During 1864 noble efforts are being made to get William A. away from Alcatraz. In the Arizona Territory the newly appointed governor, John Goodwin, a devoted Lincoln man (but no relation to William A.’s father-in-law, Ichabod Goodwin), is determined to protect the territory and requests that the captain from Alcatraz head a volunteer regiment. He fears that Arizona, ceded to the United States after the Mexican War and carved away from the Confederate stronghold of New Mexico with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, is under threat from Confederates as well as restless Indian tribes. The territory is railroad-ready and thus ripe for a land grab, and it could be a Union stronghold. Governor Goodwin sends his request for Winder straight to the top. Writing to the president from Fort Whipple on February 8, 1864, Goodwin “respectfully recommend[s] that Capt. William A. Winder U.S.A., now stationed in California[,] be appointed Brigadier General of Volunteers and assigned to command in this territory.” Governor Goodwin wrote that he is “intimately acquainted with Capt. Winder and know[s] him to be thoroughly loyal, when considerations of birth and position have influenced every other member of his family to the other side, and I believe that such devotion to his country and flag, as he has exhibited, should be recognized by you.”1
Of course Abraham Lincoln, the recipient of this letter, more than likely knew a great deal about various members of the Winder clan.
“Of his qualifications for the position there can be no question,” Goodwin wrote. “His services in the field are the best evidence. He has been for a long time stationed in this territory and is well acquainted with the different Indian tribes [of] their country, and [illegible] of comfort. As Governor of this territory, and honoring in [illegible] its future advancement and best interests I would strongly urge this appointment. Every other state and territory has received [illegible] military appointments and been in some way recognized and I would most respectfully request . . . this appointment of a gallant and patriotic soldier.”2
*
While William A. perhaps entertained high hopes that Governor Goodwin’s bold proposal would propel him to the rank of general, as post commander at Alcatraz, he must contend with a matter that on the surface, while tragic but not uncommon, has occurred on a windy afternoon a few yards offshore. On March 1 Horace Dearborn, a recently enlisted private in William A.’s Company D, drowned in a boating accident. With him at the time was Dearborn’s close friend Pvt. Simon Kennedy, also in William A.’s company. This unfortunate incident will ultimately take on a life of its own as Private Kennedy descends into madness and within several months will see his commander, William A., empathetically and brilliantly act in a way he has never acted before. It will be without exaggeration his finest hour.
But until it is time for William A. to find this opportunity away from familiar suspicions, he of course remains in place at Alcatraz as his supporters mount passionate campaigns on his behalf. There are further petitions to Lincoln from California notables for a change of command. For a few months it seemed possible. Sworn statements and endorsements of Winder’s unwavering fealty to the Union echo through the correspondences as requests—impassioned pleas—are made to Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton. Here was a chance, a real chance at both a promotion and a final cementing of Winder’s loyalty. But do not think he will find succor, even in promotion, even with letters like this:
April 12, 1864
To the President,
The name of Captain W. A. Winder having been presented to you by Governor Goodwin and others, with a strong recommendation that he be appointed Brigadier General of volunteers and stationed in Arizona Territory, we desire respectfully to add our emphatic endorsements of that recommendation and in a like spirit to urge the requested appointment. Captain Winder to our personal knowledge has at all times since the commencement of the present rebellion stood staunch and true in his loyalty to the government, alone among all his kith and kin, proved by pure motive of patriotism, valuing that as the highest and most sacred impulse of the human heart, in the [illegible] of an American citizen to his country and his flag. So far as his soldierly qualifications are concerned, his past record as an officer of the United States Army need only to be referred to satisfy the departments in that point. We believe him loyal, honest, capable and true, well fitted by past experience for service in Arizona and hence we join Governor Goodwin and others in recommending him for the appointment which it has been asked, may be bestowed upon him.
Very respectfully,
Delos Lake, Ogden Hoffman [Judge], Port Surveyor John T. McLean, U.S. Attorney, William H. Sharpe, and others3
Apparently Lincoln saw the letter and knew just who William A. was, but he unfortunately passed it to Stanton on July 7, 1864. Too late, it seemed. What was the delay? Was this promotion, this change of venue, ever considered or was it quashed by the secretary of war, who would not ever trust him?
His father-in-law certainly trusted him and showed his trust in the middle of a family tragedy.
On February 24 Ichabod Goodwin’s beloved daughter Georgette “Georgie” Cumming Goodwin Bradford died of consumption at the age of twenty-nine, leaving her husband, U.S. Navy lieutenant Joseph Bradford, and their two-year-old-son, Fielding, to mourn her. The little boy would be raised in the Goodwin mansion with the indispensable Abby at hand. In the midst of mourning Ichabod Goodwin was somewhat preoccupied with thoughts of Abby’s husband, William A., a man he admires for the stand he took against his blood relations and the pain inherent in that choice. Ichabod Goodwin thus writes to Lincoln, “My son-in-law Captain William Winder at service of the 3rd Artillery U.S.A now in command of Fort Alcatraces . . . has been recommended by his friends in California and Governor Goodwin of Arizona to be appointed a Brigadier General of Volunteers and assigned to the command of the territory of Arizona. . . . Captain Winder is desirous of the position.” Ichabod Goodwin adds that Winder is “among the most faithful, loyal, efficient and accomplished officers in the service. . . . I should [illegible] this appointment a personal favor.”4
Although a post in remote Arizona was far from the front, it would be a valuable promotion and a point of honor. But these testimonials that William A. is more than worthy and loyal are met with silence. There are no reasons given for the denial of these requests by very prominent people on behalf of a man who was so highly regarded. Absent any correspondence from his commanding officers about the much-desired Arizona post, the public record is silent.
As yet another disappointment besets him, William A. will in the coming months find a strange comfort in defending a soldier in his company, a murderer. Pvt. Simon Kennedy slaughters a fellow soldier, Pvt. James Fitzgerald, an act that will preoccupy William A.
While still at Alcatraz, Pvt. Simon Kennedy repeatedly asked William A. for protection from what he believed to be threats of hanging by some members of the company, whom he claimed held him responsible for Horace Dearborn’s drowning death at Alcatraz. Both men had enlisted with Company D of the Third Artillery a day apart in early February and more than likely had a relationship well before that, given the grief Private Kennedy expressed over and over at this loss. He also suffered from delusions, which worsened.
Even with the obviously mentally ill private being an object of William A.’s increasing concern, he faces yet another controversy for a seemingly heartfelt act of pride in the island fortress he has struggled to command with honor. In spite of his defenders and the past accusations of disloyalty being disproven, this new uproar made it seem that William A. might well prove a dangerous traitor, true to the name. He had made a sudden decision that would enrage the War Department.
On or about April 15, acting on his own initiative, Winder paid a visit to the opulent photography studio of William Herman Rulofson and Henry William Bradley on Montgomery Street in San Francisco and asked them to photograph Alcatraz and its fortifications. Apparently not suspecting the captain of treasonous intent—these were solid businessmen—but demanding far more money to do the job than Winder expected, Rulofson refused Winder’s initial request. Four hundred dollars “in government greenbacks for a photographic survey of Alcatraz” was not nearly enough to interest the men. Bradley and Rulofson wanted at least $1,500. Finally Winder suggested that “the company [Bradley & Rulofson] would make up the cost difference by selling sets of the photographs to the public.” Winder personally escorted one of the company’s photographers and his “brassbound view camera” around the highly fortified island, “eventually exposing two thousand negatives,” covering every battery, every cannon, the fortified Citadel, the guardhouse and prison, every gun, and the entire lay of the island.5
By July, with a catalog of the photos in distribution to the public at a price of $200 per set, all seemed in order. Then Mark Twain, a reporter for the San Francisco Daily Morning Call, went on a grand tour of the area’s fortifications with “General McDowell, accompanied by his staff and many military officers officials and civilians.” At “Alcatraces, under a thundering salute from the southern batteries,” they undertook a “general examination of the whole island and its defenses . . . then a partaking of the hospitalities of Captain Winder, Commandant of the Post.”6
In spite of the fact that large touring groups often saw every corner of the fortifications, the Alcatraz photographs he had ordered generated not just pride but also consternation and eventually serious trouble. Lt. George Elliot of the Corps of Engineers, who “oversaw the work crews who labored at modernizing and expanding the island’s defenses,” was not present when the photos were taken, but upon his return from Oregon he was pleased to see what Winder had done. He had moreover labored mightily to construct even more fortifications and update buildings on the island and “saw in the pictures an opportunity to document his most recent labors for his superiors in Washington.”7
Writing to Brig. Gen. Richard Delafield, army chief of engineers, on July 8, Lieutenant Elliot stated, “I have thought that you would be glad to obtain copies to illustrate the condition and the progress [of the works so that he might be paid for these improvements] and append a list, and include two specimen copies.” With the aim of trumpeting his accomplishments, he went on to describe the stereoscope photos in detail, even adding a list of “some other views [the batteries so named for notable officers like Halleck, McClellan, Rosecrans, etc.], which I would have suggested.”8
Elliot’s commanding officer, Delafield, was clearly agitated at this breach of security and telegraphed Elliot that such an act was prohibited: “You will immediately advise with Colonel De Russy to the end that they [the photographs] be instantly suppressed.”9
A flurry of commands and demands—anger and worry apparent—begins and continues.
By August 1 the army chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Henry Wager Halleck, had written to Major General McDowell, commander of the Department of the Pacific, who had supplanted Wright: “It is officially reported that photographic views of the interior and exterior of the batteries at Alcatraz Island have been taken by permission of Captain Winder, commanding, and that their publication has been sanctioned by Colonel De Russy.” Halleck adds that the “Secretary of War directs you to take measures to suppress such publication, and that you report to the Adjutant General whether or not Colonel De Russy and Captain Winder gave their sanction and permission as above stated.”10
Sanctions and permissions notwithstanding, on August 4 the San Francisco Bulletin sounded an alarm with the headline “Fort Alcatraz Taken!”
Some two months or more ago, Bradley & Rulofson, photographers, were employed by some person or persons supposed to have the proper authority, to take photographic views of Alcatraz. The views, it was understood, were wanted for the use of the Quartermaster’s Department. . . . Views were obtained from all points[;] every battery was mirrored in picture a well posted enemy would ask no further information concerning Alcatraz, if he proposed to take it, or to run past it. The work was quite completed except that of mounting the pictures, and it had already cost the photographers some fifteen hundred dollars. Indeed, a single set, consisting of the thirty views, had been delivered to Captain Winder or General Wright.11
And then, the San Francisco Bulletin reported, came disturbing news: “At four o’clock p.m., yesterday, General Mason with a squad of soldiers dropped in at Bradley & Rulofson’s gallery and producing orders from the War Department, demanded and received all the negatives, and all the copies of the pictures, and the names of all parties to whom any copies had been delivered.” And here was perhaps a partial vindication of William A.: “We understand that General McDowell has satisfied himself of the antecedents of the photographers, and that they did their work in good faith at the request of parties having authority to order it. But it is evidently concluded at Washington that either somebody had blundered, or on a sober second thought it was deemed perilous to publish so circumstantial an exhibit of the strength or weakness of one of our principal harbor defenses.”12
With this new storm hardly subsiding and with the War Department in an uproar over the blunder—bad judgment or yet again a potentially suspicious action on the part of William A. and others to allow the entire island to be photographed—the beleaguered William A. requested and was granted a transfer for himself and members of Company D to Point San Jose, a small battery perched at the tip of Fort Mason, a shout away from Alcatraz on a calm day. The site was formerly known as Black Point and often referred to as such, but in 1863 the Federal army commandeered the land, renaming it Point San Jose. Although William A. was furnished with a house overlooking the bay—with plenty of room for Abby and Willie—the post was not operating at the start of the war but was quickly garrisoned as further protection should another attempt at invasion by marauding Confederate privateers occur. In the “West Battery . . . there were six ten-inch Rodman cannons, and the East Battery had six 42 pound rifles.” Point San Jose was not as wind-whipped, it was on the mainland, and it was not far from the center of San Francisco. It also had a newly built “post headquarters, hospital and barracks, clustered around a rectangular parade ground.”13
Arriving at Point Jose on August 2, William A. assumed command of the post. Capt. Frederick Mears of the Ninth Infantry was already on scene. William A. must have known that beneath his feet once stood Porter Lodge, razed for the fort’s expansion. It had been the beloved home of abolitionist luminaries, including Gen. John C. Fremont and his brilliant wife, Jessie, the Reverend Thomas Starr King, and others. It was Union ground—and the scene of a murder that occurred two days after William A. arrived. He was at this time in the thick of the outrage over the photographs he’d authorized to be taken of the Alcatraz fortifications and had barely unpacked when he was thrust headlong into a drama that grabbed headlines. What followed and William A.’s role in the events are a testament to his fortitude and his humanity.
*
It is shortly before 1:00 a.m. on August 4 in the pitch-dark blackness of the Point San Jose guardhouse, where privates of the Third Artillery and the Ninth Infantry are temporarily confined for various infractions: drunkenness, dereliction of duty, and petty crimes. They are asleep, unaware that Pvt. Simon Kennedy is delusional and convinced that among the sleeping soldiers are those who wish to hang him as revenge for the drowning of his friend, Pvt. Horace Dearborn. Although the drowning was an accident, Kennedy is beset with guilt. He has blamed himself. As he had done before he left Alcatraz, he has again gone to William A., the new post commander at Point San Jose, for help. Kennedy tells William A. that some of the men in the company are intending to kill him and have been digging his grave.
Picture now the silent guardhouse crowded with sleeping soldiers. Private Kennedy is wakeful, however, roaming the room and repeatedly striking matches until he spots his first victim. From a hook on the wall he grabs a bayonet left carelessly within reach by a day guard and aims the weapon at the heart of Pvt. Michael Condon. He misses and stabs the soldier in the arm. Condon kicks him away and screams for help. The night guard is nowhere to be seen. Kennedy leaps on his next victim, Pvt. James Fitzgerald, his friend. A good friend.
Over and over Kennedy thrusts his bayonet into Fitzgerald until he falls, bleeding profusely, on the wooden planking. There are cries of “Murder!” Panic, scuffling, screaming, and utter mayhem ensue. Finally the guard approaches.
“When the door opened and the light [was] brought in Kennedy was beating Fitzgerald on the head with the socket of the bayonet,” Pvt. Timothy Moran later testified at the court-martial of Simon Kennedy for the murder of James Fitzgerald. The panicked soldiers had crowded the door of the guardhouse as Kennedy raced past them and fled into the night. Alone with the bloodied victim, whose head was bashed in and his body covered with stab wounds, Private Moran testified, “I felt Fitzgerald’s wrist and put my hand over his heart. When I took it away it was covered with blood. He was there dead.”14
Seizing on the lurid details and a chronology of events the next day was the San Francisco Morning Call’s Mark Twain. His article, headlined “Soldier Murdered by a Monomaniac: Escape and Subsequent Arrest of the Murderer,” breathlessly took his readers into a night that had all the elements of a penny dreadful: a madman racing from the crime scene, after which “Captain Winder turned out his whole force to pursue the killer Kennedy,” a “bloody towel, abandoned under the bank near the Bensley Water Works,” and Kennedy’s flight in civilian clothes to his former confessor, “Father Cotter at Vallejo Street,” who convinced him to put down his bayonet and surrender to the police.15
A bit calmer, but full of assorted facts, the Sacramento Daily Union relayed that “at an early hour this morning Chief Burke received a message from Captain Winder, commander at Black Point, informing him that one of his men, who was confined in the guard house with a number of others, had killed one of his companions, wounded another and made his escape.”16
A coroner’s inquest was held immediately. The Sacramento Daily Union later summarized the case: “Some months since a recruit named Simon Kennedy, aged 29, a seaman by profession was bathing at Alcatraz where he was stationed, with a boy attached to the garrison, when the boy was accidentally drowned.” The drowning “seemed to make a deep impression on the mind of Kennedy and from constantly brooding over the matter he became mentally deranged, complaining to Captain Winder and others that people were following him, threatening to hang him, and otherwise persecuting him.” William A. confined him to the guardhouse for his own protection “and watched, in hopes that his insanity might prove only temporary.” That was not to be. The mayhem in the guardhouse resulting in the slaughter of Fitzgerald ended any speculation that Kennedy would ever come to his senses.17
Before the court-martial began, Simon Kennedy begged from jail for William A. to be his defense counsel. Winder agreed, but not only did he have to study and prepare his defense brief, he still had to deal with the photograph scandal that might have resulted in his own imprisonment for having provided the enemy with critical information about Alcatraz. On August 5, the same day Mark Twain wrote about the murder, escape, and surrender of Kennedy, there is this:
Adjutant General U.S. Army [Lorenzo Thomas]
In compliance with the orders communicated by Major General Halleck by telegraph on the 2nd instant, I have to report having suppressed the publication of the photographic views of the batteries of Alcatraz Island. The provost marshal general has all the negatives and all the copies, except those Captain Elliot sent to the Engineer Department. Captain Winder reports, in answer to the inquiry directed to be made, that the pictures were taken in compliance with circular orders from the Quartermaster General, and that to save expense he gave permission to sell some of the detached views as [they] would be of no particular use in the hands of improper persons; that the proofs were all submitted to Colonel De Russy before this permission was given. Colonel De Russy reports that some small photographs of different parts of the works on Alcatraz Island were sent to him by Captain Winder, then commanding at Alcatraz, to know whether any objections could be made to printing them, and that on examination he said there was no impropriety in those he saw being printed.18
Although a later statement by Rulofson in a letter to Secretary Stanton concurred with Winder’s claim that he had official approval for the photographs and that “after we had undergone all this labor . . . and had received from individuals orders for between 4,000 and 5,000 dollars,” Rulofson’s demand for compensation in the amount of $2,500 was never paid. But as a token of his belief in Rulofson’s seeming innocence in the security breach, Brig. Gen. J. S. Mason, the assistant provost marshal general for California and Nevada, deemed him “a true and loyal citizen, who might be injured in the minds of parties not conversant with the facts in the case.”19
This confluence of events, dizzying and demanding, was occurring alongside the “Proceedings of a General Court Martial convened at Point San Jose by virtue of the following orders . . . on Friday, the 9th day of August.” Serving as court president was Lt. Col. Caleb Sibley, Ninth U.S. Infantry. Others named were officers from the Third and Ninth Artillery. Lt. George M. Wright, Third Artillery, was appointed judge advocate, and various witnesses from the guardhouse—men who had heard Simon Kennedy ranting and acting paranoid, as well as those who had seen the murder—along with doctors, surgeons, a police officer, and a priest were sworn to appear in the coming days.20
By August 20 Winder was in the courtroom as Kennedy’s defense counsel when Kennedy was arraigned on the following charges and specifications:
Charge 1st. Murder . . . that he did assault with a deadly weapon (a bayonet) Private James Fitzgerald of the same Company . . . and did inflict a number of wounds upon the body of the said James Fitzgerald which caused his death. All this at Point San Jose on or about the night of the 4th of August, 1864.
Charge 2nd. Assault with intent to kill. Specification . . . that Simon Kennedy did assault with a deadly weapon, intending to kill Private Michael Condon of the same Company and Regt and did inflict a severe wound upon the person of the said Condon, all this at Point San Jose . . . (Signed) William A. Winder Capt 3rd Arty.21
Through Winder, Simon Kennedy pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.
William A. began to question witnesses. Most if not all speak to Kennedy’s paranoid state before the crime, his belief that he must act in self-defense as the men were out to hang him; those called to bear witness to the attacks on both privates tell much the same story. Kennedy was not a known drinker and appeared to grow more and more obsessed with the death of his friend Horace Dearborn. They related that the guilt and trauma from what had occurred that day on the water left Kennedy in a state of perpetual grief leading to delusion, finally believing he would be blamed for the tragedy, for the death of Horace Dearborn.
The question before the court-martial was this: Was Kennedy insane at the time of the murder, acting on a mad impulse—his behavior both erratic and hysterical as he flailed and stabbed wildly in the darkness—or were the deeds premeditated, calculated, and done while he possessed his reason and faculties?
On August 26 Winder made his final impassioned defense of a man who’d come to him for help and protection as voices in his head drove him to kill. His defense brief is prescient and compassionate and defines the particulars of the nature of temporary insanity as the cause of the bloody rampage. The ultimate penalty is hanging. Winder must save Kennedy’s life and educate the court-martial participants in what he believes will be a grave injustice should they find him guilty of the charge of murder. In his own hand and read aloud to the court is this statement:
1st. Insanity is divided into two grades. 1st there is melancholy accompanied by delusion. In this case the party may be regular, his mind apparently bright, but yet there may be an insane delusion by which the mind is perverted.
2nd. Where a person is totally insane. In either case, if a party is insane at the time of the commission of the act, he is not held responsible; if he becomes insane after the commission of the act, but prior to trial—or if he becomes so after the judgment in each and all of the cases mentioned, he is relieved from the penalty because he is irresponsible, incapable of making defense, and it would be inhuman to punish a man who knows not the difference between right and wrong.22
William A. argued that “the punishment of crime is not intended to gratify revenge upon the offender, but to warn others from similar acts; therefore to punish a man for the commission of a crime while insane, is to perpetrate a great wrong upon human infirmity.”
He said that “the accused was laboring under some great mental excitement; this combined with the fact that he often applied for protection, under the apprehension of being hung by his comrades, clearly shows that his insanity” was caused by melancholy accompanied by delusion, “especially since the accused was a good and sober man, and always lived upon terms of friendship with the deceased. . . . His conduct must be attributed to delusion . . . in obedience to a blind impulse; madness is the result of certain pathological conditions of the brain. . . . To constitute murder, it must be shown that there was malice, there was premeditation. . . . It has been shown here . . . that the indispensible [sic] constituent of malice is wanting.” William A. goes on to say that “the accused was present when a favorite boy of the company was drowned to whom he was tenderly attached, that there was superinduced [sic] by that occurrence a melancholia which beyond all doubt is the source and cause of his insanity.”
He begs the court not to punish Kennedy with the scaffold and admonishes them to “save a human life.” And then comes this claim: “In the books relative to courts martial, a single authority cannot be cited where the plea of insanity has been made in a capital case, so far as I am informed this is the very first [case] that has been presented in the United States to a military court.” Again he pleads that “you give him the benefit of all the doubts,” and he calls upon the court to “commit him to the care of these institutions which human charity has dedicated to just such human frailty.” This brief, though much longer, resounds with a similar theme: save Kennedy from the death penalty and pity his afflicted state. “Let not man’s vengeance follow God’s visitation,” he concludes.
Judge Advocate George M. Wright for the prosecution opened his argument with a compliment to William A.: “The counsel for the defense has not overestimated the gravity and importance of this case.” With clear, blunt language he outlined the evidence against Private Kennedy. To wit: his victim died from the wounds he inflicted, and “the counsel for the defense has presented a plea of insanity.” Wright will “endeavor to show to the court from the evidence . . . that the prisoner has no valid excuse for his act.” This was the prosecution’s claim of apparent premeditation. He intended to show “reasonable doubt in the mind of the court of the insanity of the person, as the proof of committing the act ought to be to find a sane man guilty . . . whether the prisoner knew at the time right from wrong . . . according to Common Law, that if there is a partial degree of reason,” the prisoner should have been able to “restrain his passions which produced the crime . . . and distinguish the nature of his actions.” Since the offense is proved, “the judgment of the law must take place.” Reasonable doubt, “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” the judge advocate wrote, “must prevail.” Did the prisoner know at “the time right from wrong?” It was in fact a reasoned argument, one that might well stand. Wright concluded that the prisoner’s crime was premeditated, as was his escape.23
Pvt. Simon Kennedy was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, and found guilty of the second charge of assault with a deadly weapon. He was returned to Point San Jose to await final sentencing. It was not until November 22, 1864, that Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell rendered the final judgment that buttressed William A.’s defense and saved the life of Simon Kennedy. “The crime therefore, if any, could not be manslaughter of which the court finds him guilty, if any was committed it was that of murder,” McDowell wrote. “The proceedings, findings, and sentence of the Court are not approved . . . as there is abundant evidence to show that the acts were committed whilst the prisoner was insane: he will be held in confinement till he can be sent to the insane asylum.”24
William A.’s defense carried the day.
Kennedy remained a prisoner until February 14, 1865, when he was committed to the State Insane Asylum at Stockton, California. He joined a varied and pained population of men and women—common criminals, murderers, habitual and violent alcoholics—suffering from various forms of madness caused by “dementia, monomania, melancholy, suppression of menses (change of life), uncontrolled masturbation, or hallucinations.” Some stayed a week, while others remained for months or years, or died there. Simon Kennedy, of the “mania class” for which there was no treatment ordered, died at the asylum on July 27, 1868, of diarrhea.25
*
With the Kennedy court-martial behind him and apparent vindication in the photograph incident, William A. remained at Point San Jose. But as he did in younger, brighter times when gold and silver strikes were just over the hill, in a stream or under a bridge, he resumed his side business: mining. At first it was copper mining in Baja California, notably at La Paz, “the principal port and territorial capital of Baja, California,” which drew thousands of Anglos. Winder’s mining ventures, labors, and hopes will consume him as he is turning away from his military career, away from lost honor.26
Absent any glory, in large part defended by his superiors, but surely wearied and worn by his years of struggle, William A. again looks to his mines, his investments. He looks away. He must do something. From the spring of 1864 onward he has again formed an association with Ephraim W. Morse, the Yankee pioneer Winder knew from his mission years in San Diego. An upright, solid man known for his honesty and fairness, Morse had fled the New England cold and come to San Diego in 1850 with a head full of gold dreams, and he did well in the warm, dry air of California, especially that of San Diego. With Winder’s full-throated pledges of big strikes and big dollars, a match was made. Morse supplied all manner of foodstuffs and equipment from San Diego to the mines through the prominent San Francisco firm of Breed & Chase, owned by brothers Daniel N. Breed and D. C. Breed along with Morse’s cousin Andrew J. Chase. The firm of “Jobbers and Wholesale dealers in Groceries, Provisions and Case Goods” suffered and succeeded with the vicissitudes of the various mining enterprises they supplied.27
Winder and Morse formed a company that would work with the Mexican “owner [of] the mine near La Paz,” in Baja, thus allying with men who were already in place but without usurping their sovereignty and yet making sure a legally binding contract was signed. It was an uneasy and often contentious mix of ham-fisted miners, assayers, lode haulers, squatters, and absentee owners like Winder who tried hard to make sure there were fair deals made.28
Because William A. is still at Point San Jose and must not rely on speculators, short of going to the mines himself he has no choice but to send an expert assayer, a Professor Blake, “a gentleman of high standing in New York,” to either sell or “carry the work through surely to our profit and satisfaction.” Although he must have assurances that “the facilities can be granted . . . money is in abundance and will be in my hands,” Winder promises. Eventually Winder and Morse will own shares in at least four copper mines in Baja—the San Antonio, Santa Rosa, El Venado, and Delphina. The mines were not without risk as investments, and ultimately they offered no immense returns, but they became an impending burden for Winder as he tries to redeem himself in his own eyes, in Abby’s, Willie’s, and Ichabod’s eyes, and in his commander’s eyes, against all odds.29
*
In early December there finally came both a condemnation and a defense of Winder: a final and peculiar effort to both beat and bless him for his actions in allowing Alcatraz to be photographed. If he saw any of these communications, and there is no guarantee that he did, was he at best comforted? Or was it too late?
Headquarters Department of the Pacific
San Francisco, December 3, 1864
Maj. Gen. H. W. Halleck,
Chief of Staff, Washington City, D.C.:
General: I have the honor to report as follows in compliance with your instructions of August 11 in the matter of the conduct of Capt. William A. Winder, Third Artillery, in allowing photographs to be made on Alcatraz Island “for sale of batteries showing their exact condition, number of guns &etc.”30
Here came a pronounced criticism. Here came the condemnation: “I do not think Captain Winder was authorized under the circular of the Quartermaster-General you sent me to make or suffer others to make for sale photographs of batteries. Batteries do not belong to the Quartermaster-General’s Department, but it could not reasonably be inferred that the Quartermaster-General was interfering with affairs so well known to be under the charge of another branch of the service. So far as that circular is concerned, it clearly gave Captain Winder no authority.”
And here came this: “As to the motives which actuated Captain Winder I do not believe them to have been in any degree whatever of the character imputed to him. He is an officer of intelligence and would not, if he intended to be disloyal[,] have acted so openly and undisguisedly as he did.”
What of Winder’s motive? He saw it as one
of pride and interest in his important command and a desire to have himself and the community have pictures of the place. He referred them to the engineer in charge of the work, Captain Elliot, and to Colonel DeRussy, senior engineer officer in the harbor. They found nothing objectionable in his having them taken and made public. I quite agree with them. I see nothing in any of them that I have seen that would be of any comfort to an enemy. . . . I take the occasion to say I do not question the loyalty of Captain Winder.
And this: “I have relieved him from the command of Alcatraz and stationed him at Point San Jose at his own request. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Irvin McDowell, Major General Commanding Department.”
Here again is an endorsement of William A.’s loyalty, and though he would gladly escape his watery fortress and finally and forever redeem the family name as a Union defender, it is too late. Over William A.’s trying and painful summer, into the fall, and on to a piercing winter, a tragedy of immense proportions has been unfolding deep in Georgia that will finally and forever associate the Winder name with unspeakable suffering and death. The site of infamy is a camp for Union captives known as Andersonville, a place Robert Scott Davis has called “the world’s first modern concentration camp and the Civil War’s most notorious prison facility.”31
If what happened there over fourteen months was planned starvation, a deliberate attempt at genocide, a medical laboratory used to study the effects of deadly diseases, or, in a less punitive scenario, simply the lack of food for Confederate troops, never mind the prisoners of war, or the fault of a stew of Confederate government officials at Richmond unwilling or unable to help ease the horrific conditions, the ultimate responsibility for more than thirty thousand Union POWs rested in the aging hands of William A.’s father, Brig. Gen. John H. Winder.