Jacob Thompson

He accepted and arrived in Montreal in May of that year. From where he directed a failed plot to free Confederate prisoners of war on Johnson's Island, off Sandusky, Ohio, in September. He also arranged purchase of a steamer with the intention of arming it to harass shipping in the Great Lakes. Regarded in the North as a schemer and conspirator, many devious plots were associated with his name, though much of this may have been public hysteria. One plot was a planned burning of New York on November 25, 1864 in retaliation for Union Generals Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman's scorched earth tactics in the south. As head of Confederate secret agents some speculate that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, met with Thompson but this has not been proven (Thompson worked hard to clear his name of involvement in the assassination in the years after the war). Read Less