for his officer's eye is on him.
"Halt!" he cries again, "or I'll fire!"
"Fire! Waste yer powder on yer friends, like the bloody-minded spalpeen
ye are!" says the scavenger, cracking his whip, and moving forward.
It is well he does not look back. If he should, he might be melted to
his own soap-grease. The sentry's musket is levelled; he is about to
fire, but the Commandant roars out,--
"Don't shoot!" and the old man and the old horse trot off into the
twilight.
Not an hour later, two men, in big boots, slouched hats, and brownish
butternuts, come out of the Commandant's quarters. With muffled faces
and hasty strides, they make their way over the dimly lighted road into
the city. Pausing, after a while, before a large mansion, they crouch
down among the shadows. It is the house of the Grand Treasurer of the
Order of American Knights, and into it very soon they see the Texan
enter. The good man knows him well, and there is great rejoicing. He
orders up the fatted calf, and soon it is on the table, steaming hot,
and done brown in the roasting. When the meal is over, they discuss a
bottle of Champagne and the situation. The Texan cannot remain in
Chicago, for there he will surely be detected. He must be off to
Cincinnati by the first train; and he will arrive in the nick of time,
for warm work is daily expected. Has he any money about him? No, he has
left it behind, with his Sunday clothes, in the prison. He must have
funds; but the worthy gentleman can lend him none, for he is a loyal
man; of course he is! was he not the "people's candidate" for Governor?
But no one ever heard of a woman being hanged for treason. With this he
nods to his wife, who opens her purse, and tosses the Texan a roll of
greenbacks. They are honest notes, for an honest face is on them. At the
end of an hour good-night is said, and the Texan goes out to find a hole
to hide in. Down the street he hurries, the long, dark shadows
following.
He enters the private door of a public house, speaks a magic word, and
is shown to a room in the upper story. Three low, prolonged raps on the
wall, and--he is among them. They are seated about a small table, on
which is a plan of the prison. One is about forty-five,--a tall, thin
man, with a wiry frame, a jovial face, and eyes which have the wild,
roving look of the Arab's. He is dressed after the fashion of English
sportsmen, and his dog--a fine gray bloodhound--is stretched on the
hearthrug near him. He looks a reckless, desperate character, and
has an adventurous history.[D] In battle he is said to be a
thunderbolt,--lightning harnessed and inspired with the will of a devil.
He is just the character to lead the dark, desperate expedition on which
they are entered. It is St. Leger Grenfell.
At his right sits another tall, erect man, of about thirty, with large,
prominent eyes, and thin, black hair and moustache. He is of dark
complexion, has a sharp, thin nose, a small, close mouth, a coarse,
harsh voice, and a quick, boisterous manner. His face tells of
dissipation, and his dress shows the dandy; but his deep, clear eye and
pale, wrinkled forehead denote a cool, crafty intellect.[E] This is the
notorious Captain Hines, the right-hand man of Morgan, and the soul and
brains of the Conspiracy. The rest are the meaner sort of villains. I do
not know how they looked, and if I did, they would not be worth
describing.
Hines and Grenfell spring to their feet, and grasp the hand of the
Texan. He is a godsend,--sent to do what no man of them is brave enough
to do,--lead the attack on the front gateway of the prison. So they
affirm, with great oaths, as they sit down, spread out the map, and
explain to him the plan of operations.
Two hundred Rebel refugees from Canada, they say, and a hundred
"Butternuts" from Fayette and Christian Counties, have already arrived;
many more from Kentucky and Missouri are coming; and by Tuesday they
expect that a thousand or twelve hundred desperate men, armed to the
teeth, will be in Chicago. Taking advantage of the excitement of
election-night, they propose, with this force, to attack the camp and
prison. It will be divided into five parties. One squad, under Grenfell,
will be held in reserve a few hundred yards from the main body, and will
guard the large number of guns already provided to arm the prisoners.
Another--command of which is offered to the Texan--will assault the
front gateway, and engage the attention of the eight hundred troops
quartered in Garrison Square. The work of this squad will be dangerous,
for it will encounter a force four times its strength, well armed and
supplied with artillery; but it will be speedily relieved by the other
divisions. Those, under Marmaduke, Colonel Robert Anderson of Kentucky,
and Brigadier-General Charles Walsh of Chicago, Commander of the
American Knights, will simultaneously assail three sides of Prison
Square, break down the fence, liberate the prisoners, and, taking the
garrison in rear, compel a general surrender. This accomplished, small
parties will be dispatched to cut the telegraph-wires and seize the
railway-stations; while the main body, reinforced by the eight thousand
and more prisoners, will march into the city and rendezvous in
Court-House Square, which will be the base of further operations.
The first blow struck, the insurgents, will be joined by the five
thousand Illini, (American Knights,) and, seizing the arms of the
city,--six brass field-pieces and eight hundred Springfield
muskets,--and the arms and ammunition stored in private warehouses,
will begin the work of destruction. The banks will be robbed, the stores
gutted, the houses of loyal men plundered, and the railway-stations,
grain-elevators, and other public buildings burned to the ground. To
facilitate this latter design, the water-plugs have been marked, and a
force detailed to set the water running. In brief, the war will be
brought home to the North; Chicago will be dealt with like a city taken
by assault, given over to the torch, the sword, and the brutal lust of a
drunken soldiery. On it will be wreaked all the havoc, the agony, and
the desolation which three years of war have heaped upon the South; and
its upgoing flames will be the torch that shall light a score of other
cities to the same destruction!
It was a diabolical plan, conceived far down in hell amid the thick
blackness, and brought up by the arch-fiend himself, who sat there,
toying with the hideous thing, and with his cloven foot beating a merry
tune on the death's-head and cross-bones under the table.
As he concludes, Hines turns to the new comer,--
"Well, my boy, what do you say? Will you take the post of honor and of
danger?"
The Texan draws a long breath, and then, through his barred teeth,
blurts out,--
"I will!"
On those two words hang thousands of lives, millions of money!
"You are a trump!" shouts Grenfell, springing to his feet "Give us your
hand upon it!"
A general hand-shaking follows, and during it, Hines and another man
announce that their time is up:--
"It is nearly twelve. Fielding and I never stay in this d----d town
after midnight. You are fools, or you wouldn't."
Suddenly, as these words are uttered, a slouched hat, listening at the
keyhole, pops up, moves softly through the hall, and steals down the
stairway. Half an hour later the Texan opens the private door of the
Richmond House, looks cautiously around for a moment, and then stalks on
towards the heart of the city. The moon is down, the lamps burn dimly,
but after him glide the shadows.
In a room at the Tremont House, not far from this time, the Commandant
is walking and waiting, when the door opens, and a man enters. His face
is flushed, his teeth are clenched, his eyes flashing. He is stirred to
the depths of his being. Can he be the Texan?
"What is the matter?" asks the Commandant.
The other sits down, and, as if only talking to himself, tells him. One
hour has swept away the fallacies of his lifetime. He sees the Rebellion
as it is,--the outbreak and outworking of that spirit which makes hell
horrible. Hitherto, that night, he has acted from love, not duty. Now he
bows only to the All-Right and the All-Beautiful, and in his heart is
that psalm of work, sung by one of old, and by all true men since the
dawn of creation: "Here am I, Lord! Send me!"
The first gray of morning is streaking the east, when he goes forth to
find a hiding-place. The sun is not up, and the early light comes dimly
through the misty clouds, but about him still hang the long, dark
shadows. This is a world of shadows. Only in the atmosphere which soon
inclosed him is there no night and no shadow.
Soon the Texan's escape is known at the camp, and a great hue-and-cry
follows. Handbills are got out, a reward is offered, and by that Sunday
noon his name is on every street-corner. Squads of soldiers and police
ransack the city and invade every Rebel asylum. Strange things are
brought to light, and strange gentry dragged out of dark closets; but
nowhere is found the Texan. The search is well done, for the pursuers
are in dead earnest; and, Captain Hines, if you don't trust him now, you
are a fool, with all your astuteness!
So the day wears away and the night cometh. Just at dark a man enters
the private door of the Tremont House, and goes up to a room where the
Commandant is waiting. He sports a light rattan, wears a stove-pipe
hat, a Sunday suit, and is shaven and shorn like unto Samson. What is
the Commandant doing with such a dandy? Soon the gas is lighted; and lo,
it is the Texan! But who in creation would know him? The plot, he says,
thickens. More "Butternuts" have arrived, and the deed will be done on
Tuesday night, as sure as Christmas is coming. He has seen his men,--two
hundred, picked, and every one clamoring for pickings. Hines, who
carries the bag, is to give him ten thousand greenbacks, to stop their
mouths and stuff their pockets, at nine in the morning.
"And to-morrow night we'll have them, sure! And, how say you, give _you_
shackles and a dungeon?" asks the Commandant, his mouth wreathing with
grim wrinkles.
"Anything you like. Anything to _blot out my record of treason_."
He has learned the words,--they are on his heart, not to be razed out
forever.
When he is gone, up and down the room goes the Commandant, as is his
fashion. He is playing a desperate game. The stake is awful. He holds
the ace of trumps,--but shall he risk the game upon it? At half past
eight he sits down and writes a dispatch to his General. In it he
says:--
"My force is, as you know, too weak and much overworked,--only eight
hundred men, all told, to guard between eight and nine thousand
prisoners. I am certainly not justified in waiting to take risks, and
mean to arrest these officers, if possible, before morning."
The dispatch goes off, but still the Commandant is undecided. If he
strikes to-night, Hines may escape, for the fox has a hole out of town,
and may keep under cover till morning. He is the king-devil, and much
the Commandant wants to cage him. Besides, he holds the bag, and the
Texan will go out of prison a penniless man among strangers. Those ten
thousand greenbacks are lawful prize, and should be the country's dower
with the maiden. But are not republics grateful? Did not one give a
mansion to General McClellan? Ah, Captain Hines, that was lucky for you,
for, beyond a doubt, it saved your bacon!
The Commandant goes back to camp, sends for the police, and gets his
blue-coats ready. At two o'clock they swoop to the prey, and before
daybreak a hundred birds are in the talons of the eagle. Such another
haul of buzzards and night-hawks never was made since Gabriel caged the
Devil and the dark angels.[F]
At the Richmond House Grenfell was taken in bed with the Texan. They
were clapped into irons, and driven off to the prison together. A
fortnight later, the Texan, relating these details to a stranger, while
the Commandant was sitting by at his desk writing, said,--
"Words cannot describe my relief when those handcuffs were put upon us.
At times before, the sense of responsibility almost overpowered me. Then
I felt like a man who has just come into a fortune. The wonder to me now
is, how the Colonel could have trusted so much to a Rebel."
"Trusted!" echoed the Commandant, looking up from his writing. "I had
faith in you; I thought you wouldn't betray me; but I trusted your own
life in your own hands, that was all. Too much was at stake to do more.
Your every step was shadowed, from the moment you left this camp till
you came back to it in irons. Two detectives were constantly at your
back, sworn to take your life, if you wavered for half a second."
"Is that true?" asked the Texan in a musing way, but without moving a
muscle. "I didn't know it, but I felt it in the air!"
In the room at the Richmond House, on the table around which were
discussed their hellish plans, was found a slip of paper, and on it, in
pencil, was scrawled the following:--
"COLONEL,--You _must_ leave this house _to-night_. Go to the
Briggs House.
"J. FIELDING."
Fielding was the assumed name of the Rebel who burrowed with Hines out
of town, where not even his fellow-fiends could find him. Did the old
fox scent the danger? Beyond a doubt he did. Another day, and the
Texan's life might have been forfeit. Another day, and the camp might
have been sprung upon a little too suddenly! So the Commandant was none
too soon; and who that reads this can doubt that through it all he was
led and guided by the good Providence that guards his country?
But what said Chicago, when it awoke in the morning? Let one of its own
organs answer.
"A shiver of genuine horror passed over Chicago yesterday. Thousands of
citizens, who awoke to the peril hanging over their property and their
heads in the form of a stupendous foray upon the city from Camp Douglas,
led by Rebel officers in disguise and Rebel guerrillas without disguise,
and concocted by home Copperheads, whose houses had been converted into
Rebel arsenals, were appalled as though an earthquake had opened at
their feet.... Who can picture the horrors to follow the letting loose
of nine thousand Rebel prisoners upon a sleeping city, all unconscious
of the coming avalanche? With arms and ammunition stored at convenient
locations, with confederates distributed here and there, ready for the
signal of conflagration, the horrors of the scene could scarcely be
paralleled in savage history. One hour of such a catastrophe would
destroy the creations of a quarter of a century, and expose the homes of
nearly two hundred thousand souls to every conceivable form of
desecration."[G]
But the men of Chicago not only talked, they acted. They went to the
polls and voted for the Union; and so told the world what honest
Illinois thought of treason.