Autograph Letter Signed by Baker, LaFayette - 1865

1865 . [Civil War]. Baker, L[aFayette] C. Autograph Letter Signed. Office Special Agency, War Department, New York, May 15, 1865. One page letter, plus blank integral leaf, with leaves measuring 8 x 10". Faint offset from one of the enclosed photographs, else fine and bright. Together with Four Albumen Photographs. Circa 1861-65. Each measuring 2 x 3". Fine. A letter to Benson J. Lossing, the famous historian and illustrator, at his home-town of Poughkeepsie, NY. Baker encloses four photographs, depicting Clement C. Clay, Jacob Thompson, William W. Cleary, and N. Beverly Tucker. All were wanted by the Secret Service as suspected conspirators in the plot to assassinate Lincoln. Baker writes that there was no wanted poster yet printed for these men, as Lossing had apparently requested, but that he enclosed these photos instead. Lossing presumably sought the poster as part of the research for his illustrated history of the war, published in three volumes as the Pictorial History of the Civil War in the United States of America (1866-1888). Baker, chief of the U.S. Secret Service, was in charge of efforts to capture of the Lincoln conspirators. Three weeks earlier, on April 26, he received a promotion to brigadier general and a $3,750 reward for his role in planning the operation which resulted in the capture of John Wilkes Booth and D.C. Herold. However, Baker's investigation of the Lincoln assassination was far from over. On May 2, 1865, President Johnson issued a proclamation announcing the involvement of Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, and William W. Cleary in the Lincoln conspiracy. A reward of $100,000 was offered for Davis's capture and a $25,000 reward for the capture of any of the rest. On May 9, the same men were named as conspirators by the military commission headed by Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt. All had taken orders from Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate secretary of state, who the administration believed to be the ultimate authority behind the assassination. Furthermore, all of them had been accused of involvement with other conspiracies launched against the United States from Canada. Thompson, Clay, and Cleary were members of a secret Confederate mission to Canada, appointed by Jefferson Davis in April 1864. Jacob Thompson, the chief of the mission, had previously served as a U.S. Congressman and Buchanan's secretary of the interior. During the war, he was an aid to Beauregard, an inspector-general under Pemberton, and a member of the Mississippi legislature. In Canada, Thompson was assisted by Clement C. Clay, formerly a U.S. senator from Alabama and a senator in the Confederate congress. William W. Cleary was appointed secretary to the mission. They were later joined by J.P. Holcombe of Virginia. Davis provided Thompson and Clay with a $200,000 budget and a broad prerogative to hinder the Union in whatever ways they could devise, including collaborating with the Sons of Liberty in the formation of a Northwest Confederacy. Thompson met with Clement L. Vallandigham, the notorious Copperhead and leader of the Sons of Liberty, and with George N. Sanders, a Confederate agent with a background of collaboration with European radicals. Thompson became convinced that a successful uprising could be launched in the Northwest, and plotted to release Confederate prisoners of war being held in the Great Lakes region to aid in the revolt. Beverly Tucker was one of the men Thompson enlisted to carry out the scheme, along with Thomas Hines, Robert M. Martin, John W. Headley and St. Leger Grenfel. The conspirators planned to capture Chicago during the election of 1864, with the aid of prisoners freed from Camp Douglas, and to launch simultaneous attacks in Cincinnati, New York, and Boston. Thompson also hired arsonists to create havoc in Northern cities, some of whom set blazes in New York City on Nov. 25, 1864. Meanwhile, in Oct. 1864, Clement Clay organized a raid on St. Albans, Vermont. Led by Bennett H. Young, the raiders robbed three banks in St. Albans and returned to Canada with $250,000 for the Confederate war chest. The Confederate mission to Canada also had the ostensibly peaceful goal of establishing negotiations for peace with the Union. For this purpose, Clay held a meeting with Horace Greely at Niagara Falls in July 1864, in an attempt to establish informal talks with Lincoln. Despite the wide-ranging plans of the conspirators in Canada, their efforts were undermined by the work of a Secret Service double-agent working for Baker. Prior to the Nov. 1864 election, Federal troops captured many of the Chicago conspirators and their arsenal, and the guard was increased at Camp Douglas as an extra precaution. Meanwhile, 10,000 troops were sent to New York to deter any rioting and the New York City fire department minimized the damage caused by Thompson's arsonists. However, the memory of the Northwest conspiracy and the St. Albans raid, lead Federal authorities to suspect the involvement of Thompson, et. al, in the Lincoln assassination. Following Johnson's proclamation, Thompson escaped to Europe. He lived there for a time, later came back to Canada, and finally returned to Mississippi in 1868. Clay, who had returned to Richmond in Jan. 1865, fled the capital with Davis and his cabinet in April. However, when he heard of the reward posted for his arrest, he turned himself in at Macon, Ga. He was held prisoner at Ft. Monroe, along with Jefferson Davis, although neither were ever charged with a crime. Clay was paroled in April 1866, after a year spent in solitary confinement, and finally pardoned by Congress in 1880. William C. Cleary defended himself and his cohort in a Nov. 1865 letter to Johnson, in which he denied any involvement in hostile plots and insisted that their mission was peaceful. Tucker also denied any direct involvement in violent plots, which may have been truthful. The government withdrew the reward for his arrest in Nov. 1865, but he nonetheless remained abroad until 1867. The arrest of Booth proved to be the high-water mark of Baker's career as a detective and of his public reputation. Baker (1826-1868) grew up in Michigan. For most of his adulthood before the Civil War, he traveled widely, taking up occasional residences in New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. While in San Francisco he developed notoriety as a claim- jumper and vigilante. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Winfield Scott enlisted him as a spy. After a successful mission in Richmond, he came to the notice of the Union high command, received a commission as a colonel and was appointed to combat fraud against the government. However, he quickly became immersed in Washington corruption himself, to his own monetary reward. At the same time, Baker was known to have abused his extensive war-time powers, bringing charges without evidence and ignoring due process. Johnson dismissed him in 1866 for spying within the White House. Baker's reputation for untruthfulness and treachery was consolidated with his evidence against Johnson during the impeachment trial, in which he made reference to documents which evidently did not exist. Baker's legacy also includes his notoriously inaccurate History of the United States Secret Service (1867). In the months surrounding the Lincoln conspiracy, Benson Lossing was engaged in an intense effort to collect information and images for his history of the war. Lossing (1813-1891) was one of the most popular historians of America in the 19th century, noted as much for his skillful engraving with which he illustrated all of his books as he was for his writing. He came of age in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he entered the newspaper trade, and, in 1838, established himself in New York City as a wood-engraver. He is best known for his "field books" of America's wars, beginning with the Pictorial Field Book of the American Revolution (1848), followed by his aforementioned work on the Rebellion, and finally, the Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812 (1868). He published numerous other books, including biographies of eminent Americans, contributed to various magazines and scholarly societies, and edited the American Historical Record and Repertory of Notes and Queries (1872- 74). Though criticized for lacking any originality in his interpretation of historical events, Lossing was known for his commitment to historical accuracy and his deep engagement in his subject matter. He traveled extensively throughout the country in the course of his research, giving his books both a national perspective and a feeling of an authentic grasp of local realities. During the Civil War, Lincoln and Stanton granted him wide freedom of travel to visit battle sites and to interview military commanders. He accompanied Butler's expedition to take Fort Fischer in Dec. 1864 and reported first-hand on the bombardment. Though it seems likely he contacted Baker to collect data for his book, Lossing may have been using his influence with the War Department to bring early publication of a wanted poster of the Lincoln conspirators to his home town, or to issue his own engravings of the suspects. The letter reads as follows: "Dr Sir, Yours of 10 inst. is ... [received]. Enclosed please find the photographs you desired as yet there has been no posters published containing pictures of Davis, Saunders, Clay, Thompson, Tucker, & Cleary. Respectfully Yrs, L.C. Baker, Col. & Agt. War Dept."