Confederate graves at St. Ignatius Catholic Church cemetery in Chapel Point.
Southern Maryland – Did you know that Southern Maryland was once a hotbed of spies?
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron were quite familiar with the region. They knew full well the unique nature of what was called “Lower Maryland” in historical documents.
Lincoln suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, and Southern Maryland — a staunch slaveholding territory whose Confederate sympathies were clearly evident — was placed under military occupation for the duration of the Civil War.
Southern Maryland men crossed the Potomac River and fought for the Confederacy under none other than Rebel General Stonewall Jackson. They saw action at some of the war’s most famous battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg.
During the war in Chaptico, a Federal postal inspector found a rough pine box with iron hasp and hinges and a United States mail lock, partitioned through the center, with a hole for letters in each division.
The phrases “Southern Letters” and “Northern Letters” were inscribed on either side of the partition.
When he inquired of a young girl what the box was for, she told him — much to the chagrin of her father, the postmaster — that letters put in the Southern hole went to Richmond and those in the Northern went to Washington.
The unusual mailbox was seized and for years was kept at the Post Office Department at Washington as a curiosity.
In Charlotte Hall, at a plantation called The Plains owned by Col. John Henry Sothoron, Union Lt. Eben White went to recruit the colonel’s slaves for induction into the Union Army. The plantation owner shot and killed the officer.
Sothoron fled to Virginia but was indicted by the Grand Jury of St. Mary’s County for manslaughter in the death of Lt. White in 1866. He was later acquitted by a pro-Southern jury.
His wife had an ongoing correspondence with President Abraham Lincoln and with Andrew Johnson after Lincoln’s assassination. It was Johnson who eventually returned her husband’s land to her.
It was an unusual circumstance for a local population to be in league with the Confederacy while Federal soldiers occupied it. This oddity spills out of the historical record in graphic detail.
Medical supplies and comforts for Southern sons were ferried across the Potomac under the cover of darkness, often in stormy weather when Union soldiers were more apt to be idle. The cargo floated from Chaptico, Allen’s Fresh, Leonardown and finally, Millstone Landing across the Potomac River to Virginia.
A Union detective ferreting out information on Southern sympathizers said he couldn’t find one man in the county seat of Leonardtown who wasn’t a state’s rights man—a term which meant Secessionist to the North.
The St. Clement’s Island Lighthouse, which stood in the Potomac River where the crossing between Virginia and Maryland was narrowest, was a contentious beacon. Throughout the war, Confederate soldiers would steal across the river at night to vandalize the lamp.
Such an atmosphere spawned spies within the region. The more inconspicuous they were, the more successful.
That’s probably what served Anne Olivia Floyd of Rose Hill in Charles County so well in her role as Confederate spy.
Victim of an early childhood injury that broke her back, she remained crippled throughout her life.
Not long after the war’s opening salvo was fired at Fort Sumter, Floyd became an agent and messenger for the South.
Her brother, Robert, fought under the famous Confederate Jeb Stuart. When her sibling was fatally wounded at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford in March of 1863, her resolve deepened.
The two are buried side by side in the St. Ignatius Church cemetery at Chapel Point.
At the height of her clandestine activities, Olivia hid money and documents in a wooden boat model her brother had made.
Floyd’s place in Civil War lore became prominent during the fall campaigns of 1864, when Col. Bennett H. Young and 20 Confederate soldiers who had escaped from a Union prisoner-of-war camp, made a successful raid on the town of St. Albans in Vermont. Stealing money and horses, they made their way to Canada, where they were arrested by Canadian authorities.
Union officials tried to extradite the soldiers and wanted to try them as spies. To save their own lives, they needed to prove were acting on official orders as committed officers in the Confederate Army. A message was sent to the South requesting a copy of their commissions. The missive was passed through many states North to South, from sympathizer to sympathizer, until it finally reached the hands of Olivia Floyd.
The Union Army was, by now, suspicious of Olivia. No sooner did she receive the message when Union soldiers arrived at Rose Hill. She cleverly hid the message in a brass ball at the top of fireplace andirons. After searching her home and finding nothing, the soldiers proceeded to relax by the fire, one of them resting his boots on the very andiron that harbored the correspondence.
Olivia later hid the message in her hair and made her way to a signal station at Popes Creek, VA, where the information was forwarded to Richmond. Authorities were able to forward the commissions for Young and his men in time to save their lives.
After the war, Young personally invited Lloyd to join him at a Confederate reunion in Louisville, KY.
At Point Lookout in the Potomac, a young woman flirted shamelessly in French and English with Union officers and passengers before descending below deck and emerging as Richard Thomas of Chaptico, a Zouave officer of the Confederate Army. He and his comrades produced their smuggled weapons and confiscated the ship, which they later used to capture several Union vessels while making their way to Virginia.
Chaptico also entered the record at one of the war’s darkest moments. For many years, an old legend floated around recalling a mysterious rider who arrived in town with a black box on the night of Lincoln’s assassination.
No one knows what was in the box or what was the significance of the midnight journey. But with all of the spies harbored in Southern Maryland during the “War Between the States”, is it any wonder why John Wilkes Booth’s ill-fated act at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. reverberated so loudly throughout the region? Or why Booth would cross into Charles County, spending one night at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s home in Brandywine and another in Zekiah Swamp on his way to Virginia?
It’s all a part of the complex, muddled, intricate portrait that makes up Southern Maryland history.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com
