C H A P T E R  S E V E N T E E N

“Trust for a Favorable Outcome”

PRYCE LEWIS AND HIS EIGHT ACCOMPLICES were traveling north, hoping to soon encounter the advance parties of General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac on their way south. Unfortunately for the prisoners, the only soldiers moving in their direction in the first half of March 1862 were elements of General Joseph Johnston’s Confederate army.

For months Johnston’s men had been entrenched in Manassas, thirty miles southwest of Washington, and for most of that period an increasingly despairing Abraham Lincoln had been exerting pressure on McClellan to go on the offensive, drive the rebels from Maryland and then, as the popular cry went, “On to Richmond!” An assault planned for the start of the New Year had to be canceled when McClellan was stricken with typhoid and spent a month in bed. The general’s critics in the government—and there were many—accused him of malingering, of avoiding a battle because his Democrat principles aligned him more with the government in Richmond than with the one in Washington.

Lincoln rose above the squabbling, waiting until McClellan was on his feet before telling him he expected a spring offensive. The plan the president was finally presented with wasn’t one that inspired much confidence. McClellan intended to ferry his army south across the cold waters of Chesapeake Bay as far as the mouth of the Rappahannock River, seventy-five miles southeast of Manassas and sixty miles east of Richmond. Then, predicted McClellan bullishly, it would be a question of either capturing Richmond before Johnston’s rebels had time to rush south, or taking the capital once the Union army had surprised and smashed the retreating Confederates. There was a flaw in this plan, however, which Lincoln was quick to point out. What if Johnston, on hearing of McClellan’s move south, chose to head north? Who would defend Washington from the rebels?

As it turned out, General Johnston preempted the Unionists by withdrawing from Maryland into Virginia. On March 12 the New York Times gloated of “the precipitate flight of the rebels … [they] retreated in a most excited and disorderly manner,” but in truth it was a far more disciplined extraction. Though Johnston’s men were forced to destroy or discard a quantity of supplies, they calmly pulled back forty miles, to just below Fredericksburg, and dug in on the southern side of the Rappahannock River, where they could better defend Richmond from the assault they knew was coming.

Hundreds of rebel troops continued south toward Richmond, arriving either by rail or on foot along the Mechanicsville Turnpike. On Saturday, March 15, the day before the jail break, John Beauchamp Jones noted in his diary that “for several days troops have been pouring through the city, marching down the [Virginia] Peninsula. The enemy are making demonstrations against Yorktown.” In fact Jones was misinformed about Yorktown, a strategically important port on the York River, seventy miles east of Richmond. It was still in Confederate hands, a fact which only exacerbated the chagrin of Abraham Lincoln.

The president, like his people, had been led to believe by McClellan that Johnston had nearly one hundred thousand soldiers at Manassas. When Northern troops took over the newly vacated defenses it soon became evident that the rebels had numbered half the figure, if that. On March 13 the correspondent for the New York Tribune described how a tour of the former Confederate positions had left him “utterly dispirited, ashamed and humiliated … their retreat is our defeat.” Lincoln reduced McClellan’s authority, so that he was no longer general in chief but responsible only for the Army of the Potomac. In addition, Lincoln—without prior discussion with McClellan—appointed four corps commanders to the Potomac army. Before the month was out, Lincoln had also instructed General John Frémont to head a new military department in West Virginia, and agreed that a division from McClellan’s Army of the Potomac should augment Frémont’s nascent force.

Despite his relegation, McClellan defied Lincoln’s recommendation to launch an overland attack on Virginia and continued with preparations to mount a waterborne offensive. Hundreds of vessels and artillery pieces were assembled, and thousands of men underwent training for the long-awaited push into Southern territory. Never far from McClellan’s side during this fraught period was Allan Pinkerton. He strove to aid his general as best he could, even while McClellan’s “secret enemies were endeavoring to prejudice the mind of the president against his chosen commander; when wily politicians were seeking to belittle him in the estimation of the people; and when jealous-minded officers were ignorantly criticizing his plans of campaign.” Pinkerton described his team as being “taxed to its utmost” as he and his operatives interrogated captured Confederate soldiers, Southern refugees and runaway slaves to try and ascertain the number, condition and location of the rebel army. Pinkerton also inquired of some of those he examined if they were familiar with the names Webster, Scully and Lewis. Perhaps they’d heard talk of these men during their wanderings.

Four weeks had passed since his two operatives set out south, and no news was forthcoming. The silence was a bad omen. Had Lewis and Scully been arrested on the way to Richmond? Or in Richmond? Or on their return journey? Perhaps they hadn’t been caught; perhaps they were inching their way north hiding from militia patrols and avoiding retreating soldiers. And what of Webster? Where was he? How was he? Not a day passed without Pinkerton being “tortured by the uncertainty of their fate.”

Tim Webster had hardly seen his wife in the past twelve months. His real wife. Hattie Lawton was the woman with whom he had shared his life since the start of 1861. The intensity of their existence, its precariousness, its pressure, had brought them together in a way Webster had never experienced with Mrs. Charlotte Webster. Hattie Lawton had acted the adoring wife well enough to fool everyone in Richmond.

The day after the arrest of Lewis and Scully, Samuel McCubbin knocked on the door of the Websters’ room in the Monumental Hotel. The greeting with Hattie Lawton was coolly cordial. He pulled up a chair alongside Webster and wondered at the strange events of the previous night. Webster told McCubbin he didn’t follow, so the detective, watching the sick man closely, explained how Lewis and Scully had been arrested on suspicion of spying.

Webster could hardly believe it. On what evidence? McCubbin couldn’t go into specifics, but he asked for the letter that they’d delivered. Of course, said Webster, by all means. He told his wife to look for it; it was somewhere in the room. Lawton found the letter and gave it to the detective, who tucked it into his pocket and left with a curt “good day.”

In the following days none of Winder’s men appeared at Webster’s door to make inquires about his health. Only polite Mr. Price still popped by. Webster knew the danger he was in; they were on to him, of course, but what was their proof? Pinkerton’s idea to send a letter had been crass and injudicious, but on its own it couldn’t damn him. Webster spent hours sitting up in bed, reviewing the past year, searching for lapses that might prove pivotal to his enemies, and fatal to him. While Webster agonized, Lawton acted the devoted companion, telling him to “trust for a favorable outcome.”