SOLD Judah Benjamin: The Order to Disburse the Last Funds of the Confederacy

In February 1864, the Confederate Congress passed a bill that authorized a campaign of sabotage against “the enemy’s property, by land or sea.”

The bill established a large Secret Service fund to finance the sabotage, one million dollars of which was specifically earmarked for use by agents in Canada. Not far from the Canadian border were three large Union prisoner of war camps – on Johnson’s Island, near Sandusky, Ohio in Lake Erie; at Fort Douglas in Chicago; and at Elmira, New York – and operations against these were the goal. Confederate agents in Canada were also busy with other operations. They seized a U.S. steamer near Detroit but then had to abort the mission. Soon after, 20 agents in civilian clothes entered St. Albans, Vermont and robbed three banks of about $200,000. In November 1864, Confederate Commissioners Jacob Thompson and Clement Clay authorized the boldest operation yet: the torching of New York City by eight agents. Their agents set fires in 19 hotels, a theater, and P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. However, the fires did not amount to much and the action was unsuccessful.

To replace Clay and Thompson, in early December 1864, Secretary of State Judah Benjamin named Edwin Gray Lee, second cousin of Robert E. Lee, who had served as an aide to Stonewall Jackson and later commanded a regiment in Jackson’s Valley Campaign, the Seven Days battles, Second Manassas and Cedar Mountain. After being captured and taking time off for poor health, he was promoted to Brigadier General in 1864. On December 6, 1864, he met with Benjamin in Richmond pursuant to his new assignment and there received some or all of $1,500 in gold that was issued to Benjamin that day and charged to “Necessities and Exigencies”– the Secret Service fund. Lee then ran the blockade and went to Montreal. There was a thin line between the Confederate diplomatic service and secret service, and in Canada Lee walked that line. His assignments may have been secret but his presence was not, as shown in February when he attended a ball in the full-dress gray uniform of a Confederate general. The excellent but little known biography of Lee, This Awful Drama by Alexandra Lee Levin, contains this and a wealth of other fascinating details, and is included.

John Wilkes Booth met John Surratt in Washington on December 23, 1864, and told him of his plot to kidnap President Lincoln. Surratt willingly joined Booth’s group of conspirators and brought in George Atzerodt; eventually his own mother, Mary Surratt, became implicated. On the night of Wednesday, March 15, 1865, Surratt met with Booth and other conspirators to discuss the possible abduction of the President. Booth and his associates tried to capture Lincoln on March 17, 1865, but the enterprise failed and they gave up the abduction plan. On March 31, as Surratt related, “I was told that Mr. Benjamin, the then Secretary of War of the Confederate States, wanted to see me. I accordingly sought his presence. He asked me if I would carry some dispatches to Canada for him. I replied ‘yes.’ That evening he gave me the dispatches and $200 in gold with which to pay my way to Canada…I took the cars for Montreal, arriving there the next day. I put up at the St. Lawrence Hotel…I saw General Edward G. Lee, to whom the dispatches were directed, and delivered them to him…” This meeting took place April 6 and the dispatches concerned disposition of Confederate funds in Canada. At that time, Lee said he had a plan to release the Confederate prisoners then in Elmira, N.Y., and asked Surratt to go there and make a sketch of the prison and find out the number of prisoners. Surratt arrived at Elmira April 13 and was there when Lincoln was assassinated; he immediately returned to Canada. Lee, who must have had knowledge of the abduction conspiracy from Surratt, absolutely denied to a Canadian newspaper any Confederate knowledge of the assassination itself.

Meanwhile, on April 2, 1865, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, which effectively ended its operations, and President Davis and some of his cabinet fled south. A week later, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to U.S. Grant. On April 26, the other major Confederate army in the field was surrendered by Joseph Johnston, and by the end of May all Confederate forces had laid down their arms and gone home. Davis was captured by the Federals on May 10, and only two senior government officials avoided the same fate. Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge gave the last order within the Confederacy in May and fled to Cuba, where he closed the Confederate consulate in July. By mid-August he was in England, where he attempted, without success, to get former agent Jacob Thompson to surrender funds taken from Canada that Breckinridge felt belonged to the CSA, so they could be used in the defense of Jefferson Davis (then awaiting trial). Secretary of State Benjamin, after a long and harrowing escape, arrived in England on August 30. Although it had been almost five months since the Confederate government had functioned, its consulate in England, its first and best-funded, still operated with a consul in the person of James M. Mason. Benjamin, the government’s senior remaining officer, immediately proceeded to London for a few days to assist Mason in winding up the affairs of the consulate. Mason still had funds that belonged to the CSA and transferred them to Benjamin for disbursal on September 2. Over the next few days, Benjamin used the money to pay some of the late nation’s creditors. These were not, however, the last remaining monies of the Confederacy; Lee still had some unexpended funds in Canada, and with this letter Benjamin requested that they be forwarded to him for the relief of President Davis and his family.

Autograph Letter Signed, London, September 1, 1865, to Gen. Edwin Gray Lee. “I have just arrived in London and find the public affairs of the Confederacy in lamentable disorder. I am closing up the accounts of all agents of the Department and collecting the funds remaining on hand to pay the most sacred claims against the Government, among which the first and most pressing is that of the President and his family, and as I know that Mrs. Davis is entirely without resources. I have therefore to beg that you will as speedily as possible forward me your account, and remit the unexpended balance of the funds I sent you to Canada.” He signed as “Judah P. Benjamin, Sec. of State,” making this one of the final documents ever signed as a Confederate Government official. On September 5, Benjamin left for France to begin his new, post-war life.

Lee had been disbursing some of the monies he held in Canada. Hearing that Robert E. Lee lacked funds, Edwin sent him $1,350 in June which the former commander acknowledged receiving. On September 2, Lee gave Lincoln-kidnapping conspirator Surratt $100 to pay for his escape to Europe and safety, which was accomplished successfully. In mid-September, Lee gave his cousin a check for $3,538.82 to be delivered to General Pendleton in Virginia to be distributed to Southern widows, orphans and poor soldiers. On October 10, he sent $100 to Gen. George Pickett, who had escaped to Canada. Then, after weeks in transit, this letter from Benjamin reached him, as Mrs. Levin’s book specifically confirms. In response, Lee took the remaining Confederate funds in Canada and sent them to Benjamin in a bill of exchange for 923.12 pounds, along with a letter explaining how he had disbursed the other monies. Benjamin answered in late October, saying “You have, in appropriating portions of the money in your hands for such sacred purposes as…aiding Gen’l Lee and sending relief to our destitute officers and soldiers in Virginia, made a use of the funds…in a manner that is warmly approved by me…”

The delivery of this letter to Lee and his response almost surely constituted the last transaction of the Confederate Secret Service, and the disposal of the last funds outstanding on account for the Confederacy.