Confederates Raid St. Albans, Vermont (Article 11)

Throughout the Civil War there were Confederate operatives based in Canada. Some were on diplomatic missions to observe Canadian and British neutrality, while others were merchants who brought Southern cotton, rice and tobacco into Canada for sale or barter to return funds to the Southern states.

But there were also Confederate military forces based in Canada which, despite that nation’s neutral position, conducted raids into the northern most parts of the United States. Confederate Captain John Yates Beall led a group that harassed docks on Lake Michigan, damaged rail tracks, and even planned, but failed to initiate, an attack to free Confederate prisoners of war held in Ohio. Captain Beall was captured in the United States and charged by the regional military commander as a spy, rather than held as a prisoner of war; and he was sentenced to death by a military court. President Lincoln was asked by numerous northern politicians and citizens, who knew Beall’s family before the War, to commute the sentence but he refused to intercede. Later, Lincoln said, “It was a lack of decision I now regret because the boy was surely a soldier.”

However, the most audacious raid by Confederate soldiers, and the one farther north in the United States than any other, was at St. Albans, Vermont on October 19, 1864.

Lieutenant Bennett Young, a Confederate officer stationed in Canada, had proposed to his superiors in the South that his unit of about twenty men conduct various raids in Maine, Vermont, and New York, but had not received permission to enter the United States. The Southern leaders were concerned that Canada, and the rest of the British Empire, would consider such forays as a breach of their neutrality.

By 1864, however, the Confederate government’s financial situation was grim with their currency devalued to near zero and no new opportunities to raise money from other countries. Further, they desperately needed a successful military action which might demoralize northern citizens, energize their own people, and distract Union forces which were pushing deep into the South. So, they gave Lt. Young permission to raid into the U.S. from his base in Canada.

The military action he chose was never anticipated by any Union officials, authorities in the state of Vermont, and certainly not by the people of small towns in upstate Vermont; and probably not even by his superiors down in Richmond. He decided to rob banks!

His target was the town of St. Albans, Vermont, about 15 miles from the Canadian border, which was a central commercial hub for the area and boasted three banks. Also, the Governor of Vermont had a residence there and Lt. Young planned to burn that house and other buildings in the town, as retaliation for similar acts by Union troops in the South.

Lt. Young sent several men into town to scout the banks, any police or military presence, and find the best escape route back into Canada. They checked into two hotels in town and some passed themselves off as Canadian businessmen looking for opportunities, while others claimed to be part of a group planning a hunting trip. On October 19th, the rest of Lt. Young’s men, dressed in civilian clothes, rode into town and joined the group already there waiting on horseback. The combined force began riding through town firing their weapons and rounding up citizens who were on the streets or in nearby buildings, and herded the crowd into the town’s central park. The raiders told their captives that they were only a part of a larger force of 100 Confederate soldiers who were there to take over the town; not a true number, but certainly effective crowd control, at least for a while. Selected soldiers in three teams then charged into the three banks at the same time, overwhelming the small staffs and a few customers. In later testimony, one soldier said that they did not expect much resistance, and had no intention of hurting anyone; however, they were heavily armed and had additional men stationed on the outskirts of town to fend off any pursuit by citizens or authorities.

The first few minutes of the robberies went as planned and all three units emerged from the individual banks and onto the streets at about the same time, with their bags full of cash; a surprising amount of over $200,000! (Adjusted for inflation, the haul was worth over $5 million).

But then, Captain George Conger, a Union officer on leave, broke free from the containment at the park and ran through several buildings to an area not controlled by the soldiers. He rounded up a few men and they all quickly found arms and began firing at the Confederates. In the exchange of gunfire, one citizen was mortally wounded and died three days later, while one Confederate soldier also died a few days later of wounds. As they hastily retreated from St. Albans, Lt. Young’s men, on orders to burn the town, threw incendiary devises into several buildings,  but they failed to ignite and the raiders never even made it to the Governor’s house.

The Confederate force returned into Canada where all were eventually captured by Canadian authorities and most of the money was confiscated as evidence. But, using a defense that theirs was a military mission, carried out only in the United States, the Canadian prosecutors and courts determined that no crime had been committed in their territory. When Secretary of State William Seward demanded that the soldiers be extradited to the United States, Canadian courts again blocked the move. Some politicians and other leaders in the U.S. recommended that Union soldiers be sent into Canada to capture and return the Confederates; however, President Lincoln would not allow any such action across the border. In the long term, Lincoln’s careful response was appreciated by the British who made it clear to the Confederate government that further “expeditions” from Canadian territory would be considered a “belligerent act” upon the British Empire. In 1865, Canada returned some of the stolen funds, but, in the year since the raid, much of the money had just mysteriously disappeared.

In 1911, when he was seventy one, the former Lt. Young returned to Canada and a contingent of St. Albans citizens met with him in Montreal. He told the group that despite the controversy his raid caused in Canada, he appreciated that a few sympathetic Canadians had helped him get some of the money to Richmond. And, he said, that while he regretted the loss of life, it was a wartime raid and he considered his mission a success.

On October 19, 2014, St. Albans commemorated the 150th anniversary of “The northernmost military action by Confederate forces.”

One resident noted that, this time, although there were several “Southerners” in town again, the only shots were taken by photographers and bar patrons.

Contact the author at gadorris2@gmail.com