Double Death

“I Suffer a Double Death”

THE CHARGE WAS LAID before Timothy Webster by Colonel Nathaniel Tyler, president of the court and also the co-owner and editor of the Richmond Enquirer.* The defendant stood accused of “lurking about the armies and fortifications of the Confederate States of America,” and it was the court’s intention to prove two specifications.

First Specification: That on the 1st of April [1862], being an enemy alien and in the service of the United States, he lurked about the armies and fortifications of the Confederate States in and near Richmond.

Second Specification: That about the 1st of July 1861, prisoner being an enemy alien and in the service of the United States, did lurk in and about the armies and fortifications of the Confederate States at Memphis, in the State of Tennessee.

The court summoned John Scully, who confirmed that the accused was Timothy Webster, an employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He also told the court that he had come to Richmond to collect information from Webster and to take this information to Washington.

The next day Pryce Lewis was called. The Englishman looked across at Webster and noticed how much he had changed. He was gaunt, worn-out, a man who no longer had the strength to keep up the act. Webster acknowledged Lewis with a bow of his head. When Lewis was asked if he knew the accused, he replied in the affirmative. And what else do you know of him?

Very little, said Lewis. Was he aware Webster carried mail between Richmond and Washington? Lewis had never seen him carry any mail.

Well then, had he heard any rumors to that effect? Yes, replied Lewis. It was rumored that he carried mail. But he couldn’t swear upon it because he had never seen him do it.

For several minutes the prosecution skirmished with Lewis, pressing him again and again on the subject of Webster’s role as a letter carrier. But the witness stuck to what he’d already said, reemphasizing that he had never seen Webster in possession of Richmond mail. Webster’s defense counsel, James Nance, asked Lewis to elaborate on what he’d already said: he came to Richmond to deliver a letter to Webster. No, he knew neither the contents of the letter nor why it had to be handed over in person. And that was correct, prior to delivering the letter he had never met the accused.

Lewis was returned to his cell in Castle Godwin. More than a week had now passed since the postponement of his execution, and he was being tolerably well treated, though not as well as Scully if Father McMullen was to be believed. His cell, so the priest said, “might be termed elegant.” Lewis wrote again to Frederick Cridland but received no reply. He passed the days reading or standing on the bench looking out of the window. One day Lewis saw Tim Webster in the prison yard below, “sitting down on a step, very pale and weary-looking.”

Webster’s trial concluded on Saturday, April 19. Three days later the Richmond Dispatch reported that “the result has not transpired.” However, added the newspaper, a guilty verdict was assured because “the proof, it is understood, was direct and positive.” On Friday, April 25, Timothy Webster was taken from Castle Godwin to City Hall, where the verdict was announced by Colonel Tyler, president of the court. Guilty.

Tyler then announced that with “two thirds of the Court concurring, it was adjudged that the accused suffer death by hanging … that the sentence should be executed under the direction of the provost marshal on the 29th of April, between the hours of 6 and 12 o’clock.”

It was the Richmond Dispatch’s report of April 5 that first alerted the Federal authorities to the fate of Lewis and Scully. The next day Captain Gustavus Fox, assistant secretary of the Union navy, received a telegram at his headquarters at Fort Monroe, on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula, signed by C. C Fulton. It read: RICHMOND PAPERS MENTION THAT TWO MEN NAMED PRICE [SIC] LEWIS AND JOHN SCULLY HAVE BEEN CONVICTED AS SPIES AND WERE TO HAVE BEEN HUNG YESTERDAY, BUT THAT A SHORT RESPITE HAS BEEN GRANTED. THE MEN CLAIM TO BE BRITISH SUBJECTS AND LOYAL.

Word was quickly passed to Pinkerton, who was on the Virginia Peninsula with McClellan. Two days earlier, on April 4, McClellan had begun to push west toward the Confederate-held port of Yorktown. McClellan arrived outside Yorktown on the fifth, the same day he learned that President Lincoln had rescinded his order to General Irvin McDowell to move his thirty-five-thousand-strong corps from northern Virginia to the peninsula.*

McClellan was apoplectic when he found out, petulantly fuming that he was the victim of political intrigue on account of his Democratic leanings. He still had fifty-five thousand men under his command, however, as he drew closer to Yorktown. Entrenched around Yorktown were no more than fifteen thousand poorly equipped rebels. Most other generals would have invested the port in a matter of days, but not McClellan. He recoiled from an all-out assault, preferring to wait for his artillery to arrive so he could blast the rebels from their trenches. It was Lincoln’s turn to rage. it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow, the president telegraphed his general, warning that THE COUNTRY WILL NOT FAIL TO NOTE—IS NOW NOTING—THAT THE PRESENT HESITATION TO MOVE UPON AN ENTRENCHED ENEMY, IS BUT THE STORY OF MANASSAS [THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN] REPEATED.

Confronted with the gravest crisis of his military career, General McClellan had more pressing matters than the fate of two spies,* but Pinkerton sought clarification from the harbormaster at Fort Monroe. The thought that one or all of his operatives might be dead left him “almost prostrated” with anxiety.

Subsequent intelligence was confused. The harbormaster confirmed that it appeared the men were indeed still alive. But then on April 16 the Boston Herald ran an article headlined a spy hung by the rebels in which it said that “Price [sic] Lewis late of Wolcottville, Con; was a few days since hung at Richmond, having made several trips to the enemy’s camp successfully was caught at last and manfully paid the penalty.”

After hearing his verdict, Webster was returned to Castle Godwin and moved to the condemned cell lately occupied by Pryce Lewis. Hattie Lawton, whom the Confederates still believed to be the real Mrs. Webster, had been found guilty of complicity and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. Although she was now separated from her companion, Lawton was allowed a few minutes each day with Webster, and she was also granted permission to petition President Jefferson Davis. Her plea for clemency was rejected.

Webster wrote to no one. What was the point in writing to Frederick Cridland when he had long since renounced his British citizenship? Tim Webster was a Yankee. He couldn’t even write to his real wife, Charlotte, six hundred miles northwest in Onarga, for fear of exposing Hattie Lawton as a Pinkerton operative.

On the evening of Monday, April 28, Lawton called on Webster for the final time. He gave her his possessions, including “plenty of gold and C.S Treasury notes,” and then they embraced. Webster’s last visit was from the Reverend Dr. George Woodbridge, the fifty-one-year-old rector of Richmond’s Episcopal Monumental Church. Woodbridge was an avuncular figure, father to four children and a much respected preacher.

Webster prayed with Woodbridge; then they talked for many hours. The rector left a Bible with the prisoner and promised to return the next morning. Webster passed the night reading the Bible. One psalm in particular gave him solace, it was psalm 35, David’s psalm, and contained within it were the following lines.

Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me:

fight against them that fight against me.

Take hold of shield and buckler,

and stand up for mine help.

Draw out also the spear,

and stop the way against them that persecute me:

say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.

Let them be confounded and put to shame

that seek after my soul:

let them be turned back and brought to confusion

that devise my hurt.

Let them be as chaff before the wind:

and let the angel of the Lord chase them.

Let their way be dark and slippery:

and let the angel of the Lord persecute them.

For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit,

which without cause they have digged for my soul.

Let destruction come upon him at unawares;

and let his net that he hath hid catch himself:

into that very destruction let him fall.

False witnesses did rise up;

they laid to my charge things that I knew not.

They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul.

. . .

The Reverend Dr. Woodbridge returned at six o’clock the next morning, Tuesday, April 29. Webster was dressed in a white cotton shirt and a black coat. The two men prayed and talked, and together read some passages from the Bible. The rector implored Webster to be strong, reminding him that he had nothing to fear from a just and loving God. Woodbridge remained with the condemned man for an hour. When the time came for him to depart, he shook Webster’s hand and suggested he spend his final minutes in prayer.

Soon a carriage driven by Winder’s men arrived, and Webster was taken from his cell by George Freeburger. Without the aid of crutches, Webster had to lean heavily on his jailor for support. They rode west along Broad Street, following the course of the railroad toward Camp Lee. It was a fine day, and the air was scented with violets and hyacinths. Daffodils burst from the roadside verges, and the meadows beyond the hedges of ailanthus that lined the mile-long route were golden. Behind the carriage the sun climbed above the spires of Richmond’s thirty-three churches.

The carriage passed a guard of soldiers and pulled up outside the headquarters of the camp commandant, Colonel John Shields. In prewar days the headquarters had been the office of the president of the Richmond Central Agricultural Society. Eighteen months earlier the society had hosted the Prince of Wales during his visit to the showground. To the rear of the headquarters was a long building occupied by quartermasters, surgeons and drillmasters, and the enclosed space in front of this building was where the officers played marbles in the cool of the evening. Enlisted soldiers lived in tents and washed in a creek on the edge of the camp.

Inside the headquarters Webster’s manacles were removed, and he was left alone with the Reverend Dr. Moses Hoge, the padre of the camp. They prayed and talked, and at ten minutes past eleven Freeburger returned. Webster was shackled once more, and then Hoge and Freeburger assisted him into the carriage. It was a short ride to the gallows, no more than 250 yards, but it took five minutes because the ground was still soft from the spring rain. From inside the carriage Webster saw the wooden coffin at the foot of the scaffold.

A large crowd of Richmonders had gathered, and soldiers pushed them back as Webster climbed down from the carriage. He mounted the scaffold steps unaided. In the branches of the oak trees that overhung the gallows perched a gang of boys, their young eyes wide with curiosity. Waiting for Webster on the scaffold was the hangman, a fearsome fellow with a “white beard, long and flowing … face hard, features large and firm, eyes gray, cold and cruel.” His name was John Caphart, once a hunter of runaway slaves and now the city’s executioner. In Richmond and throughout Virginia they called him “Anti-Christ Caphart.” He bound Webster’s feet as Hoge invoked the Divine Mercy. The rope was adjusted around the prisoner’s neck, under his brown beard flecked with gray. George Freeburger asked Webster if he had anything to say. Webster looked at Hoge and thanked him for his kindness.

Caphart removed Webster’s silk dress hat and slipped a black cap over his head. He stepped back three paces, grasped a wooden lever and pulled. The trap opened, and Webster fell. There was a heavy thud, then gasps and shouts from the crowd. Caphart looked through the trap and saw the empty noose and underneath Webster twitching on the ground. Two soldiers pulled Webster to his feet and dragged him up the gallows steps as the prisoner moaned, “I suffer a double death.”

Caphart adjusted the cotton noose, looped it once more around Webster’s neck and tightened it with a brutal jerk. Webster gave an anguished cry: “You are going to choke me this time.” Caphart stepped back and pulled the lever. There was no thud. The mute crowd watched as Webster kicked the air in his death throes. Caphart removed his hat and wiped his brow with his lucky red bandana. For fifteen minutes the correspondents of the Richmond newspapers stood and chatted in front of the gallows as Webster’s body gently swung to and fro. Then they began to move away. It was nearly luncheon, and they had to write their copy for the morning issue.

The newspapermen had agreed that Webster’s gallant death would not be edifying for their readers. The people of Richmond expected a Yankee, particularly one as perfidious as Webster, to die with more disgrace.

The Richmond Examiner related how Webster had arrived at Camp Lee “making use of horrid oaths and treating the subject of his approaching death with scorn and derision.” Then in the final few minutes his bluster vanished and instead “he wept constantly and his strength seemed to fail him utterly. He trembled like an aspen and was unable to stand alone.” The paper added: “It is said, on taking leave of him, Webster’s wife exhorted him ‘to die like a man’; in how far he obeyed her exhortation our readers can judge.”

The Dispatch concentrated less on the manner of Webster’s death and more on his profanity, describing how he had insisted Reverend Woodbridge “read the psalm of David, invoking vengeance on his enemies. He [Woodbridge] refused and Webster grew indignant, causing the clergyman to take an early departure.” The Enquirer also published details of this final prayer meeting, during which Woodbridge’s “endeavors to bring about a pious state of mind in the unmitigated villain only met with ill-mannered responses, [and] the only approach he made towards resignation was a request that the Rev. gentleman would read him that psalm of David which invoked curses upon his enemies.”

The Reverend Dr. Woodbridge read the newspapers with mounting irritation. Having deliberated on the response, he retired to his office and wrote a letter to William B. Allegre and Nathaniel Tyler, the owners of the Richmond Enquirer.

Gentlemen:

Will you please allow me to correct a statement in your paper respecting Webster, the spy. I ask it for the sake of his wife. In all my interviews with him he was uniformly grateful and respectful … the psalm to which reference is made is the 35th. He pointed it out to me the day before. Considering it as indicating a state of mind not desirable, I told him that if he entertained any unkind feelings towards the others he must abandon them, as an indispensable qualification for forgiveness from God. He said, however, that the Psalm suited his state of mind, not that he wished any evil to others; and that he freely forgave others their offences against him as he wished forgiveness from God. This Psalm he did not ask me to read on the morning of his execution, though I noticed that the leaf was turned down.

Geo. Woodbridge

Will those editors in the city please to publish this who have given similar accounts.

*The transcripts of Webster’s trial, and of Lewis’s and Scully’s, were never found. In all probability when Richmond fell to Union troops in April 1865 and Judah Benjamin ordered stacks of wartime documents to be burned, they were among them. None of the Richmond papers carried extensive reports on the trial (held in camera), but the Dispatch summarized the court’s proceedings in its edition of April 30, 1862.

*Lincoln’s decision was prompted by the revelation that far from the seventy-three thousand men McClellan claimed to have left in Washington to defend the capital, there were fewer than thirty thousand. McClellan had included in his wildly inaccurate figure the twenty-five thousand men of Major General Nathaniel Banks’s army stationed in the Shenandoah Valley, and he had also blatantly deceived his president, counting some divisions twice.

*Pinkerton later claimed that when he told McClellan about Lewis and Scully, “his sympathy and sorrow were as acute as though the men had been joined to him by ties of blood.” Given that the general—who had met neither Lewis nor Scully—had the fate of tens of thousands of men in his hands, it seems unlikely he would have lost much sleep over the pair.