The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling DetailsAyer, I. Winslow
History
The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details
Ayer, I. Winslow
Knights of the Golden Circle; Northwestern Conspiracy, 1864
A citizen of Chicago, he was at one time the Democratic candidate for
Sheriff of Cook County, in which is the city of Chicago, during the
earliest part of the war he was very active in helping to raise what
was called the Irish brigade. He afterwards became a bitter democratic
partizan and was connected with the Sons of Liberty. Just before and
during the Convention be received into his family several rebel soldiers
who were there during the day and night time, making cartridges for the
expected release of the rebel prisoners of war at Camp Douglas. He was
arrested in his own house on the morning of the 7th of November, as was
also his son, and two Rebel soldiers and taken to Camp Douglas. In his
house and on his premises were an immense numbers of guns of several
kinds and also immense military stores, consisting of powder, buckshot,
cartridges, with two or three cast braces of army revolvers, all these
guns and pistols were loaded and ready with the exception of being
capped. Charles Walsh is of Irish extraction and about forty years of
age, and a fine looking man. He is generous, impulsive, rather easily
influenced, agreeable in conversation, and except in the character he
assumed as an enemy to his country was possessed of qualities which
would win for him many friends. There are as bad men, in our opinion, as
Mr. Charles Walsh, to day at liberty and talking treason in our midst.]
Of the remainder of the officers of the Michigan, they thought their
well-known Democratic faith and sympathy with the rebellion, would
prevent them from seeing or knowing _too much_, until too late to avoid
the disaster. Of these last, the conspirators did not seem to entertain
the least fear, some of them being Southern men by birth, and at most,
but passive in their fidelity to the government. The men of the vessel
who were loyal, were also tampered with, and the rebels in Canada looked
for assistance from them, and claimed that some of their own men from
Canada had enlisted on board of her for the purpose of aiding to capture
her. Of these rebels, however, there were but few. As the writer
has stated before, the attempt on the steamer Michigan was to be
simultaneous with that at Chicago, Ill., and while the rebels and their
friends were assembling in Chicago, they were also gathering in Sandusky
City, for the capture of the Michigan. The exact number of conspirators
in Sandusky, at that time, is not known to the writer, nor the details
of their plans; but let it suffice to say, _that they were there, armed
and ready_. When the time of action arrived, however, the engineer and
his accomplices were no where to be found, and after waiting for nearly
two days, the rebel portion of the conspirators, with the exception of
Capt. Beall, returned to Canada. On their return, they said that the
persons whom they had bribed were afraid to toe the mark--that is, were
afraid to carry out their infamous and hazardous part of the contract.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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