Dwelling in history’s shadow is the dark role the metropolis played as a nexus for the Confederate South’s agents in the American Civil War.
Many newspapers were more sympathetic to the Confederacy than they were to Lincoln, denounced in Canada as a “mad despot.” In Montreal, the Gazette and most of the French papers were filled with stories that favoured the slave states. Leading politicians, businessmen and church leaders sided with the South.
Owner Henry Hogan admitted that in “the exciting times during the Civil War … the St. Lawrence Hall was the headquarters of the ‘Confederate Junta.’” Well aware that his establishment was a nest of intrigue for rival spies from the South and the North, Hogan had installed a peephole in his office to allow him to do some spying of his own, with a view of the entire main parlour.
Booth easily arranged to transport his trunks through Patrick C. Martin, a former Baltimore merchant who became a prosperous blockade-runner in Montreal.Article content The day before he left Montreal, Booth dropped by the Montreal branch of the Ontario Bank. His choice of that institution was not a coincidence. It operated what would become in effect a slush fund for the Confederacy’s war of sabotage and subterfuge waged from Canada against Lincoln and his government.Article content
Dooley’s Bar at the St. Lawrence Hall, where John Wilkes Booth played billiards. Photo courtesy McCord Museum. “I am going to run the blockade,” Booth told Campbell openly, clearly not worried that the bank would have any objections. “ case I should be captured, can my capturers make use of the exchange?”
Lamothe was an odd choice to head the police department of Canada’s largest city. In a private memoir he wrote for his son decades later, Lamothe admitted his appointment had little to do with police experience — of which he had none — and everything to do with his political connections, which were plentiful. “I always took an active part in politics,” he wrote, “and I often gave of myself and of my money to the Liberal Party, of course.
The day before the trial was set to resume on Dec. 13, Sanders talked again with Montreal police boss Lamothe. This time, they met with John Porterfield, a Nashville banker who was, in effect, the Confederacy’s financial agent in Montreal.Article content In the courtroom lobby, Porterfield was already huddling with Lamothe to get the police chief’s written authorization to Starnes for the release of the money. On a sleigh he had waiting outside the court, Porterfield dashed to the bank and grabbed the money — in effect, helping the Confederates robbers steal the bank loot twice.Article content
The beleaguered police chief resigned in the midst of the embarrassing hearings. On Dec. 23, in front of the full city council, came the vote on whether or not to accept his resignation. Bad weather forced the men back, but in April 1865, Lamothe tried again. With funds from the Confederates, he bought a schooner, stocking it with food, guns and ammunition. Across rough waters, he guided the four escapees to Nova Scotia, and from there they would eventually reach safety in the slave South.
Jefferson Davis, the defeated and jailed president of the Confederacy, was freed on bail two years after the war in May 1867. “We could not but sympathize with the Southerners,” explained Lovell’s wife, “in the loss of their luxurious homes and of the many near and dear to them.”
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