Between the Lines: Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After

by Henry Bascom Smith

The detectives did not come upstairs, but a man named C. L. Alder came up to the room and told me to get ready and come down stairs, that he had a buggy ready to see me safe and that he would die before I should be taken and that he had helped many of the Rebels out of just such scrapes by taking them to the Rebel lines.

We went about a mile and a half from Reisterstown and stopped at the house of Dr. J. Larsh, and held a conversation with him and another man that I could not learn the name of; about the best plan for me to adopt was to keep away from the detectives; he, the Doctor, told me that he was very busy or he would take me safe through himself, but told Alder to take me to Charles T. Cockey's, and that he would see me all right.

We then went to C. T. Cockey's and Alder explained to him who I was and Mr. Cockey then introduced me to John C. Brown, of Busson Parish, La., and lately manager of the Rebel Secretary of War's plantation. Mr. Cockey told me to remain there all night and he would see me safe, as he was engaged in the business ever since the war commenced, and had run off a great many men to the Rebel army; in fact he said that men from all parts of the country were sent to him to take across the lines, and that he always went into the Rebel lines with them.

Among the rest that he had taken across was Capt. Simms and Capt. Beard and Gus Williamson. He said when General McClellan was following Lee into Maryland, a man came to him from Washington and gave him the number of men that McClellan had, and the direction he was going to take, and that he went to Frederick, and gave the information to Lee; and would, he said, do so again, if it would do any good to the Southern cause.

Cockey receives papers regularly from Richmond. He also said that Capt. Harry Gilmor stops at his house whenever he comes over the lines, and that a great many men from the South come to his house, and he always helps them. I remained at his house all night, and listened to him and John C. Brown cursing the government for everything they could think of, and telling what they would do if the Rebel army would come into Maryland again. C. T. Cockey was also engaged at the time of Lee's raid into Pennsylvania; he took men to the Rebel army and was in the Rebel lines several times, and gave them all the information that he could get hold of that would do them any good.

Mr. J. C. Brown gave me the name of his brother, Benj. F. Brown, of Frederick, Md., agent for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co., and in charge of the government warehouse which he surrendered to the Rebels without endeavoring to destroy the goods, or to get them out of the way. J. C. Brown told me to go to his brother and let him know who I was and everything would be right, and that he would meet me there with a lot of recruits, and a Rebel mail to take south.

The next day, 21st April, I expressed a wish to go into Pennsylvania for a few days, and promised to meet Mr. Brown in Frederick. Mr. C. T. Cockey took me in his buggy to T. D. Cockey of "I" at Ellingown, near Texas, on the Northern Central Railroad, where I met T. D. Cockey, of "I".

T. Deye Cockey and Philip Fendel, who are violent Rebels, say they have been running men off ever since the war commenced. And T. Deye Cockey says that he has been in the Rebel lines several times, and at one time took three recruits from Harford County to Hanover Junction, when the Rebels were there, and gave them all the information he could.

Richard Worthington, a very wealthy man, whom I met, offered me a horse, and any assistance in his power, to enable me to escape, and stated that he had rented his farm out, and was endeavoring to get his property fixed in such a way that the damned negro government could not confiscate it. He was going to leave the damned Yankees and go to Canada, and from there to Nassau, and take a vessel and go to the Confederacy, where he would be free to do as he pleased. He said he had invested a portion of his money in Confederate bonds, and only wished he had a chance to invest more in them, as the greenbacks, or Yankee shinplasters were not worth a damn.

These men were under the impression that I was the Rebel Capt. Harry Thompson, who, as it was published, had made his escape from a Federal prison. I told them I had escaped from the Old Capitol.