Critic's Corner

Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln

By Stephen Davis · Originally published September 2017 · p. 36

Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln Joan Wenner’s fine article, “Confederate Secret Service” in our June issue recommended for further reading Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (University Press of Mississippi, 1988). Her citation reminded me how much I enjoyed reading this book almost three decades ago, and reviewing it for The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. From the start I was impressed by the three authors’ credentials. William A. Tidwell and David Winfred Gaddy were career military intelligence officers. James O. Hall was a preeminent authority on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. All three scholars have since passed away.

Together they set out to argue in Come Retribution that Jefferson Davis and key Confederate Cabinet officers sanctioned a plot to kidnap Lincoln in the spring of 1865, and use him for leverage in negotiations with the U.S. government to end the war. The story of Rebels nabbing Lincoln is not new, complete with fictional trappings. No less than Joel Chandler Harris—yes, he of the “Uncle Remus” stories—wrote an adventure about how Confederates kidnapped the Northern president and sneaked him to Richmond as hostage. The Southerners were so moved by the Railsplitter’s magnanimity that they let him go. But back to history, and John Wilkes Booth. After the assassination, U.S. government officials knew that Booth and his co-conspirators had planned to kidnap, not kill Lincoln. William Hanchett, in his The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (1983), counted at least three Confederate abduction plots. Hanchett stopped short of implicating Jefferson Davis in them. …which is what Tidwell, Hall and Gaddy attempt to demonstrate. “There is no documentary evidence that directly proves Confederate involvement,” they acknowledge, but add that “circumstantial evidence, however, abounds.” As an example, John Surratt met with Secretary of State Judah Benjamin in late Jan. 1865, leading the authors to conjecture, “Benjamin may have been President Davis’ chief assistant in overseeing the Lincoln

Stephen Davis Cumming, Ga.

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Confederate leaders plotted to have Lincoln kidnapped.” Now, several decades later, present-day conspiracy theories about foreign meddling in U.S. presidential politics, sanctioned at the highest levels, make Tidwell’s, Hall’s and Gaddy’s work of speculative scholarship seem less fanciful than ever. Steve Davis of Atlanta is a regular contributor to Civil War News and is the Book Review Editor. His book, A Long and Bloody Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5-July 18, 1864, was published as part of Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War paperback series. The companion volume, All The Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign From Peachtree Creek To The City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864, has just been published this Spring.