Lewis Powell returned to Mosby’s Confederacy after escorting Richard Blazer and the other Scout prisoners to Richmond. “Leaving Richmond, Powell returned to the Piedmont a changed man. He often spoke of his visit to Richmond and his intention. Powell soon began to sell off his horses and dispose of his effects, saying that he would be gone on his Maryland expedition,” wrote Lewis Edmonds Payne, describing Powell’s demeanor when he returned late in the fall of 1864. Only a teen during the war, the young man lived with Powell, who boarded in the Payne family home near Warrenton.* Payne recalled that when the topic of politics came up, especially Lincoln, Powell would rant about Secretary of State William Seward: “Seward is the man; he furnishes the brains. He’s the power behind the throne itself.”1
Powell stayed out of harm’s way. After returning from Richmond, he “never went on any raid, but was continually talking about a visit or raid into Maryland, and he and other soldiers would go off to the stables or woods and have long talks and seem to be particularly anxious that no one should know what they were talking about,” recalled Payne.2 Powell’s behavior stemmed from his service and upcoming mission with the Confederate Secret Service, which he met with in Richmond after delivering Blazer.3 Powell’s friends and fellow Rangers, Captain R. S. Walker and Lieutenant W. Ben Palmer, describe the night in January 1865 that Powell embarked on his mission and left Mosby’s Confederacy: “[We] found the young man dressed in a badly fitting suit of citizen’s clothes and with a black slouch hat pulled down over his eyes. He was in high spirits and talked of plans.” The Ranger officers said Powell talked about his mission. “He said that they intended to kidnap Lincoln and bring him South. No mention was made of killing anyone.”4 If junior officers knew Powell’s mission, seemingly an open secret, Mosby undoubtedly would have been aware of it.
Clearly, Powell had more extensive plans in Maryland and a rendezvous through the Secret Service with John Wilkes Booth. As one of Mosby’s best Rangers, Powell would be the trained soldier on the Secret Service’s action team to capture the president. Yet, before leaving Mosby’s Confederacy, in one incident, the fearless Powell went out of his way to save Union lives rather than take them.
Around Christmas, several Union soldiers were captured near Warrenton, Virginia, after looting and sacking a local’s home. The civilians seethed, killed one man, and wanted to execute the remaining men. Powell jumped on his horse and rode into the violent scene. One local woman witnessed Powell in action: “I saw him in his saddle-stirrups; and he told them that whilst he was a gentleman, and wished to be treated as one, though he could not defend all, if they killed or captured the one, he had in his charge, they would do it at the peril of their lives.”5 The mob dispersed.
A couple of weeks later, Powell would leave Mosby’s Rangers for a mission that would change history. The tale most modern authors would recount is that Powell deserted Mosby’s Rangers, simply walking away from them to become a civilian, and coincidentally met Booth in Baltimore. The explanation is preposterous. Very few men in Mosby’s command left the war and returned to life as civilians. The tiny number who did turned coat and fought for the Union; they did not join an operation that would prove to be one of the most perilous of the war.
On January 13, 1865, Powell walked into Union lines in his disheveled civilian clothes, told what had to be a whale of a story to Union soldiers—that he was a refugee fleeing the South—took the Oath of Allegiance to the Union, and proceeded to Baltimore and his Secret Service handlers as Lewis Payne.
* Powell would steal Payne’s identity and use it as his own for his mission. Payne later became a US attorney.