Confederate Secret Service Operations
From his base in Great Britain, Bulloch was the financier of covert Confederate naval operations within the British Empire. This aspect of his intelligence operations has eluded the many analysts and historians who have studied the Canadian elements of the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. In late 1864, Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory ordered Bulloch to write a check drawn on “secret funds” to Patrick Martin, a Confederate blockade runner operating from Canada. These funds were intended to support the plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. Martin’s project later morphed into the successful assassination plot. Captain Martin and his ship were lost in a storm in December 1864, as he was en route to Maryland with supplies for John Wilkes Booth. When John Surratt, the last surviving member of the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, arrived in Liverpool in 1865, there is no evidence they made contact, but Bulloch had to maintain a very low profile.
Read more about this topic: James Dunwoody Bulloch
Famous quotes containing the words confederate, secret, service and/or operations:
“During the Civil War the area became a refuge for service- dodging Texans, and gangs of bushwhackers, as they were called, hid in its fastnesses. Conscript details of the Confederate Army hunted the fugitives and occasional skirmishes resulted.”
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks
Are at my service like enforced smiles,
And both are ready in their offices
At any time to grace my stratagems.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)