A MYSTERIOUS WITNESS
In the latter part of the winter of 1864-65 I was detailed as president
of a military commission, called to meet in Winchester to try a man
charged with being a spy, a guerrilla, a dealer in contraband goods, and
a bad and dangerous man. The specifications recited that the accused had
been a member of the notorious Harry Gilmor's band of partisans; that he
had been caught wearing citizen's clothes inside the union lines; and
that he was in the habit of conveying quinine and other medical supplies
into the confederacy. He was a mild mannered, inoffensive appearing
person who had been an employe of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad
company. He appeared under guard, before the commission, at its daily
sessions, accompanied by his counsel, a leading attorney of Winchester,
whose learning and ability were not less pronounced than was the quality
of his whisky, samples of which he, at irregular intervals, brought in
for the solace, if not for the seduction of the court. It was no more
like the article commonly called whisky than Mumm's extra dry is like
the pink lemonade of circus time. It had an oily appearance, an
aromatic flavor, and the lawyer averred that there was not a headache in
a barrel of it, though he was the only one who ever had an opportunity
to test the truth of the statement and there is no doubt that he knew.
The prisoner exhibited a surprising degree of sang froid considering the
grave crimes with which he was charged, the penalty of conviction for
any one of which was death. This attitude of the accused puzzled the
commission not a little, for he acted like either a very hardened
criminal, or a man who was both conscious of innocence and confident of
acquittal, and he did not look like "a very bad man."
The case was on trial when the army moved. General Sheridan seemed to
lay much stress on the matter for he refused the request of the
president of the commission to be relieved in order to rejoin his
regiment. A personal letter from General Merritt to General Forsythe,
chief-of-staff, making the same request was negatived and an order
issued directing the commission to remain in session until that
particular case was disposed of and providing that such members as
should then desire it, be relieved and their places filled by others.
During the progress of the trial the commission was informed that a very
important witness had been detained under guard, by order of General
Sheridan, in order that his testimony might be taken. On the witness's
first appearance it was noticed that the guard detail was very careful
to give him no opportunity to escape. He proved to be a person of most
noticeable appearance. Rather above than under six feet, well-built,
straight, athletic, with coal-black hair worn rather long, a keen,
restless black eye, prominent features, well-dressed, and with a
confident, devil-may-care bearing, he was altogether, a most striking
figure. His name was Lemoss; his testimony to the point and unequivocal.
He acknowledged having been a guerrilla, himself. He had, he said, been
a member of Gilmor's band and of other equally notorious commands. He
had deserted and tendered his services as a scout and they had been
accepted by General Sheridan. He swore that he knew the prisoner; had
seen him serving with Gilmor; and knew that he had been engaged in the
practices charged.
After this witness had given his testimony the court saw no more of him,
but he left a very bad impression on the minds of the members and there
was not one of them who did not feel, and give voice to the suspicion
that there was something mysterious about him which was not disclosed at
the trial. When news of the assassination of the president came to
Winchester, all wondered if he did not have something to do with it and
the name "Lemoss" was instantly on the lips of every one of us. He had,
in the meantime disappeared.
When I met General Sheridan in Petersburg, after the surrender, and he
inquired what disposition had been made of that case I told him of the
distrust of the principal witness and that it was the unanimous opinion
of the commission that the witness was a much more dangerous man than
the prisoner. The general smiled and remarked, rather significantly I
thought, that he kept Early's spies at his headquarters all winter,
letting them suppose that they were deceiving him, and that before the
army moved he had sent them off on false scents. The inference I drew
from the conversation was that Lemoss was one of those spies and that
the trial was a blind for the purpose of keeping him where he could do
no harm, without letting him know that he was under suspicion. Nothing
more was said about the matter, and I presume that, at the time, General
Sheridan did not know what had become of Lemoss.
Soon after the grand review, my regiment was ordered to the west and,
while en route to Leavenworth, Kansas, I stopped over night in St.
Louis. When reading the morning paper at the breakfast table, I came
upon an item which was dated in some New England city, Hartford or New
Haven, I think, stating that a man by the name of Lemoss, who had been a
scout at Sheridan's headquarters in the Shenandoah valley, had been
arrested by the police in the city in question and papers found on his
person tending to show that he had been in some way implicated in the
plot to assassinate President Lincoln. This recalled to my mind the
surmises in Winchester on the day of the event and also the hint thrown
out by General Sheridan in reply to my question in Petersburg. I cut
the slip out, intending to keep it, but before my return to the states a
long time afterwards, had both lost it and temporarily forgotten the
circumstance. It was not until many years had elapsed and I began to
think of putting my recollections of the war into form for preservation,
that all these things came back to my mind. I have often told the story
to comrades at regimental or army reunions. The conjectures of the
members of the military commission; the suggestion of General Sheridan
that Lemoss was a confederate spy; and the newspaper clipping in St.
Louis; all seemed so coincident as to form a pretty conclusive chain of
evidence connecting the Winchester witness with the conspiracy. I never
learned what was done with him after the arrest in New England.
Recently, when consulting Sheridan's memoirs to verify my own
remembrance of the dates of certain events in the Shenandoah campaign,
what was my surprise to find that the purport of a passage bearing
directly upon this subject had entirely escaped my attention on the
occasion of a first reading soon after the book appeared.
On page 108, volume 2, appears the following:
"A man named Lomas, who claimed to be a Marylander, offered me his
services as a spy, and coming highly recommended from Mr. Stanton,
who had made use of him in that capacity, I employed him. He made
many pretensions, was more than ordinarily intelligent, but my
confidence in him was by no means unlimited. I often found what he
reported corroborated by Young's men, but generally, there were
discrepancies in his tales which led me to suspect that he was
employed by the enemy as well as by me. I felt however, that with
good watching, he could do me very little harm and, if my suspicions
were incorrect, he might be very useful, so I held on to him.
"Early in February Lomas was very solicitous for me to employ a man,
who, he said, had been with Mosby, but on account of some quarrel had
abandoned that leader. Thinking that with two of them I might destroy
the railroad bridge east of Lynchburg, I concluded after the Mosby
man had been brought to my headquarters, by Lomas about 12 o'clock
one night, to give him employment at the same time informing Colonel
Young that I suspected their fidelity and that he must test it by
shadowing their every movement. When Lomas's companion entered my
room he was completely disguised but on discarding the various
contrivances by which his identity was concealed he proved to be a
rather slender, dark-complexioned, handsome young man, of easy
address and captivating manners. He gave his name as "Renfrew,"
answered all questions satisfactorily, and went into details about
Mosby and his men which showed an intimacy with them at some time. I
explained the work I had laid out for them, * * * * * They assented
and it was arranged that they should start the following night.
Meantime Young had selected his men to shadow them and, two days
later, they reported my spies as being concealed in Strasburg without
making the slightest effort to continue on their mission. On the 16th
of February, they returned and reported their failure, telling so
many lies as to remove all doubt as to their double-dealing.
Unquestionably, they were spies, but it struck me that through them I
might deceive Early as to the time of opening the spring campaign. I
therefore, retained the men without even a suggestion of my knowledge
of their true character. Young, meantime, kept close watch over all
their doings."
General Sheridan then, after giving a summary of the scattered locations
of the various portions of Early's army continues as follows:
"It was my aim to get well on the road before Early could collect
these scattered forces and as the officers had been in the habit of
amusing themselves during the winter by fox-hunting, I decided to use
the hunt as an expedient for stealing a march on the enemy and had it
given out that a grand fox-chase would take place on the 29th of
February. Knowing that Lomas and Renfrew would spread the
announcement south they were permitted to see several red foxes as
well as a pack of hounds which had been secured for the spurt and
were then started on a second expedition to burn the bridges. Of
course, they were shadowed, and two days later were arrested in
Newtown. On the way north, they escaped from their guards when
passing through Baltimore, and I never heard of them again, though I
learned that, after the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, Secretary
Stanton strongly suspected his friend Lomas of being associated with
the conspirators and it then occurred to me that the good-looking
Renfrew may have been Wilkes Booth, for he certainly bore a strong
resemblance to Booth's pictures."
There is no doubt that "Lemoss," the witness, and the "Lomas" of General
Sheridan's narrative, were one and the same person. When he wrote the
account from which the foregoing is an extract, General Sheridan had,
probably, forgotten about leaving the spies in Winchester under guard
where they remained until he was well on his way towards Appomattox.
After giving his testimony, Lomas and Renfrew were sent north under
guard by General Hancock, Sheridan's successor as commander of the
Middle Military Division, and making their escape as explained in
Sheridan's narrative, Wilkes Booth, alias Renfrew, was able to carry out
his part of the plot. It is, also, quite probable that Lomas's part in
the conspiracy was to assassinate either General Sheridan or Secretary
Stanton, but, that the scheme was interrupted by the detention of the
two spies in Winchester coupled with the unexpected opening of the
spring campaign. It is likely that the arrest of the two conspirators
led to a postponement of the date of the assassination and that the
scope of the plot as originally conceived in the fertile brain of Booth,
was very much abridged. There was never in my own mind a particle of
doubt, from the moment we heard the news of the president's death, that
the man Lomas or Lemoss had something to do with it. The fact that he
was on terms of intimacy with Secretary Stanton and contrived to be
stationed at Sheridan's headquarters, seems to point conclusively to the
part he was to play in the tragedy. At that time, Sheridan was
considered, perhaps, the most dangerous enemy the confederacy had to
fear and his name must have been high up in the list of those marked by
the conspirators for assassination.
An amusing incident occurred as this trial neared its close. The defense
asked to have William Prescott Smith, master of transportation of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad, summoned as a witness. His residence was
Baltimore and he was summoned by wire, the telegram bearing the name of
General Hancock, commander of the department. Mr. Smith did not want to
come to Winchester and urged the commission to go to Baltimore. Failing
to secure acquiescence in that proposition, he suggested as a
compromise, that the commission meet him half-way by going to Harper's
Ferry. This was agreed to and on the appointed day, the commission took
passage on a special train consisting of a locomotive and one passenger
coach taking along the prisoner and a guard. Harper's Ferry was reached
a little after dark and a messenger from Mr. Smith met us with the
compliments of that gentleman and a request that we proceed to his
private car. The invitation was accepted and the party was received by
the railroad magnate with every manifestation of welcome and a courtesy
that seemed to be entirely unaffected. It was found that the most
generous and thoughtful provision had been made for our comfort. The
colored chef prepared a dinner which would have tickled the palate of an
epicure, much more those of a quartet of hungry officers directly from
the front. There were champagne and cigars in abundance of a quality
such as would have been good enough had General Hancock himself been the
guest. The host was courtesy itself, an excellent raconteur, a good
fellow, and a gentleman. He could not have treated the president and his
cabinet with more distinguished consideration that that with which he
honored that little party of volunteer officers.
Late in the evening his testimony was taken and he gave the prisoner a
very good character. We slept in his car and in the morning had a
breakfast that suitably supplemented the elegant dinner. Some more
choice cigars, and then Mr. Smith's private car was attached to an
ingoing train and he departed for Baltimore. At the very last moment
before his train started, Mr. Smith said:
"Pardon me, gentlemen, but it is too good a joke to keep and I am sure
that you will appreciate it now better than you would have done last
night. When you wired me to come, you know, General Hancock's name was
signed to the telegram. I supposed I was to entertain him and don't mind
telling you, frankly, that the dinner was provided with especial
reference to his supposed partiality for the good things of life. I
don't mean to say I would not have done the same thing for you. I
certainly would now that I know you, but, all the same, please say to
the general that I expected him and regret much that he was not one of
the party so that I might have had the pleasure of entertaining him as
well as yourselves. And, by the way, he continued, when I urged you to
come to Baltimore it had been arranged that the mayor and a large number
of prominent citizens of the city were to meet you at a banquet to have
been given at the Eutaw House in honor of General Hancock."
The refined courtesy of the gentleman was something that has been rarely
surpassed.
Mr. Smith was a thoroughbred.