Tag: Richmond VA

On A Double Spy

This past week, I told you how much I love spy stories. This one involves a spy who worked for the American cause during the American Revolution in the 1780s. That period was a good time (relatively speaking–it was fraught with danger, of course) for spying because loyalties were fluid and people changed sides in the war depending often on who was standing nearby. But James was decidedly on the side of the American rebels.

It’s pretty generally accepted that the American public in the 13 British colonies were split into thirds during the conflict. About a third was against the rebellion and wished for the British Empire to stay as the ruler of the colonies. Another third didn’t care either way–the war didn’t affect them one way or another. Finally, approximately the last third of the population was whole-heartedly on the side of independence and actively worked towards that end. And James worked for independence more than most.

He offered his services as a spy to the rebels, and his offer was accepted. His commander was the French general, the famous Marquis de Lafayette, the man who admired the Americans’ desire for liberty so much that he came to the colonies to help George Washington in the war effort. Lafayette suggested that James secure a position as a “loyalist” in the camp of the American traitor, General Benedict Arnold. Arnold had changed sides in 1780 and then fought for the British. So, Lafayette, with Washington’s approval, sent James to spy on Arnold shortly after the transition from American patriot to British traitor. James gained the trust of the former American leader by pretending to be a spy for the British. The information that James gave Arnold was always solid but was largely useless. However, the intelligence he secretly sent back to the Americans was invaluable regarding British troop size and movements.

Then, as the war began its final stages, Lafayette ordered James to offer his services to General Cornwallis, the British commander in Virginia. There, James secured work as a courier for the British, taking orders and correspondence between British camps. In other words, the British were giving their battle plans directly into the hands of the Americans by entrusting it to James to carry between their lines. The information James gathered enabled the Americans to easily counter Cornwallis’s movements, and it led directly to the American victory over Cornwallis at Yorktown. It was the victory that effectively ended the American Revolution.

After the war, James purchased several acres of land in Virginia and became a fairly prosperous farmer. Despite some issues on whether or not he was in uniform during the war (he was not, obviously), James eventually received a small pension for his service in the war. But, for James, the real satisfaction was knowing that he had fought for the cause of liberty in his own way.

Then, in 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette made a return trip to the United States in honor of the nation’s upcoming 50th birthday. He traveled around all 24 states including Virginia. While in Richmond, Virginia, Lafayette was riding in his carriage through a large group of well-wishers when he saw James’s face in the crowd. The Marquis ordered his driver to stop, and he got out. He rushed into the crowd to excitedly hug James. The two old men were so happy to see each other after so many years and after they both had endured so much for the cause of liberty. However, many in the group surrounding the Marquis’s carriage were less than pleased, however.

You see, James had chosen the last name Lafayette after the man he so admired during the war. And the reason he chose that name was that he had no last name when he had met the Marquis. And the crowd was upset at the embrace because, at that time in Virginia, White men simply did not embrace former slaves like James Lafayette.

On a Mysterious Death

The place was a bar called Ryan’s Tavern, in Maryland, and the time was October 3, 1849. Joe Walker, merely an amateur drinker, found an acquaintance of his who seemed completely and slovenly drunk in Ryan’s. That man, who was in his early 40s, wasn’t making any sense and kept babbling to Joe various names and places. But, upon closer inspection, Joe decided that the man wasn’t only drunk, but that he was also seriously ill. In a delirium, the man gave Joe the name of a friend, and Joe reached out to the friend to help him find a place for the obviously distressed man.

When that man, a Mr. Snodgrass, arrived at Ryan’s to help Joe, he later described the delirious man as being “beastly intoxicated,” and described a man wearing dirty, unkempt clothes, his hair all askew, and vacant, staring eyes. Those clothes, by the way, appeared to not have belonged to the man–they were several sizes too large for him.

Joe and Snodgrass took the man to a doctor, a man named John Moran, who put the ailing man in a hospital for observation. Moran knew the man, had been his person physician at one time, in fact. Dr. Moran forbade any visitors to the man, and he kept him in what was basically a drunk tank inside the hospital, almost more prison than health care facility. In his condition, the only thing the ailing man could do was to call out the name Reynolds.

Over the next four days, Dr. Moran became convinced that the man was suffering from severe depression and some illness that he could not diagnose. During this time, the man’s strength ebbed and flowed. In the short periods the man became lucid, Moran kept asking what he could do for him, but the only answer he received was that the man asked the doctor to shoot him and put him out of his misery.

As the man’s condition worsened, he thrashed about on the bed. At times, he also cried out for a woman he said was his wife in Richmond, Virginia. He despaired for his traveling trunk, which he said had all his possessions in it. Finally, in the early morning hours of October 7, the man suddenly stopped his thrashing and lay still. Dr. Moran noted the time and called for the orderlies to remove the still warm body to the morgue.

All in all, it was a mysterious and curious death. Later, it would be suggested that the man suffered from cholera or even from an overdose of laudanum or opium. Some said he died from being poisoned. Even Dr. Moran became a suspect in the strange death because he didn’t inform the family of the passing for a month, and then only after the family requested information about their missing relative. And the story told here is based only on Moran’s recounting as he allowed no visitors to the room while the may lay dying.

To this day, we still don’t know the truth of how and from what the man died. Truly, it was a death worthy of a mystery story.

And that’s a fitting end to someone like Edgar Allan Poe.