By Order of President Jefferson Davis
Alvin Lloyd was in Richmond and it was the morning of July 29, 1864. On that day, it seemed he may have made his way to the Confederate White House on Main Street to see Jefferson Davis, for things were happening, albeit seven months later, as a result of Virginia’s brother Eugene Higgins’s letter to the Confederate president. On the very day Lloyd was in town, James A. Seddon, the Confederate secretary of war and surely not a defender of Lloyd’s, wrote a letter to Major General Dabney Herndon Maury, the commander of the Department of the Gulf.
Imagine the general, expecting to do battle with invading Union ships at any moment, reading an order from President Davis about William Alvin Lloyd. Yet, here it is:
General, I send you a paper from which you will see that it is the desire of the President that Mr. W.A. Lloyd should be employed in connection with the business of the Provost Marshall’s office in your city. He seems to have a turn for detective duty, and he might be employed as such detective or police agent in the pay of the commander, and receive his compensation out of the Secret Service money. From his information, it would appear that illicit trade is still carried on in cotton & other commodities with the enemy.
As in so much of Lloyd’s self-proclaimed insider-status claims, this one begs believability. Seddon, under presidential pressure, it appears, adds this caveat, this doubt:
He [Lloyd] believes it will be in his power to obtain such information as to enable you to break it up. It will be well to give him any reasonable facilities for attaining such result, as he will thus show how far his representations are exaggerated or delusive. Yours respectfully, J.A. Seddon.339
However, an order from the president is just that, no matter what the secretary of war implied. But Alvin never became a Mobile detective nor did he go anywhere near Mobile again.
And as for Boyd, he was now back in Castle Thunder prison, one of several drear and overflowing places at this time in the war. There is this item from the Daily Richmond Examiner of August 11, 1864: “Gone to the Castle Again. Thomas H. Stockton Boyd, or alphabetical Boyd, an exceeding nice young man, and William H. Shellings, equally nice, and detailed for ‘light duty,’ have been sent to the Castle, for threatening, with force of arms, to assault Sergeant Hanley of one of the reserve companies.” Bill Snellings and Tom Boyd were certainly privates in Company E of the 2nd Virginia State Reserves. This little episode kind of puts a crimp in Alphabetical’s career as a colonel, not to mention a bilk he was planning in Richmond.
About the time of Alphabetical’s latest misfortune, on August 2, Alvin left Richmond, arriving at Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday the fifth. On that day, back in Mobile, Union Admiral David Glasgow Farragut’s squadron steamed into Mobile Bay. The Confederate defenses there included not only warships but also mines, called torpedoes. Farragut’s forces assaulted Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan’s squadron, charged with guarding the three forts at the entrance of the bay. When one of Farragut’s men yelled out to the admiral that the bay was heavily mined, allegedly, Farragut shouted back, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Meanwhile, in the Carolinas, Alvin remained in Columbia for nine days, leaving on Sunday, August 14, and on the following day arrived at Wilmington, North Carolina. He left Wilmington on Friday the nineteenth, and the following day was in Charlotte. He left Charlotte on the twenty-eighth, and later that day was in Augusta, selling ads and finding investors for his guide.340
In his 1872 deposition, Alphabetical Boyd says of Lloyd, “I left him in Augusta about first September 1864 and returned to Richmond. He was engaged in procuring information in regard to the movement of the Army of [Confederate] Gen’l Jos. E. Johnston, afterwards commanded by [Confederate] General Hood.”
Here Alphabetical’s fiction implies he must have talked his way out of Castle Thunder and joined Lloyd on the road, arriving with him in Augusta on the twenty-eighth of August 1864. Not so. The Confederate Army records are quite clear that T.H.S. Boyd was physically present for the August 1864 muster roll with his company, as he had been for the July roll.
Later, Boyd was in Richmond on September 16. As the city, the South, reeled at the news that General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces had captured Atlanta on September 2, a death knell was sounding over the Confederacy. The news—grim and grimmer still—the defeats, the dark and rapid bulletins frightened most southerners. But life in the common-criminal demimonde went on. On that day, as the Richmond Dispatch reports, Boyd was arrested for bilking Philip Whitlock, owner of a clothing store, and lodged in the lower cage by Officer John W. Davis.341
And in the same paper, the Richmond Dispatch, on September 19, 1864: “Thomas H.S. Boyd, formerly a captain in the Confederate service, was charged with forging the name of J.W. Allison, of Lynchburg, to a receipt for one year’s house rent amounting to $1300, and obtaining $975 from Philip Whitlock under false pretences. The absence of important witnesses induced the Mayor to postpone the matter till this morning.”
The Richmond Examiner of September 20, 1864, describes Boyd as “a gay young man from Maryland who, for several years, led an adventurous life in Richmond, getting into ugly scrapes periodically, but managing to squirm out of them without detriment to his liberty.”
As for Alvin, finally, he found an investor for his guide. James M. Willis was a young man from Georgia, a former druggist and actor who’d served as a hospital steward during the first two years of the war. After becoming ill with typhoid fever, he was on convalescent leave and never returned to his regiment, the 14th Alabama Infantry. But thanks to a fortunate marriage, he was now a banker and broker, with a large amount of money. A lucky break for Alvin. They struck a partnership deal on September 26, 1864, the new firm of Lloyd & Willis to produce, for five years, a publication called Lloyd’s Southern Railroad Guide and Railroad Map, something they counted on to be of great use to the Confederate government. It was under their banner that the October 1864 edition came out, published in Augusta.342
October was the very month Alphabetical Boyd claimed to have joined Lloyd in Atlanta, full of Union troops readying to march with Sherman to the sea. Despite Boyd’s claim that he was in fact in the city, for the entire month of October 1864 he had been sent back to jail, the new trial not being until November 25. All Alvin mentions in his itinerary for this time period is Augusta, where he was heavily involved with his new company, Lloyd & Willis; nothing about Boyd.343
Alvin left Augusta on Thursday, October 27, 1864, and “Arrived in Richmond October 31st at 3½ a.m.” Alphabetical Boyd, in his 1872 deposition, says, of Lloyd, “He joined me in Richmond about October 1864.” By “joined me,” Boyd must mean “came to see me in jail,” because that’s where Alphabetical was, languishing on a narrow cot behind bars. Boyd continues, “He had several packets of information. They were sent to the President. I can’t think of the name of the person by whom they were sent. The contents related to the number of troops commanded by Jos. E. Johnston, and also number and location of General Lee’s Army, then in front of Richmond and Petersburg.”344
Abraham Lincoln’s re-election on November 8 was met with outrage and agitation throughout the tattered Confederacy. There would be no stopping the war now. Amid all this, on November 21, 1864, in the court of Judge Lyons in Richmond, an indictment was found against Thomas H. S. Boyd for larceny. Then this from the Daily Richmond Examiner of November 24, 1864: “Criminal Court. Judge William H. Lyons—Wednesday, November 23, 1864—The only case heard in this court today was that of Thomas H.S. Boyd, indicted for grand larceny, in stealing thirteen hundred dollars from Philip Whitlock. The jury convicted, and the judge sentenced him to one year’s confinement in the Penitentiary,” The jury recommended him to executive clemency by the governor. This was all appealed.345
On December 21, 1864, the day Sherman captured Savannah and informed Lincoln that this city was his Christmas present, the Daily Richmond Examiner reports this item: “Criminal Court. Judge William H. Lyons. Tuesday, December 20, 1864. Court was occupied this morning with the case of Thomas H.S. Boyd, indicted for obtaining money under false pretences from Philip Whitlock, upon a forged paper. The accused was tried once before upon the same indictment, convicted and sentenced to the Penitentiary for one year. Upon the plea of prisoner’s counsel, Colonel Evans, the judge set aside the verdict, and granted a new trial. The jury again convicted, finding him this time guilty of attempting and committing the felony of obtaining money under false pretences. Counsel for prisoner moved in an argument for another new trial, but the Judge overruled the motion, and sentenced Boyd to twelve months confinement in the city jail.”
This from the Daily Richmond Examiner of December 29, 1864: “Pardon Application. The counsel and friends of Thomas H.S. Boyd, convicted of obtaining money under false pretences and sentenced to the city jail for one year, have made an application to the Governour for his pardon. Boyd was first tried, convicted and sentenced to the Penitentiary for one year, but the Judge granting a new trial and setting aside the verdict, he was again convicted and sentenced to the jail for the time specified.”
But in his 1872 deposition, Boyd swore that Lloyd “went to Wilmington, N.C., and Columbia, S.C. This was about December ’64 and January ’65. He was taking descriptions of batteries, gunboats, and general outlines of the water defenses of the approaches to Wilmington. He came on to Richmond, and sent a report to Mr. Lincoln in the early part of January 1865. He sent it through a prisoner exchanged from Castle Thunder, who was employed by Seward. I gave it to the prisoner, who was named Scully, myself.” This Scully mentioned is not necessarily John Scully, one of Pinkerton’s detectives who was so involved in the Timothy Webster case of 1862. It was a name Boyd pulled out of thin air. “I read the dispatches,” Boyd testified. “They also contained information as to the number and force of the armies around Petersburg and Richmond.”346
According to Enclosure 13, Alvin left Richmond on January 26, 1865, which means he had spent three straight months in the Confederate capital. There is no record of heartache, no weeping for the sure end of the world as they knew it, from either Boyd or Lloyd. Just travel, more travel, and more falsehoods. On January 28, Alvin arrived in Greensboro, leaving there the following day, a Sunday. On the thirty-first he arrived at Columbia and left on February 4, 1865, and arrived at Richmond on the sixth, leaving there on Thursday the ninth.347
This notice was placed in the Richmond Daily Dispatch on February 27: “Lost between Dr. E. Powell’s office, on Tenth street, and my residence on Ninth and Clay streets, a due bill for twenty-five hundred and eighty dollars, drawn by Colonel W. Alvin Lloyd in my favor. This is to caution the public against trading for the same, as payment has been stopped. L. Bowser.”348
Lloyd left Columbia on the fifteenth. On Monday, February 28, he arrived in Richmond. Boyd claimed that Lloyd was still sending dispatches to Lincoln. “He made a report in March 1865. It was sent by a blockade runner named Anderson. It contained, among other things, the exact amount of men under General Lee’s command, which was 42,000 men, including infantry and artillery, but not cavalry. He got the information from Major Taylor, Assistant Adjutant General on General Lee’s staff, from the morning reports. He stayed in Richmond until the news came that General Lee would have to uncover Richmond.”349
Alphabetical Boyd was “pardoned out” by the governor on March 3, 1865. That’s a fact. The Richmond Dispatch of March 4 tells us that. That really does seem to imply that Boyd was in jail at the time of the “pardoning out.” However, he was not in jail at that time. He was not in Richmond. He was not even in the South. Union records report that on January 20 a rebel deserter crossed the lines into Bermuda Hundred, near Hopewell, Virginia, where the Union Army of the Potomac was camped. His name was Private Thomas Boyd, 2nd Regiment Virginia, and, at Bermuda Hundred, he took the oath of allegiance to the United States. On January 21 he was received and processed by the Provost Marshal of Washington, DC, and on the twenty-fourth sent to that city. His weapons—his Colts—were taken, and transfer was furnished to Norfolk, Virginia. That was the end of the war for Thomas H. S. Boyd, but soon his supporting role as Lloyd’s accomplice in the fraud against the US government, would begin.
As for Alvin Lloyd, he would, in a matter of days, be part of another flight, a desperate flight of an entire government.