Lawyer and former Union soldier Richard Montgomery is commissioned to infiltrate a clandestine Confederate operation in Canada in 1864 during the U.S. Civil War. On numerous forays across enemy lines as a courier for former Alabama senator Clement C. Clay, one of the leaders of the Rebel conspiracy, Montgomery relays the word to his Yankee superiors regarding several diabolical Confederate campaigns in Union territory. These include a nefarious attempt to burn down much of New York City, guerrilla raids into New England, and ultimately the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the last involving early planning in Montreal with Confederate conspirators such as John Wilkes Booth.
Posing as a Southern sympathizer named James Thomson in St. Catharines, Canada West, a hotbed of Rebel intrigue, Montgomery reunites with childhood friend Aaron Young, a once enslaved man who escaped the plantation of Montgomery’s father and becomes an ally in the secret Union mission. To complicate his life further, Montgomery meets a Southern woman living in St. Catharines and falls in love.
Along the way, he also encounters famed Montreal photographer William Notman, as well as various spies and secret agents on both sides of the war in Toronto, Niagara Falls, Montreal, and Halifax, eventually crossing paths with Lincoln’s future assassin.
Inhoudsopgave
A New Town, a New Identity
Colonel Stephenson
Fomentation
‘Military Necessity’
The Meeting
First Dispatch to Washington City
Orchids
A Near Miss
Thompson Meets Thomson
Abetting a Conspiracy
Better Lucky Than Rich
Shopping with Wallace
Dinner with Wallace
Close Calls
Through Enemy Lines
Wallace’s
Fires from the North
The Eye of a Spy
Clay Resigns
The ‘Languishing’ Prisoners
I Meet Another Union Agent
Washington Is Aroused
‘You Will Be Taken, Searched, and Jailed’
A Confusing Mark of Traits
Trapped
Wild Retribution
Aaron Young’s Message
Toronto, Canada West
The Trial of the Raiders
Tracing Wallace
Killing Not Murder
A Spring of Dread
A Trial Within a Trial
I Recognize One of the Prisoners
Secret Testimony Is Leaked
Undercover One Last Time
The Fateful Twenty Minutes Alone
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Over de auteur
Linda Bramble, Ph.D., is a writer and educator in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, a short distance from where Rebel Spies and Yankee Agents takes place. She has chronicled many local, national, and in this case, international stories of interest. Linda can be reached at [email protected].