Not
surprising was the resistance of the Northern war munitions industry to
peace initiatives; after defeat in 1856 the new Republican party saw
future victory in wooing northeastern industrialists through protective
tariffs and corporate welfare schemes, and protecting their interests at
the expense of the agricultural South. In early 1864, Southern agents
in Canada like Captain Thomas Hines rounded up Southern prisoners of war
who escaped across the border to freedom, holding the most useful for
his clandestine command and helping others return South via blockade
runners to Wilmington. From June 1864 on, Hines and the Confederate
Commissioners planned bold moves to bring their enemy to the peace
table.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Financial Panic and Copperhead Uprising:
“While
Hines rounded up the escaped prisoners of war to form his tiny
“squadron,” as he would call it in later years, [Confederate
Commissioner in Canada Jacob] Thompson set out for Niagara Falls to
contact “potent men of the North” to learn how they felt about peace.
Leading Copperheads like Fernando Wood, ex-mayor of New York City, and
ex-governor Washington Hunt of New York, met with him at the Clifton
House [hotel in Niagara Falls, Canada West]. New York and the East were
not ready for peace or an uprising, they told Thompson. War [munitions]
manufacturers there were too powerful and were on the alert to
“neutralize” any peace efforts.
Thompson
next turned to Secretary [Judah] Benjamin’s favorite project: trying to
create a financial panic in the North by buying up gold and smuggling
it out of the country in order to weaken the gold security for the Union
dollar. A Nashville banker named Porterfield, who was living in exile
in Montreal, was selected by Thompson as the proper man to set this in
motion.
Porterfield
was furnished with fifty thousand dollars. He went to New York, opened
an office under a fictitious name and began to purchase gold, which he
exported to England and sold for sterling bills of exchange. Then he
converted the sterling bills into dollars which he used to buy more
gold. The transaction was a costly one, showing a loss due to the cost
of operations, trans-shipment, etc.
Porterfield continued until his
losses were twenty thousand dollars….[but by] this time he had exported
five million dollars in gold, “and had induced many others to ship much
more [gold].” His buying up gold and sending it out of the country began
“showing a marked effect,” as Thompson said in his official report to
Richmond, when the Federals cracked down.
A
former partner of Porterfield’s was arrested by General Ben Butler for
exporting gold, and thrown into Lafayette Prison in New York Harbor.
Porterfield fled back to Canada….[but] still retained the twenty-five
thousand dollars remaining to continue the exporting of gold through
“fronts” in New York.
By
the first week of June, 1864, Hines was in touch with his Copperhead
friends in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and in communication with [Ohio
gubernatorial candidate Clement] Vallandigham, who was now [exiled] in
Windsor [Canada West]. A meeting was set for the 14th to plan the Copperhead uprising and the release of the Rebel prisoners in Camps Douglas, Morton, Chase and Rock Island.
Hines and Thompson met with Vallandigham on the 14th….[at]
St. Catherines, Canada [West]…[and the latter] detailed for Hines the
strength of the Copperheads. Membership totaled about 300,000.
Illinois
had furnished 80,000, Indiana, 50,000, Ohio, 40,000 and Kentucky and New
York States, the rest. A “feeling of fatigue” was sweeping through the
North, Vallandigham told them, following Lincoln’s call for 500,000
more men….[and] he added: “If provocation and opportunity arise,
gentlemen, there will be a general uprising.”
(Confederate Agent, A Discovery in History, James D. Horan, Crown Publishers, 1954, pp. 88-90)
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