The shocking moment a group of Confederate spies plotted – and failed – to burn down New York City

Two months before the Civil War ended, a Confederate soldier was tried in a New York City courtroom for espionage — and for trying to burn down the Union’s largest city.

According to the New York Timesthe prosecution alleged against Confederate officer Robert Cobb Kennedy that “on the night of the 24th of November last, he attempted to burn the city of New York, with apparent injury to life and property, and against every article or provision of honorable warfare.”

The seditious plot began when Kennedy, captured by Union troops in 1863, escaped from a military prison on Lake Erie and fled north to Canada. Kennedy, the son of a Louisiana planter, was outraged by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s scorched earth tactics in the South. In Toronto he met other disaffected Southerners in exile, and planned to infiltrate northern cities to turn the tide of the war.

The first plan they came up with was to interfere with the 1864 presidential election on November 8. The rebels would storm federal buildings in New York, fly a Confederate flag over City Hall and try to gain support from New Yorkers, who had close ties to the Southern states. cotton industry. But the plan never came to fruition thanks to incumbent President Abraham Lincoln, who sent federal troops during the election to quell discontent in major cities. to suppress discontent in the big cities during the elections.

Instead, Kennedy – carrying forged papers identifying him as Mr. Stanton of Toronto – and seven other Confederates plotted to simultaneously set off a large number of firebombs in businesses and hotels throughout New York, destroying the Northern economy and morale in the south was boosted.

Coincidentally, only six of the eight men showed up to begin the ambitious attack on November 25. They each took ten incendiaries filled with Greek fire, a mixture of chemicals that the attackers believed only required a brief exposure to air to ignite. Kennedy planted firebombs in three hotels and – on a drunken impulse after stopping at a bar – threw one into PT Barnum’s American Museum.

The attack was a resounding failure. Some bombs did not ignite, and those that did caused only small, scattered fires that were easily handled by firefighters. The North was certainly not destroyed.

Back in the South, reactions to the attempted attack were mixed. New York was the wrong place to attack, the Richmond Whig complained. In reality, it was the only place in the North “that should be spared” because of its ties to the Southern economy and its apparent hostility toward Lincoln.

“We therefore hope that the gentleman … will decide to leave New York alone and turn his attention to more deserving cities – Boston, for example, or Philadelphia,” the spokesperson said. Whig wrote. “The destruction of places like this would be roughly equivalent to the atrocities committed by the Yankee armies in the South.” . “The destruction of places like this would be roughly equivalent to the atrocities committed by the Yankee armies in the South.”

In the meantime, the six would-be bombers fled back to Canada to wait out the war on neutral territory. Only Kennedy attempted to reenter the US, where he was promptly arrested in Michigan.

Kennedy barely stood a chance against the military trial that followed – a proceeding packed with testimony and evidence against him.

He was portrayed by the Northern press as the poster child for the rebellious South. The Times called him “an astute, desperate man (who) combines the cunning and enthusiasm of a fanatic with the lack of moral principles characteristic of many of the Southern Hotspurs,” and noted his West Point education (“at the expense of of the United States”) and a family connection to one of the founding fathers of the Confederacy, Howell Cobb.

Kennedy was found guilty and sentenced to hang. His last-minute appeal to Lincoln for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty went nowhere. The US executed Kennedy at Fort Lafayette, a prison island off the coast of Brooklyn. His was the last execution of the Civil War, which ended just two weeks later.