Jacob Thompson

For the English painter, see Jacob Thompson (painter).

Not to be confused with Jake Thompson.

was appointed to the United States Senate in 1845, but

never received the commission, and the seat went to
Joseph W. Chalmers. Thompson was the chairman of
the
Committee on Indian Aairs in the 29th Congress.
Jacob Thompson (May 15, 1810 March 24, 1885) was
He lost reelection to the 32nd Congress and went back to
the United States Secretary of the Interior, who resigned
on the outbreak of the American Civil War, to become practicing law until 1857, when newly elected President
James Buchanan appointed Thompson United States SecInspector General of the Confederate States Army.
retary of the Interior.
In 1864, Jeerson Davis asked Thompson to lead a delegation to Canada, where he appears to have been leader of In the later years of the Buchanan administration, the
the Confederate Secret Service. From here, he is known cabinet members argued with one another on issues of
to have organised many anti-Union plots, and was sus- slavery and secession.
pected of many more, including a possible meeting with
Lincolns assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

1.1 Thompsons alignment with the Con-

Union troops burned down his mansion in Oxford, Misfederacy

sissippi, home-town of William Faulkner, who based
some of his ctional characters on Thompson.
Thompson sided with the Confederacy and resigned as
Interior Secretary in January 1861. When he resigned,
Horace Greeley's New-York Daily Tribune denounced
him as a traitor, remarking, Undertaking to over1 Biography
throw the Government of which you are a sworn minister
may be in accordance with the ideas of cotton-growing
Born in Leasburg, North Carolina, in 1810, Thompson atchivalry, but to common men cannot be made to appear
tended Bingham Academy in Orange County, North Carcreditable.[1]
olina, and later went on to graduate from the University
of North Carolina in 1831. Afterwards, he served on the Thompson became Inspector General of the Confederate
university faculty for a short time until he left to study law States Army. Though not a military man, Thompson later
in 1832. He was admitted to the bar in 1834 and com- joined the army as an ocer and served as an aide to
General P.G.T. Beauregard at the Battle of Shiloh. He
menced practice in Pontotoc, Mississippi.
attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was present at
several other battles in the Western Theater of the war,
including Vicksburg, Corinth and Tupelo.

1.2 Commissioner in Canada

In March 1864, Jeerson Davis asked Thompson to lead
a secret delegation in Canada. He accepted and arrived in
Montreal in May of that year. Thompson appears to have
been the leader of Confederate Secret Service operations
in Canada.
From there, he directed a failed plot to free Confederate prisoners of war on Johnsons Island, o Sandusky,
Ohio, in September. He also arranged the purchase of a
President Buchanan and his Cabinet
steamer, with the intention of arming it to harass shipping
From left to right: Jacob Thompson, Lewis Cass, John B. Floyd,
in the Great Lakes. Regarded in the North as a schemer
James Buchanan, Howell Cobb, Isaac Toucey, Joseph Holt and
and conspirator, many devious plots were associated with
Jeremiah S. Black, (c. 1859)
his name, though much of this may have been public hysThompson got involved in politics and was elected to teria.
the 26th Congress, serving from 1839 to 1851. He On June 13, 1864, Thompson met with former New
1

York governor Washington Hunt at Niagara Falls.[2] According to the testimony of Peace Democrat Clement
Vallandigham, he met Thompson and talked to him
about creating a Northwestern Confederacy and obtained
money for arms, which was routed to a subordinate.
Thompson gave Ben Woods, the owner of the New York
Daily News, money to purchase arms.[3]
One plot was a planned burning of New York on November 25, 1864, in retaliation for Union Generals Philip
Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman's scorchedearth tactics in the south.[4] Some speculate that John
Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, met
with Thompson, but this has not been proven (Thompson worked hard to clear his name of involvement in the
assassination in the years after the war). His manor called
Home Place in Oxford, Mississippi, was burned down
by Union troops in 1864.
After the Civil War, Thompson ed to England and later
returned to Canada as he waited for passions to cool in
the United States. He eventually came home and settled
in Memphis, Tennessee, to manage his extensive holdings. Thompson was later appointed to the board of the
University of the South at Sewanee and was a great benefactor of the school.
He died in Memphis and was interred in Elmwood Cemetery.
William Faulkner, who was also a resident of Oxford,
loosely based several ancestral members of the Compson
family, featured in The Sound and the Fury, on Thompson.

References

[1] New-York Daily Tribune, January 9, 1861, p. 4.

[2] p. 145, Castleman, John Breckenridge. Active Service.
Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal Job Printing, 1917.
[3] p. 146, Castleman, John Breckenridge. Active Service.
Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal Job Printing, 1917.
[4] p. 54, Benn Pitman. United States. Army. Military
Commission (Lincoln Assassins: 1865). The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators.
Cincinnati, OH: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1865.

External links

Jacob Thompson at the Biographical Directory of the

United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-5-12
The Jacob Thompson Collection (MUM00266) can
be found in the William and Marjorie Lewis Collection at the University of Mississippi in the Archives
and Special Collections.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Jacob Thompson. Find a Grave. Retrieved May

12, 2009.

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

4.1

Text

Jacob Thompson Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Thompson?oldid=660637483 Contributors: John K, Jengod, Bearcat,

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