10-27-1864 Booth deposited $455 in Montreal branch of Ontario Bank; 11-16-1864 Booth deposited $1500 in Jay Cooke and Co. Bank at Washington https://books.google.com/books?id=BN1uBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=jay+cooke+wilkes+booth+check&source=bl&ots=yHaDVoViQ3&sig=SWP13kKdFXLhsiy78EUeP_32Mw4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAmoVChMI0e3M3KKWyQIVQfZjCh2fpg63#v=onepage&q=jay%20cooke%20wilkes%20booth%20check&f=false
Neff also found a letter dated November 4, 1864 with the "178 1/2 Water
Street" signed by a Thomas Caldwell, who was an agent for J.J. Chaffey & Co. This letter was addressed to John Wilkes Booth and included four payments to the actor from August 24 to October 5, 1864 totaling $14,548.40. The money was credited to the Bank of Montreal and payed in gold.... What makes these transactions interesting, says author Hall, is that Booth made these deposits in Cooke's bank just after he made a covert trip to Montreal. Booth arrived in Canada on October 18, 1864 and checked into the St. Lawrence Hall hotel where other members of the Confederate Secret Service were staying.Neff came across a magazine called Coburn's United Service
Magazine, Series 11, 1864. In the periodical Neff came across two coded
messages written by Lafayette Baker concerning his participation in the events of April 1865. The coded messages detailed the following information; Stanton was one of the prime movers in the assassination plot....part of the coded message reads as follows, "There were at least eleven members of Congress involved in the plot, no less than twelve army officers, of which one was a governor of a loyal state. Five were bankers of great repute, three were nationally known newspaper men and eleven were industrialists of great repute and wealth....Eighty-five thousand dollars was contributed by the named persons to pay for the deed. Only eight persons knew the details of the plot and the identity of the others. I fear for my life. LCB." Neff found a copy of Baker's will and in it he found that at the time of his death he had a fortune of over $200,000, more money than he could have ever saved from his government salary.3-17-1865 Booth was visited in his Washington hotel room by Colonel Lafayette Baker, head of the National Detective Police (NDP). Booth may have been understandably panicky that the formal head of the Union's secret service was paying him a visit. It may have been that he was fearful that his attempts at kidnapping the President had been found out. However Baker's mission that day was to deliver three sealed envelopes from (respectively) Jefferson Davis [President of the Confederacy!], Judah Benjamin, and Clement Clay. One of the messages that Booth received directed him to pay Baker a sum of money.After Baker had received the money from Booth and had left, Booth was probably astonished. He immediately sent a note by special courier to Confederate agent Judah Benjamin in Richmond. He then went to the office of Radical Republican, Senator John Conness.
Conness had been connected with NDP head Baker as a member of a
vigilante group in California during the 1850's. He calmed
Booth's fears and assured him that Baker could be trusted.
Not long after this meeting with Senator Conness, Booth received
a reply to his message to Judah Benjamin in Richmond. It said
that Baker was to be trusted. -Balsiger & Sellier: Lincoln Conspiracy, part 7http://www.fnord.org/occult/high-weirdness/lincoln
................................................. Instead of turning in confiscated contraband to the military
commissary, Baker began using the Chaffey Company to sell it
to interested buyers. This was especially true for cotton which
had risen from 10 cents/pound to $1.00/pound. "A single bale was
now worth more than $1,000, and a seized shipment of several
bales could be quietly sold for a tidy sum. At the rate Baker was
making deposits, his account would hit $150,000 by the end of the
year."While in Montreal, Booth was recruited by Confederate agents Clay and Thompson to organize the kidnapping of Abraham Lincoln. John H. Surratt, Jr. was suggested to Booth as a good man to help in his organizing efforts. When Booth returned to Washington, "$12,499.28 had been transferred from the Bank of Montreal to Booth's account at the Chaffey Company in New York. This was, to the penny, what Daniel Watson, a Tennessee cotton speculator, had deposited in the Bank of Montreal on July 4 for some unknown reason.""Booth wrote in his diary, 'I am to find and send North 15 men whom I trust. The messenger brings me $20,000 in gold to recruit them. I'm to start at once.'" It is somewhat suspicious that "the messenger who brought the gold was connected with the Union's Judge Advocate General's Office." In addition to the kidnap plot that Booth was involved with, "another highly secret plot was developing inside the government in Washington... A hint of the Northern plot was turned up by NDP operatives." Members of Lincoln's own party, including Radical Republicans were plotting to "have him kidnapped and kept out of sight until fake charges... [were] arranged to impeach him." https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/lincoln$20conspiracy$20part$204/alt.conspiracy/dBpvIcU_PqM/VF5hNJTtxBoJ.....................................................In the fall of 1864 Booth made a trip to Richmond where he met with one Judah Benjamin, a British lawyer, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. "Out of this meeting came detailed instructions for Booth. An order for $70,000, 'drawn on a friendly bank,' was also handed the actor."...After the 1864 election, Booth met with banker-financier Jay Cooke at the Astor House in New York. Cooke's brother Henry was also in attendance and spoke highly of the aforementioned Judah Benjamin. This was a curious circumstance in that Mr. Benjamin was one of the top men in the Confederacy whereas Cooke was one of the bankers financing the Union side in the war. Also in attendance at the meeting were "Thurlow Weed, Samuel Noble, a New York Cotton broker, and Radical Republican Zachariah Chandler, Michigan senator." "In his diary Booth later recorded, 'Each and every one asserted that he had dealings with the Confederate States and would continue to whenever possible.'" According to the authors, the link between most or all of these groups was economic. Due to the Union blockade of the Confederacy, the South, northern speculators, and the British were all suffering. Because the South could not export its cotton, mills in Britain and France were shutting down. The blockade also cut off Northern moneymen from lucrative investments in the cotton trade. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/lincoln$20conspiracy$20part$205/alt.conspiracy/W-T0--a01LE/NSEMyvQ-Q30J.....................................................................According to the recently recovered Booth diary pages, while in Montreal near the end of 1864 Booth saw National Detective Police (NDP) head Lafayette Baker in the company of Confederate agent Nathaniel Beverly Tucker. Later that day Booth met with Tucker and Canadian Confederate secret service chief Jacob Thompson. Booth delivered coded messages to each of them and Thompson gave Booth a satchel containing $50,000 in bank notes. He was to deliver $20,000 of this money to Senator Benjamin Wade, co-author of the previously mentioned Wade-Davis Bill. Thus if the missing Booth diary pages are to be believed, we have evident collusion between Radical Republicans and the Confederate secret service. Furthermore some connection between the head of the Union's NDP and the southern secret service seems likely. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/lincoln$20conspiracy$20part$206/alt.conspiracy/qjGHwHA39aw/CYYU7e-B48wJ.............................................................Spies, Traitors and Moles - An Espionage & Intelligence Quiz Book
Peter Kross 1998
All Rights Reserved
IllumiNet Press
P.O. Box 2808
Lilburn, Georgia 30048
excerpt:
In the vocabulary of the spy trade Lafayette Baker was a "walk in." In July 1861 Baker offered his services as a spy to General Winfield Scott who immediately sent him on a spy mission to Richmond, where he was arrested and
sent packing back north. On his second mission, Baker, posing as "Sam Munson," was arrested in Manassas, Virginia, and personally questioned by President
Jefferson Davis. He managed to convince the Confederates of his bona fides and was given a pass to travel through the southern lines, where he spied on enemy
fortifications.
Baker's exploits attracted the attention of Secretary of State Seward, who hired him to break up Confederate communication's lines in Maryland. Baker's employment was transferred to the War Department where he started the "National Detective Police." Working with a small force, his job was to hunt
down Confederate spies in Washington, New York, and Canada, where the Confederates had secret spy networks.
After the war ended, Baker lost his job with the War Department when President Andrew Johnson became aware that he was spying on the White House. One of Baker's informants was placed in the White House to spy on President Johnson
in connection with an investigation of "pardon brokers" operating out of the executive mansion. After the war ended, Baker returned to his Philadelphia
home. It was during this time that he wrote a book on his role in the war called History of the United States Secret Service.
In the wake of the assassination of President Lincoln, some people suspected Baker of being a participant in the conspiracy lead by John Wilkes Booth tomurder the president. That allegation has yet to be proven.
p. 35
As described earlier in this work, Lafayette Baker, the head of the Union National Detective Police, was one of President Lincoln's most trustedadvisors and was responsible for counter-intelligence operations against the South at the onset of the Civil War. But Baker was a man without scruples and
despite his work for the Union, he was basically out for his own good. One hundred years after the Lincoln assassination new evidence was published that implicated Lafayette Baker as co-conspirator with John Wilkes Booth to kill
Abraham Lincoln.
In 1961, an article was published in the old Civil War Times written by a New Jersey chemist named Ray Neff. Neff reported that he had located a coded message in the National Archives, possibly written by Baker, that implicated
him in the Lincoln plot. At the same time that the Neff article appeared, another author who was writing a book on the assassination, Vaughan Shelton (Mask For Treason, The Lincoln Murder Trial), came upon the same material as
did Ray Neff. In the archives, Shelton found a note written to John Surratt from New York City dated March 19, 1865 and signed by "R. D. Watson." In the trial of the
Lincoln conspirators there is no official mention of anyone by that name. So who was "R. D. Watson?" Neff and Shelton believe it was none other than Lafayette Baker. The brief letter reads as follows, "I would like to see you
on important business, if you can spare the time to come to New York. Please telegraph me immediately on the receipt of this, whether you can come on or not & oblige, Yours re, R. D. Watson." The address on the note was "Care
Demill & Co. 178 1/2 Water Street." The R. D. Watson letter was sent to a handwriting expert and the authority said that in his opinion, the letter matched the writing of Baker.
While conducting his research, Ray Neff came up with other evidence against Baker. In 1844, Baker was an agent of a Canadian company called J.J. Chaffey
Co. By 1864, records show that J.J. Chaffey paid Baker a total of $148,894.00. Also, on the J.J. Chaffey papers the address "178 1/2 Water Street" appeared. Neff also found a letter dated November 4, 1864 with the "178 1/2 Water
Street" signed by a Thomas Caldwell, who was an agent for J.J. Chaffey & Co. This letter was addressed to John Wilkes Booth and included four payments to the actor from August 24 to October 5, 1864 totaling $14,548.40. The money was
credited to the Bank of Montreal and payed in gold.
It should be noted that Booth was in Montreal prior to the assassination where he met with Confederate commissioners who were planning covert actions against
the Union. Neff also came up with another telegram, this one dated April 2, 1865 to "Geo. Miller & Co., 130 Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois, saying, "J.W. Booth will ship oysters until Saturday 15th." When Neff checked the New
York City directory for 1864 he discovered that a firm called "Demill & Co." was located at 178 1/2 Water Street, the same address as that of the mysterious "R.D. Watson" letter. It is interesting to note that the date April
15 in the letter from "George Miller" was one day after Booth shot Lincoln.
It is possible that the Demill & Co., located at "178 1/2 Water Street" was just a dummy company used to hide the activities of the Lincoln conspirators.
While this does not categorically implicate Baker in pre-assassination planning, it asks questions that still have not been satisfactorily explained. In 1991, a dealer in historic papers offered a $100 check for sale, written by
John Wilkes Booth in the months preceding his assassination of President Lincoln (the check was bought for $15,000). But according to historian James Hall who wrote a definitive book on the Lincoln assassination and the Confederate Secret Service, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service
and the Assassination of Lincoln, this check is a direct paper trail that links the activities of Booth prior to the event.
The check was written on November 16, 1864 on the account of Jay Cooke & Co., a bank in Washington in the amount of $1.500.00. It was payable to a Matthew Canning, a long time friend and theatrical agent of Booth. A total of seven
checks were drawn on the account, the one hundred dollar amount to Canning, a $150 check cashed by Booth on January 7, 1865, and another one for $25 also cashed by Booth on March 16, 1865. What makes these transactions interesting,
says author Hall, is that Booth made these deposits in Cooke's bank just after he made a covert trip to Montreal.
Booth arrived in Canada on October 18, 1864 and checked into the St. Lawrence Hall hotel where other members of the Confederate Secret Service were staying.
One of the men Booth made contact with there was George Sanders, a former ambassador to London during the administration of Franklin Pierce. Sanders was
an advocate of political assassinations, and one of his potential candidates for assassination was Abraham Lincoln.
While in Montreal Booth was able to use money set up for him in the Ontario Bank to the amount of $455 Canadian dollars. This money was most likely supplied to Booth by the Confederate commissioners who were then living in the
city. Immediately after leaving Canada, Booth came to Washington where he got a room at the National Hotel and made his deposits at Cooke's bank.
When the presidential assassin was killed at Garrett's Farm, soldiers found a Canadian bill of exchange on his body. https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg03501.html
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Franklin Pierce subsequently appointed George Nicholas Sanders Consul-General to London. In 1854 the Senate failed to confirm Sanders' appointment, voting 49 to 10 against him. His bizarre behavior, acrimonious criticism of political opponents, and close friendship with the European revolutionaries had alienated too many politicians. During the Civil War Sanders became a Confederate agent. In 1864, after numerous business ventures, he joined the secret service operation in Canada. Sanders was instrumental in organizing the St. Albans raid in Vermont and the abortive Niagara peace conference, two seemingly contradictory projects. Both were designed to achieve a favorable end to the war for the South. Finally on May 2, 1865 President Johnson issued a $25,000 reward for his arrest in connection with Abraham Lincoln's assassination. The charges were ultimately dropped, but Sanders had probably encouraged John Wilkes Booth, although he was ultimately able to absolve the Confederacy of any blame in the plot. Sanders possessed vigor and charm, traits which won him many devoted friends. Therefore he was capable of manipulating other people to achieve his own goals. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/704/
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Although constantly in the middle of the current political debates, the details of Sanders' roles were frequently elusive, and he never gained prominence personally. He maintained a clandestine character and manipulated other, more prominent people in order to influence the course of prevailing events. He was a better behind-the-scenes organizer than a visionary leader. Also, Sanders could move more freely in the shadows than in the public spotlight, thereby avoiding the consequences of his controversial activities. Nevertheless, he did not always escape responsibility….
Sanders' London residence was often the site for the gatherings of such notable exiled revolutionaries as Louis Kossuth, Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Alexander Ledru-Rollin. Sanders' diplomatic pouches also occasionally carried the correspondence of these revolutionaries. "Many were the consultations and weighty the conclusions of those days and nights," judged a fellow Young American, "devoted to the examination of the situation [with the revolutionaries]."4 Due to his relationships with these figures and his blatant support of their activities to promote European unrest, in February 1854, the Senate did not confirm Sanders' appointment.
Although the Senate recalled Sanders after only three months as consul, he remained in Europe to pursue revolutionary intrigues of his own. Addressing an open letter to the French people, he advocated the assassination of Napoleon III. He also sent an equally controversial letter to the President of the Swiss Confederation, urging that Switzerland continue granting asylum to those refugees fleeing from tyrannical European regimes. Sanders influenced prominent American diplomats in Europe to issue the famous nationalistic Ostend Manifesto, proclaiming the intention of the United States government to wrest Cuba away from Spain if that nation would not willingly sell the island.
In return for Sanders promoting his 1856 presidential campaign, James Buchanan awarded him with the office of Navy Agent for the port of New York. Primarily due to the president's ruinous stance on the Kansas and Lecompton issues, Sanders renounced Buchanan and returned to the camp of Stephen A. Douglas in time to champion the Illinois senator's 1860 campaign. Although Sanders supported the Confederate cause, he still attempted to prevent a war….
He then proceeded to address the Kentucky legislators in Frankfort, urging them to secede. He hoped that by presenting President Lincoln with a united southern front, including the president's birthplace of Kentucky, the South could dissuade Lincoln from using force to prevent their withdrawal, thereby preserving peace. After this plan proved futile, Sanders tried to sell to the new Confederate government a reconstruction plan based on commerce, but it produced the same results. Thereafter Sanders delved into the southern war effort as an agent for the Confederacy. Sanders acted in various capacities for the rebel government. Initially he operated as a business agent, negotiating to secure six ironclad merchant steamers and additional army supplies, as well as running a courier service between the South and Europe….The rebel government appointed Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, and James P. Holcombe as official commissioners in Canada, while George Sanders became the selfappointed, unofficial fourth member. Acting on his own accord, Sanders worked in conjunction with the commissioners. Residing in Montreal, Canada, Sanders discovered that his charm worked on Clay and Holcombe, and he manipulated these men to go along with his plans and provide official sanction. …
If peace could not be attained, Sanders still hoped to demonstrate to the nation that Lincoln did not actually want peace and only wished to crush the South. If he could represent Lincoln in a negative light, then he might not be re-elected, and the South would gain another chance to end the war on its own terms, not the Union's. Sanders, however, misrepresented the commissioners who, in actuality, did not possess authority to negotiate….
While he did not directly assist Booth in murdering the president and attacking Secretary of State William Seward, Sanders most likely supported the plan to abduct Lincoln and later encouraged Booth's endeavors.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43643197.pdf
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