The Case of the Chapman Pirates
Martha Wallace
 |
The Cyane
(left) loomed over the
J M Chapman (right) after capturing
it in
March 1863.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,
May 9, 1863
|
Criminal Cases US Circuit Court 1863-1917
Box 1, Cases 7 & 8. United States v Ridgley
Greathouse, et al.
Box 1, Cases 7 & 8. United States v the schooner J M Chapman, her tackle, apparel, and
furniture, cargo, arms, and ammunition; Paul Shirley, commander of the USS Cyane, the officers and crew.
During the Civil War, gold from California was an important
resource for the Union, helping to fund the war. Ulysses S. Grant once said on
the topic of California’s support to the war effort, “I do not know what we
would do in this great national emergency if it were not for the gold sent from
California.”
The Big
Plan
In 1862 a group of Confederate sympathizers put together
a plan to arm a schooner and lie outside the Golden Gate and along the Pacific
Coast down to Manzanillo, Mexico, and capture ships filled with gold and silver
headed to the east coast (there were still a lot of gold shipments at this
time). The captured ships would be used as privateers with a commission from
the Confederate government. The gold and silver would be used to purchase arms
for the captured ships as well as for sending money to the Confederacy. Then
they would have California secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. The
leaders were Ridgeley Greathouse, Asbury
Harpending, and Alfred Rubery.
Asbury Harpending visited Confederate President Jefferson Davis in
Richmond and received a letter of marque, a government license authorizing the
fitting out of an armed ship to use to capture enemy ships.
Ridgley Greathouse was the one with the money. He was a wealthy banker who
had been involved in northern California mining and stage lines.
They gathered other southern sympathizers,
many of them members of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society
working to undermine Union military efforts to defeat the South.
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Daily Alta California, Volume 15,
Number 4764,
11 March
1863
|
They purchased a fast 90-ton clipper schooner, the J M Chapman, for $6500 and outfitted it
with arms (two 12-pound-shot cannons, rifles, pistols, gunpowder, and other equipment
of war). The ship was advertised to sail from Jackson Wharf in San Francisco on
March 9, 1863.
There were 22 men involved in this case:
Ridgeley Greathouse, Asbury Harpending, Alfred Rubery,
William C. Law, Lorenzo L. Libby, James Smith, John W. McFadden, William D.
Ward, John E. Kent, John Fletcher, Thomas W. Brunds, William W. Mason, George
W. Davis, Albion T. Crow, Madison H. Marshall, Thomas Poole, Alfred Aumond,
Henry C. Boyd, Joseph W. Smith, Richard H. Duval, Gideon C. Jones and Joseph G.
Baldwin Junior.
Betrayal
Someone warned the authorities. On March 14, 1863, they
were ready to sail out of San Francisco, but they kept waiting for the
captain/navigator, William Law, to return to the ship. He may have been out
getting drunk or he may have been talking to the authorities; or they may have
been planning to sail at daybreak. Some sources name Captain W. E. Travers of
the Hornet, as the informant. The crew
of the J M Chapman went to sleep on
board the ship.
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The Journal of San Diego History
April 1961
|
At dawn, on March 15, the US Naval ship, USS Cyane and a police tug came
alongside with cannons trained on the Chapman.
The Cyane crew boarded the Chapman and arrested everyone.
The 22 men were imprisoned on Alcatraz Island in Fort
Alcatraz, and set for trial, accused of treason. The fort began functioning as
a military prison in 1861 and in 1863 it was used to hold private citizens
accused of treason.
The Trial
The trial began on October 2, 1863. The indictment was
for “assisting, aiding and comforting the existing Rebellion against the United
States.”
Greathouse, Harpending, and Rubery were found guilty of
giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States and sentenced to ten
years in prison and a fine of $10,000.
 |
| Daily Alta
California, 9 Sep 1863 |
In December 1863 President Lincoln announced a general
pardon: anyone who had worked against the Union and then signed a loyalty oath
could be released. The other members of the crew were freed after swearing an
oath of loyalty to the Union. Greathouse, Harpending, and Rubery were released
in February 1864 after signing the oath. Their stories after the war are also
interesting.
Results: The opinions
rendered in this trial by Judge Ogden Hoffman, Jr., set a precedent for defining
piracy and treason until World War II.1, 2
The questions addressed were:
Were the men traitors
or enemies? The men on the Chapman
were tried as traitors not as enemies, because they lived in a state that was
in the United States, not in a state that was in the Confederacy. If the
Confederate States had been a foreign and independent nation with whom the US
was at war, the crime would still have been considered treason.
Was their plan a pirate
expedition? Did the Confederate letters of marque affect their status as
pirates, traitors, or enemies? When a civil war exists, hostilities committed
by vessels under a letter of marque are not an act of piracy.
Who was entitled to prize
money (money from the sale of the ship)?
• The J M Chapman was sold as a war prize
for $7,000. The money was divided between the United States and the informer,
Captain E. W. Travers.
• The members of
the crew of the J M Chapman were
allowed one month's salary as they were judged innocent of all charges.
• The crew of the USS Cyane, the US warship involved
in the capture, sued the US government for the prize money resulting from the
sale of the Chapman. Prize money was
due to naval crews when a pirate ship was captured. If the Chapman was declared a pirate
ship, that meant that the Confederacy was recognized as a separate nation. If
the Chapman was a US ship, the crew
were guilty of treason and no prize money was due to the Cyane crew.
Later Stories
 |
Asbury
Harpending,
taken during his active career
in San Francisco.
|
Asbury Harpending - Born in Kentucky, his previous adventures included joining
a filibuster in Nicaragua, mining in California and Mexico, and joining a
conspiracy to create a “Pacific Republic” in California. After the Civil War he
got into mining, real estate, and railroads. He was one of the financiers of
the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872, along with others such as Horace Greeley,
William C Ralston, Baron von Rothschild, and Charles Tiffany. This involved
salting land in Wyoming and Colorado with diamonds and was one of the greatest
swindles of the time. Asbury Harpending wrote his autobiography in 1913, The Great Diamond Hoax. You can read his
version of the whole incident in his own words. It is a rollicking read!3
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Marysville Daily Appeal,
Number 83, 8 April
1864
|
Ridgely Greathouse - Born in Kentucky, he had come to California where he
became a banker and gold miner, owning property in Yreka, Scott Valley, and
Shasta Valley. He was the city treasurer in Yreka and operated a canal company
and an express and passenger service between Shasta County and Jacksonville, Oregon. He was rearrested
in 1864 for breaking the parole and oath of allegiance he had signed 1861 and
1862 when leaving Kentucky. He was then sent east to Lafayette prison in New
York harbor, where he escaped by bribing a guard to bring him a saw to saw
through the bars of his window. He swam to shore, walked ten
miles to Williamsburg, and crossed over into New York. From there he went to Canada,
England, and Mexico, returning to the US under a general amnesty, perhaps to
mining in Idaho. He was driving cattle from Texas to Idaho but had to sell the
herd in Kansas. He then worked on a ranch near Matador, Texas, until his death.
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Alfred Rubery, nephew? of John Bright,
the great British statesman.
|
Alfred Rubery was born in England, so Lincoln’s amnesty did not cover
him. He received a special pardon through the help of John Bright, British
Member of Parliament, who appealed to Lincoln. John Bright wanted the man
pardoned, and England's friendship was vital; Rubery was pardoned.4
 |
Santa Cruz Public Library
|
A crew
member who was freed, Tom Poole,
came from Loma Prieta in Santa Cruz County. He had been undersheriff of
Monterey County. Those areas were hotbeds of Southern sympathy. Tom Poole was
finally hung in 1865 in Placerville in the gold country after being involved in
a shoot-out at an inn with a posse chasing a bunch of gold robbers – he was one
of them – and they were going to send the money to the Confederacy. Another
interesting story!
Another crew member who was freed, John McFadden, in 1864 was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in the
State Prison for highway robbery.
Footnotes
- The Opinon in Case No. 2,602. The CHAPMAN {4Sawy. 501.} District Court, NorthernDistrict California. Jan. 13, 1864. (LawResource.org)
- “Treason,”
by Henry Mark Holzer, 19 Sep 2005. Article delineating the importance of the
Greathouse case in defining treason. (Discoverthenetworks.org)
- The Great Diamond Hoax Chapter 8 Chapter 9 by Asbury Harpending (BooksaboutCalifornia.com)
- "Diplomat In Carpet Slippers Abraham Lincoln Deals With Foreign Affairs" by Jay Monahan (Internet Archive)
Some Online Summaries
culled from the San Francisco Examiner by Barry Goyette 
