In October of 1864, Confederate agents crossed over from Canada into Vermont and raided the small town of St. Albans. This account explores some of the previously unknown facts about that raid.
Perhaps no events of the Civil War have been so misunderstood, and so incorrectly reported, as the secret Confederate operations that took place in Vermont during the year 1864. The events have usually been treated as a series of separate events culminating in the failed attack on the village of St. Albens. Recent information, however, suggests that the Vermont incidents were part of a well coordinated, but ultimately futile campaign against the maple sugar industry of that state.
The story begins on the 3rd day of the Battle of Gettysburg when Gen. George Stannard’s Vermont brigade smashed into the flank of Confederate Gen. Kemper’s brigade during Pickett’s Charge. The Confederates vowed revenge on the nine month men from the Green Mountain state. Their revenge on the battlefield never came, however, as Stannard’s men were soon mustered out and returned to their homes in Vermont, boasting of their achievement.
The plans for the Vermont Campaign grew solely from a desire by Kemper’s men to get revenge on those who had ruined their moment of glory. Several of Kemper’s soldiers, discharged due to wounds received at Gettysburg, plotted to take their revenge behind enemy lines.
The Confederate Secret Service, eager to lend a hand to any plan that would inflict damage on the hated Yankees, quickly approved the plan and provided logistical support for the conspirators. Dozens of operatives in New England and Canada were mobilized and sent to the rural regions of Vermont in an insidious plot to ruin the Vermont economy.
The Confederate agents, many of whom formerly fought with Kemper, quickly infiltrated the Vermont woods and began reaping a terrible toll on the vital maple sugar industry in that spring of ’64. Most of the damage was done by night, with the operatives traveling the wooded paths and pouring out the valuable contents of the sap buckets. Other methods included sabotaging equipment and polluting the raw sap.
Within a month the spring harvest was in serious jeopardy with desperate farmers were standing guard in the woods at night. The state economy teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and desperate measures were needed. A savior came in the form of Webster Finkle, president of the Bank of Vermont in St. Albans. The St. Albans bank had been built with a huge vault, capable of storing a tremendous amount of money. St. Albans however, was a poor rural community which had suffered greatly from the maple syrup recession. The great vault in the St. Albans bank was nearly empty, and available to hold the state’s precious stockpile of maple syrup. And so, as the maple syrup season drew to a close, the precious stockpiles of syrup that had survived the Confederate onslaught found their way to the steely confines of the St. Albans bank. For the time being the state’s economy was saved.
All through the summer months the Confederates fumed and cursed the Yankee ingenuity that had thwarted their evil plan. As summer turned to fall, and the maple leaves began to change, one Confederate operative named Bennett Young offered to lead a raid against the St. Albans bank to destroy the precious maple syrup reserve.
In October of 1864, Confederate agents converged on the small Vermont town, meeting at a nearby inn to finalize plans. As luck would have it, a free black woman named Aunt Jemima was working as a waitress at the inn. She overheard the Confederates plotting to attack the St. Albans bank and that night slipped out and warned the local constable of the impending attack.
The next day Bennett and his associates stormed into town, crashing into the bank with intentions to blow up the vault. Once inside they discovered an empty vault; sticky syrup residue told them that their mission was a bust. Thanks to the timely warning by Aunt Jemima, the local farmers had held an all-night boiling session and the bottled syrup was well on its way to Montpelier.
As the Confederates exited the bank they were met with a hail of bullets from dozens of Stannard’s veterans dressed in farmer’s overalls and hidden in nearby buildings and on rooftops. For a time the scene resembled Pickett’s charge, with dead and wounded Confederates lying in the streets. The survivors quickly mounted up and galloped out of town with a Yankee posse in close pursuit.
To this day folks from the Green Mountain state still honor the memory of the brave Aunt Jemima who risked life and limb to warn the citizens of St. Albans of the impending danger. And thus another Vermont legend was born.
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