Confederate Expenditures for Secret Service

Confederate Expenditures for Secret Service William A. Tidwell The Confederate States of America spent at least four times as much money on clandestine operations as the Federal government spent. By the end of the war, the Confederacy had spent on the order of $2 million in gold on secret service, while the Union had spent the equivalent of about $500,000 in gold on a slightly different mix of secret service activities.1 Why such a disparity? It is axiomatic among Intelligence officers that in time of war, clandestine operations are used by the underdogs to help balance the power wielded by their opponents. It would appear that the Confederates were a case in point. In the beginning, both sides engaged in conventional espionage against the other. The Union came to the end of the war with an excellent tactical intelligence capability. The Confederacy, however, having limited access abroad, was forced to do many things through clandestine operations, such as recruitment and progaganda, that the Union could do through normal diplomatic or other overt channels. In the course of the war the Confederacy expanded the scope of their secret service to add political action, sabotage, and other forms of subversion to their espionage and tactical intelligence capabilities. This broadranging secret activity was closely guided by Jefferson Davis and his secretary of state. Beginning in 1864, they greatly increased the scope and tempo of their secret work to include the attempt to organize the 1 This estimate of Union expenditures, for which the author is indebted to Edwin C. Fishel, is an extrapolation from known data—the costs of operating three intelligence bureaus in the eastern theater to the operation of less well-documented secret service activities elsewhere. The three bureaus (those headed by Allan Pinkerton, Lafayette C. Baker, and Colonel George H. Sharpe) employed a total of 342 operatives. The expenditures of those three were extrapolated to include other commands where Fishel identified 3,700 persons as having served as spies, scouts, or detectives. Nearly all of the Federal secret service expenditures were for espionage, scouting, and counterintelligence, i.e., very little was spent on clandestine warfare projects like those that consumed the greater part of the Confederate secret service funds. Civil War History, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, ° 1991 by the Kent State University Press 220CIVIL WAR HISTORY "Northwest Conspiracy," the capture of Lincoln as a hostage,2 and largescale sabotage of Union facilities. Recent identification and analysis of three sets of documents provides a remarkable insight into the expenditures by the Confederate government for secret service. These documents are a numbered series of forms signed by Jefferson Davis, requesting the issuance of Treasury warrants for gold for secret services use;3 the remnant of a ledger or book once kept by the disbursing clerk of the Confederate State Department to record funds received and disbursed for secret service purposes;4 and a list of sums paid by the Confederate War Department for incidental and contingent expenditures during the last eighteen months of the war.5 These documents show that, beginning with Act 73 of March 15, 1861, through the end of the war, the Confederate government had available at least $840,000 for secret service "Necessities and Exigencies" of the Executive Department and $5 million for a different category of expenses identified only as "Secret Service." Of these funds, $601,523.66 in gold had been drawn from the Treasury as secret service Necessities and Exigencies by February 25, 1865. An additional $1,257,666 in gold of the "Secret Service" appropriation was drawn between early 1864 and the end of March 1865. Other sums are known to have been used between the end of February 1865 and the end of the war but are not accounted for in these figures. The beginning of 1864 seems to have been a watershed in the expenditure of money for secret service. Before that date, only $207,283 of Confederate money had been spent for Necessities and Exigencies. After that date over $400,000 was spent for the same purposes. All $1.2 million of the money actually drawn from the separate Secret Service appropriation was spent in the last sixteen months...