Thread: Early Gilchrist?

Nice work on the history, Martin and Zak! Most interesting and appreciated!

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Nice work on the history, Martin and Zak! Most interesting and appreciated!

Just to add to the amusement, my grandmother had framed a print of one of William Wallace Gilchrist's paintings. I looked at that painting pretty much every day, growing up.



And pretty soon I'll be posting about the Hassam Brothers out of Boston... Who had a surprisingly similar story (minus the arrest for treason, that is)...

I'll spare folks the mind-numbing details. But I've been reading through the official documents about the conspiracy / treason case against Gilchrist. A summary is difficult, but the end result is that he was held in prison for 5 months and then released on a 'DO NOT PROSECUTE' order.

The whole affair is spelled out in repetitive, legalistic, mind-numbing detail here. There's a lot of stuff in that book other than this, so you'll want to do a search on Gilchrist to get the juicy bits.

However, the juiciest bit is that in Gilchrist's letter to the British Consul, he says that Robert Wade of Philadelphia will vouch for him.

Two years later, two of his sons enlisted. James as a surgeon, and William Jr as infantry. William Jr was really sick though, and begged his dad to pull strings to get him released. His mother wrote back to him pleading to not sound insubordinate to people in authority.

Oh, yeah... And the guy that was arrested was the guy that made the razors, the father of the composer. HIS father was a British soldier in Canada and he survived fighting in the Canadian rebellions of the 1820's. Looks like my earlier info on when he came to America was wrong -- it had to have been the early 1840's.

I've read through a huge pile of stuff now and I'm convinced.

William Gilchrist's arrest for treason was because he inadvertently uncovered secret service agent Lafayette Baker's sideline of selling munitions to the South. In short, Gilchrist was framed.

Baker was a slimeball and all of the especially damning evidence against Gilchrist is purely Baker's word. There are a couple of facts that don't square real good with the idea of Gilchrist as an enthusiastic gun-runner for the south.

First and foremost, his eldest son was a surgeon in the army since before the war. Well before the arrest. I was wrong, earlier -- it was after the arrest that his second son joined up. Secondly, his brother-in-law was an important general: Jacob D. Cox.

I'm trying to track down the letters back and forth, but Gilchrist claimed to have been in contact with the War Department about the goods that Baker was buying from him (and selling to another guy), and he claimed he was given the go-ahead to continue selling in order to accumulate evidence. When I say he claimed these things, his claim also took the form of sending those letters to his prosecutors.

The guy who actually was physically taking the stuff and reselling it was released to his friends on the advice of Baker.

After the case against Gilchrist was dropped, Baker went on to head up the first centralized spy agency... And be fired for tapping the telegraph lines his boss used -- but not before making a bunch of high profile arrests of members of the Treasury on corruption charges. It was widely considered at the time that Baker's wrath was due entirely to the graft not lining his pockets.

The Philadelphia police detective who assisted in the case against Gilchrist got Baker a job with the Pinkertons after he lost his government job, and it was with the Pinkertons that Baker found John Wilkes Booth (and collected almost the entire reward himself). He would go on, later, to accuse the president of being part of the assassination plot against Lincoln. Even the president's political enemies were unimpressed with Baker's evidence though, largely because he never produced the promised letters of proof.

Amazing stuff, Zak! Interesting history!

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Amazing stuff, Zak! Interesting history!

I'll have a lot more to say about it later, but it's going to be an epic writeup. First I need to get and read the book Gilchrist wrote about his imprisonment.

Very Cool Zak! I always like Gilchrist because of the tie with Lincoln, like it even more now!

Originally Posted by Martin103

Very Cool Zak! I always like Gilchrist because of the tie with Lincoln, like it even more now!

I never would have found this stuff without that press clipping you found, Martin!

(Which, interestingly, seems to have been written by Baker -- at least, Baker quotes it near-verbatim in his 'History of the Secret Service')

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

I never would have found this stuff without that press clipping you found, Martin!

(Which, interestingly, seems to have been written by Baker -- at least, Baker quotes it near-verbatim in his 'History of the Secret Service')

Indeed, but you took it to another level, and its really interesting, some really big names are coming up, and perhaps some more.