John Yates Beall

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/beall_john_y_1835-1865#start_e...

On April 18, 1861, the Botts Greys became Company G of the 2nd Virginia Infantry, one of the five regiments that soon comprised Confederate general Thomas J. Jackson's famed Stonewall Brigade. On October 16, while detailed to take a sick soldier to Jefferson County, Beall learned that Lieutenant Colonel Turner Ashby's troops were under attack at nearby Bolivar Heights. Beall joined Ashby and, despite his low rank, led an impromptu charge in the course of which he suffered a severe chest wound. During his long recuperation from this injury, which never fully healed, he visited a Louisiana plantation and met Martha O'Bryan, a Nashville schoolteacher to whom he became secretly engaged. ___________

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yates_Beall

John Yates Beall (January 1, 1835 – February 24, 1865) was a Confederate privateer in the American Civil War who was arrested as a spy in New York and executed at Fort Columbus, Governors Island, New York.

Early Life

He was born in Jefferson County, Virginia, now West Virginia, on his father's farm, Walnut Grove. He attended the University of Virginia to study law but on the death of his father he left his studies to take up farming in 1855.

Civil War

At the start of the war, he joined Bott's Grays, Company G, in the 2nd Virginia Infantry. He received a wound in the lungs which left him incapable of active service.

Inspired by John Hunt Morgan, he conceived a plan to launch privateers on the Great Lakes. He presented his plan to Confederate authorities, who were interested, but declined to act since it might endanger relations with neutral England. However, Beall was commissioned as acting master in the Confederate States Navy, though not given a command. He then proceeded on his own as a privateer, active in the areas of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. He assembled a crew of 18 men, and commanded two boats called The Raven and The Swan. His second in command was a 22-year-old Scotsman named Bennett G. Burley. Beall was captured in November, 1863, and was jailed at Fort McHenry, in Baltimore until he was exchanged on May 5, 1864.

After being exchanged on May 5, 1864, Beall found approval to continue his partisan activities slow to come and went to Canada to look for other opportunities to strike the enemy. The commander of Confederate secret operations in Canada, Jacob Thompson, recruited Beall to form a force of refugees and escaped Confederate prisoners who were in Canada to disrupt Northern trade on Lake Erie. Specifically, Beall was to free Confederate prisoners of war being held on Johnson's Island, off Sandusky in Lake Erie, as well as those at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio. If successful, the enterprise was supposed to result in the establishment of a Confederate Department of the Army on Lake Erie.

The Philo Parsons

On his release, he returned to the north shore of Lake Erie, to Canada West, part of the Province of Canada, in order to implement a plan to free Confederate prisoners on Johnson's Island. On September 18, 1864, a small group of volunteers embarked from Sandwich and Amherstburg, Canada West, and, with Beall, captured the ship Philo Parsons off Kelley's Island, and then the Island Queen, which was scuttled. The plan included capturing the U.S. gunboat Michigan. However, at this point the crew refused to proceed further without outside assistance. Beall reluctantly agreed, and together they sailed back to Sandwich (the former name of and now a neighborhood of Windsor, Ontario), where they scuttled the Philo Parsons and separated, all escaping arrest except for Bennett G. Burley, whose extradition was demanded by U.S. authorities.

Beall then decided to free some captured Confederate officers by derailing a passenger train, but he and a companion, George S. Anderson, were arrested in Niagara, New York, on December 16, 1864. They were imprisoned at Fort Lafayette, New York. Anderson agreed to testify against Beall in return for leniency.

General John Adams Dix ordered a military commission for Beall's trial, which began on January 17, 1865. He was represented by James T. Brady. The arrest of Beall had not been published in any newspaper, and Confederate authorities were unaware of his status. On February 8, the commission found him guilty on all charges and sentenced him to death. Beall was then transported to and held at Fort Columbus on Governors Island in New York Harbor to await his execution.

The story of Beall's arrest and trial then appeared in the newspapers, and efforts were made to save him. Appeals were made to the President by many prominent people, including six U.S. Senators and ninety-one members of Congress,[3] but Lincoln refused to intervene, not wanting to undermine Dix's authority,[4] and Beall was executed on February 24, 1865.

There is a legend discussed by Lloyd Lewis that Lincoln was approached by John Wilkes Booth, who was a friend of Beall's, to save his life, and that the President agreed to do so. But Lincoln changed his mind (the legend goes) when he was approached by his friend and Secretary of State William Henry Seward, who insisted that Beall's activities had been dangerous to the citizens of New York State (Seward's state). Supposedly a furious Booth determined to kill Lincoln and Seward for this betrayal after Beall was executed.