The Civil War "October Surprise" That Wasn’t

Presidential candidates dread sudden reversals of fortune in a campaign’s final weeks. Modern-day “October Surprises” include Richard Nixon prematurely announcing a Vietnam peace agreement (1972), Iran refusing to release U.S. hostages until after Election Day (1980), and Mitt Romney taped belittling less-wealthy voters (2012). 

Yet, the biggest “surprise” for an incumbent president nearly took place in the fall of 1864 when Abraham Lincoln was in the White House. In going against George McClellan, the Democratic Party nominee, many in the GOP and Lincoln’s cabinet weren’t certain he could win again.

Despite the Union Army advancing to Richmond, the Civil War had already lasted nearly four years, resulting in more than 600,000 deaths. Many Americans were eager for peace—even if it meant allowing the Confederacy to become its own nation. Against that backdrop, rebel spies positioned themselves along our northern border with British Canada.

Their Northwest Conspiracy was led by Jacob Thompson, a former cabinet secretary under President James Buchanan and now a Southern sympathizer. Given $1 million in gold by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Thompson’s assignment was to direct a clandestine operation along the border. One of his first targets was the USS Michigan, which was the only Union warship left on the Great Lakes late in 1864. 

Anchored off Sandusky, Ohio, the iron-hulled steamer had a thirty-pound parrot rifle, a half-dozen howitzers, and additional firepower. In mid-September, rebel leader John Yates Beall led a raiding party from the Detroit area to seize the Michigan. A private in the “Stonewall Brigade” at the war’s onset, Beall had shifted to piracy and espionage.

By this point in the Civil War, British Canada had become a haven for rebel spies and their supporters. John Wilkes Booth, who would soon assassinate Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, was a visitor to Montreal. Julian Sher, author of The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots Against Lincoln, says the Catholic Church helped one of Booth’s accomplices hide out for months. Also, a leading financier in Montreal allowed Confederates to launder money through his bank.

In fact, when Booth was killed near Port Royal, Virginia, in late April 1865, less than two weeks after shooting Lincoln, a banknote from the Ontario Bank branch in Montreal was found in his pocket. It was signed by bank manager Henry Starnes, the former and future mayor of Montreal. 

Beall and Booth knew of each other and perhaps met at John Brown’s execution in Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Ironically, Brown’s son, John Jr., who lived on an island near Sandusky, nearly derailed the rebels’ plan in 1864 to take the Michigan. 

While Booth’s plots were haphazard, spurred by hatred for Lincoln, Beall’s raids, first on the Chesapeake Bay and then on Lake Erie, were backed by Confederate officials in Richmond.

Arriving by nightfall at Sandusky Harbor on September 19, 1864, Beall moved the steamship he had stolen into position near the Michigan. Everything went smoothly until a signal from the shore wasn’t posted. This was supposed to indicate that the warship’s officers and crew were incapacitated by spiked liquor at a party. When no flare was seen, Beall’s crew got cold feet, and the rebel leader had to flee back across Lake Erie.  

That’s how close the 1864 presidential election came to an “October Surprise.” If Beall had captured the Union warship, he planned to free Confederate prisoners on Johnson’s Island, outside of Sandusky Harbor and not far from where the Michigan was anchored. Approximately 3,000 rebels were imprisoned there, including twenty officers. From there, the Confederates could have bombarded Cleveland, Buffalo, and other targets along the southern shore of Lake Erie.

In the end, the 1864 presidential election was a landslide for the Republican Party. Lincoln won the Electoral College by 212-21 and 55 percent of the popular vote. But what’s rarely mentioned in history textbooks is how the Confederates nearly opened a new front in the Civil War only weeks before voters went to the polls.

Even after Lincoln was reelected, the rebels remained active in the Great Lakes. Beall wasn’t apprehended until December after he attempted to derail a train carrying Confederate prisoners and a load of gold south of Buffalo. A historical plaque near the Whirlpool Bridge in Niagara Falls, NY, now marks where authorities finally arrested him. Despite a petition signed by ninety-two members of Congress asking for Beall to be pardoned, he was hung on Governors Island in New York Harbor. 

All we can be sure of today is if the Confederates had seized the USS Michigan, it would have been an October Surprise and certainly made Beall & Co. more than a historical footnote. 

About the Author: 

Tim Wendel is the author of Rebel Falls. The historical novel details the Confederates’ spy network along the U.S.-Canadian border in 1864. Follow him on X: @Tim_Wendel. 

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