C H A P T E R  T W E N T Y - O N E

“I Have Made a Full Statement and Confessed Everything”

PRYCE LEWIS SAT in Castle Godwin’s “condemned cell” on April 3, waiting to die. He and Scully had been separated shortly after the visit of Frederick Cridland, and Lewis considered his new home a cruel place for a man to spend his last night on earth. It was windowless and lightless and practically airless; only “a hole cut in the door about five inches square” allowed Lewis to breathe. There was one bench and “the floor was wet … and smelt horribly.”

Lewis told his jailor, George Freeburger, that “there is no people in the world, civilized or savage, who would consign a condemned man to a room like this.” Freeburger looked around and agreed. He departed with a promise to cheer up the place and soon returned with two Negroes who between them carried a cot, blankets, a bucket, a chair and some candles. Freeburger had a pile of books under his arms. Father McMullen arrived and told Lewis that he had heard Scully’s final confession. Lewis did not reply. The Father asked if he could do anything for the Englishman, but the offer was rebuffed. McMullen expressed his sorrow for Lewis and implored him to confess his sins and prepare for the next life. Lewis shook his head and asked what was the point. Face it, Father, he said, “you know nothing beyond the grave more than I do. None of us know anything about it.”

McMullen was astounded by Lewis’s words. He asked if he could stay with him for a few minutes, if he promised not to preach. The pair sat in silence for a while, and the priest then left, saying he would return at dawn. Fine, replied Lewis, as long as he came as a man and not a priest.

After McMullen left, Lewis ate “an excellent supper, including roast chicken,” and spent the evening reading by candlelight. One of the books he found funny, a tale of an Irish schoolmaster who fell victim to a series of schoolboy pranks.

Lewis fell into a fitful sort of slumber but soon awoke and spent the rest of the night reviewing his life. He hadn’t lied to Father McMullen. He had no fear of death and considered “that the physical pain would not be greater than an instant’s sharp toothache.” And as for the hereafter Lewis “believed in a just God. I was in His power. If He were not just, I could not help it.”

At eight o’clock Captain Freeburger arrived with Lewis’s breakfast. He thanked the warden and asked if the hammering he could hear was the gallows being erected. No, Freeburger assured him, just some new bunks being installed in the guards’ room.

Not long after Lewis had finished his breakfast Father McMullen entered the cell. He said nothing but gazed at Lewis for a few seconds. Then, matter-of-factly, he conveyed the news that the execution had been respited. Lewis gave a small nod of his head. McMullen placed a couple of religious volumes on the bench and walked out.

Judah Benjamin had granted the two men a “spontaneous” respite in the name of President Jefferson Davis. The first Frederick Cridland knew of the decision was when he read “in the public papers that the execution had been postponed to the 12th day of April.” Benjamin’s decision did little to endear him to his critics, particularly to the newspaper editors who were vexed at his show of mercy. “For reasons satisfactory to ourselves,” ran a report in the April 5 edition of the Richmond Dispatch, whose editor, James Cowardin, was personally acquainted with the two spies, “the principal one being the fact that the authorities were averse to any publicity being given to the affair, we have refrained for several days past from mentioning that two men, Pryce Lewis and John Scully, had been tried before the Court Martial now sitting in the City Hall, and condemned to be hung as spies. The execution was to have taken place yesterday at 11 o’clock, at the New Fair Grounds, the gallows having been erected there, and all needful preparation made for carrying into effect the sentence of the court. The execution has been postponed for a short time on a respite granted the parties by the president, but we are assured it will come off at an early day.”

There was a curious end to the Dispatch’s report, a twist that must have tantalized Richmond’s citizens as they sat at their breakfast tables drinking their coffee substitute. The newspaper revealed “that the condemned have made disclosures affecting the fidelity of several persons, one or more of whom have been apprehended. Rumor had it yesterday that one of the parties thus implicated was an officer holding a place under the Government. If rumor speaks the truth, he will find himself, no doubt, in an uncomfortably hot place.”

After Webster had spoken up for John Scully, the Confederates knew they had their man. The “style of his evidence,” and his avowal that Scully “was a good friend to the south” was a lie. It was arranged that William Campbell, the government contractor with whom Webster had journeyed to Nashville in January, should insist that the sick man finish his convalescence at his house. There would be less risk of him absconding from Richmond during the dead of night. Webster, who had celebrated his fortieth birthday earlier in the month, raised a feeble protest, but Campbell insisted and in late March Webster was moved from the Monumental Hotel.

Not long before sundown on Thursday, April 3, at around the time Cridland was shaking hands with Benjamin and Randolph, there was a knock at the Websters’ door. Standing outside was Campbell who, in a detached voice, announced that a policeman was on his way up the stairs.

Philip Cashmeyer was one of the younger members of the military police, a cunning man with a “blarney smile” whose favorite phrase was “you can always catch flies with molasses”; in other words, grease his palm, and he might turn a blind eye. But not in Webster’s case.

Cashmeyer entered the room and announced that it was his “painful duty” to arrest both Mr. and Mrs. Webster and convey them to Castle Godwin prison. There was the sound of heavy boots running up the stairs, and then two soldiers with bayonets fixed appeared. Hattie Lawton exclaimed that Webster was in no fit state to be moved, but Cashmeyer had his instructions.

The Richmond Dispatch reported a few days later that eleven people were committed to Castle Godwin on April 3. Mike Fitzgerald from New Orleans was imprisoned because of “fighting,” John Fallon for “a breach of discipline” and J. T. Reed had been “disloyal.” The paper made no special reference to the two suspected Union agents; it simply stated: “Tim Webster, Mrs. Webster, Kentucky, spies.” The Websters were put in a cell on the second floor of Godwin, in which were “several females accused of disloyalty and giving aid to the United States government.” On the floor above the Websters was a thirty-four-year-old Virginian named George Washington Frosst, a machinist in a woolen factory arrested on suspicion of “disloyalty.” Over the coming days Frosst saw Webster several times and noted that “he was greatly suffering from rheumatic pains in his limbs … and was compelled to use crutches.”

On the day of his reprieve Lewis was moved from the condemned cell to a furnished room on the first floor with a window. There was a table and chair, writing material and plenty of books. Lewis was shackled at the wrists, which made writing impossible and reading tiresome, so he spent hours at the window enviously watching people go about their business outside the prison’s walls. Still unnerved by the morning’s events, Lewis leaped to the door whenever he heard footsteps and peeped through the keyhole. In the afternoon he thought he recognized the squat frame of General Winder climbing the stairs to the second floor.

The next day, Saturday, April 5, Lewis’s guards brought him the newspapers. He read about the postponement of his execution, and then he came to the final paragraph. “The condemned have made disclosures affecting the fidelity of several persons.” Lewis slumped into a chair and read the words again, hoping that perhaps he had imagined them. He hadn’t. It was several minutes before his head stopped spinning. Then he began to think. He must get a message to Scully. When a Negro arrived to collect his breakfast tray, Lewis asked if he might deliver a message to John Scully on the top floor.

The servant looked doubtful, but Lewis persuaded him with two dollars slipped into his hand. The message asked Scully what he had told the authorities. The reply came in a note hidden under Lewis’s lunch plate. “I have made a full statement and confessed everything and it would be better for us if you would do the same.”

The news upset Lewis for reasons, initially, unrelated to Tim Webster. At that point self-preservation was Lewis’s priority. By saying he had “confessed everything,” was Scully referring just to their trip to Richmond or to their entire espionage career? In particular Lewis was terrified that “Scully had told about my visit to [Henry] Wise’s camp.” Lewis had heard it said that Wise was in Richmond at this very moment. If there was any proof he had spied on Virginian soil, he would hang.

Lewis passed an anguished night. The next morning he handed the Negro another dollar bill, folded around a note that asked Scully if he had mentioned anything about his trip to West Virginia. Lewis knew the note might be intercepted, but “my mental suspense was such that I was desperate enough to take the risk.”

A different man brought Lewis his supper, so it wasn’t until the morning of Monday, April 7, that he received Scully’s reply. It was a terse note, one which studiously ignored Lewis’s question. It simply exhorted Lewis to tell Winder everything he knew. In the afternoon Father McMullen appeared and advised the Englishman “to make a statement to the authorities.”

Lewis brusquely dismissed the suggestion. McMullen sighed and reminded Lewis that he was in a bad fix, one that only a full and frank confession could remedy. On Tuesday Lewis was taken from his cell into the guards’ room. There was a group of men sitting around a table on which “were a couple of large, leather-bound account books or ledgers.” He recognized George Alexander, assistant provost marshal, and Judge Advocate William Crump. The latter spoke first, saying he understood Lewis “desired to make a full statement.” Lewis said he wished to do nothing of the sort.

Crump asked for another chair and beckoned the prisoner to sit. Lewis removed his felt hat and did as instructed. Then Crump, “in a soft and gentlemanly manner,” told Lewis that he was an Englishman, caught up in a conflict that had nothing to do with him. He was in this predicament because the Washington government “recklessly led you into this trouble without caring a snap what became of you.” What loyalty could he possibly harbor for Abraham Lincoln?

Lewis listened impassively as the judge tried to snare him with civility, aware that “his line of argument was a powerful one in my condition of mind.” When Crump had finished he looked in expectation at the disheveled figure across the table. Lewis raised his head and said, “Judge, I have no statement to make.”

No one spoke for two or three minutes; then Crump asked Lewis what he knew of Timothy Webster. Lewis repeated his earlier assertion, that he barely knew the man and was just passing along a letter to him. Crump shook his head wearily, called Lewis a “foolish man” and ordered him to be taken back to his cell and “put in double irons.”

Lewis was returned to his cell, and his feet and hands were shackled. All the furniture supplied by Captain Freeburger was removed; even the books were confiscated. His food was thrown in through the small hatch in the cell door, and, except for a few hours a day, he sat in darkness. Lewis felt “entombed [and] began to devise some scheme to get out of this torture chamber.” If Scully had made a full confession and the rebels knew everything, concluded Lewis, it was pointless to maintain his silence. They knew he was a Northern detective; if he said nothing about his adventure in western Virginia, and nothing that they didn’t already know about Tim Webster but instead fed his inquisitors scraps of harmless information, it might appease their vengeful souls.

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, Lewis told his guards he wished to see Judge Crump. The judge arrived in the afternoon, and he and the prisoner sat down across a table in the guards’ room. Crump asked if now he would make a statement. Yes, he would, replied Lewis, rubbing his red wrists as the manacles were removed. Crump smiled and told Lewis he was a sensible man. The statement should be written, he added, as “Scully had done.” The Englishman refused, saying he would answer any questions put to him but he wouldn’t put pen to paper. Crump accepted the compromise and for nearly an hour plied Lewis with questions. When did he leave England? How long had he worked for Allan Pinkerton? So what did he do before becoming a detective? A traveling book salesman. For which company? The titles of the books? There were inquiries about Rose Greenhow, Eugenia Phillips, and more information was demanded about his role in the search of the Morton home.

Crump listened intently to all Lewis’s answers. Suddenly he asked him about his trip to Tennessee, information that could only have come from Scully. Lewis told the judge about the murder case, including his purchase of the novel about Eugene Aram. It had nothing to do with the war, Lewis stressed, offering to furnish the judge with the names of several people in Jackson who could testify to that effect.

Eventually Crump brought up Timothy Webster, and Lewis replied, yet again, that he had never met him prior to handing over the letter. Crump refused to believe it. Lewis shrugged and said it was true. What more could he say? Crump leaned back in his chair and considered Lewis for several long, dragging seconds. The Englishman felt sure the judge was building up to his final question, the one about Charleston and the Kanawha Valley, but then Crump expressed his “astonishment.” At what? inquired Lewis. The judge said it appeared Lewis did indeed have nothing to hide. Lewis was unsure if the judge was being sincere or sarcastic. But then Crump told the guards to return the prisoner to his cell and to remove his irons. The judge left Castle Godwin and reported his findings to the officers of the court-martial; having spoken at length to Mr. Lewis, Crump related, he was satisfied that he was who he said he was, nothing more than a minor detective working for Allan Pinkerton, and not “an emissary between the Union people of Richmond and the Government of Washington … [who] could give information that would expose the secret political affiliations of hundreds of people in Richmond.”

That same day, Thursday, April 10, John Beauchamp Jones wrote in his diary about the facts gleaned from the newspapers: “The condemned spies [Lewis and Scully] have implicated Webster, the letter-carrier, who has had so many passports. He will hang, probably. Gen. Winder himself, and his policemen, wrote home by him. I don’t believe him any more guilty than many who used to write by him.”