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14
The Journal of Mississippi History
Gen. Johnson [sic] to interrupt navigation?scouts?light batteries?torpedoes?mode and place of crossing the river?how these plans may be defeated. 3. The Union sentiment in Mississippi?and how in 60 days a combined movement may be had to throw off the Jeff Davis yoke. 4. Mr. Benjamin?s operations abroad, in all their ramifications. This gentleman has twice run the blockade with dispatches for Slidell, Mason & other agents. He know?s them all intimately.... He holds the commission of Mr. Benjamin, accrediting him to the various rebel emissaries in Europe, and can be induced to place their dispatches in the hands of Mr. Seward.49
General Banks was, of course, interested in meeting Claiborne?s friend. The young agent of Secretary Benjamin was spirited from ?Laurel Wood? to Banks? headquarters in New Orleans, where he was identified as Benjamin W. Sanders, the former state librarian of Mississippi.50 Banks immediately sent the young man to Washington. The success of Sanders? visit to Union headquarters was attested by a letter he sent to Banks from Havana late in January, 1864:
I avail myself of the first suitable opportunity to apprise you of the result of my mission to Washington and the manner in which I was received by the President and the Hon. Sec. of State. . . . Sec. Seward did not hesitate for a moment to approve of the plan for thwarting the enemy?s movements abroad. He adopted^ all my propositions.... I am here, now, enroute for England and France, and will sail for Southampton on the next steamer.51
The extent of actual assistance rendered to the Union - .cause by Claiborne?s activities can only be guessed. Sanders?
_ treason, for example, doubtless would have caused consider--able injury to the Confederacy had Claiborne been able to induce him to turn traitor earlier in the war before European powers became convinced of the hopelessness of southern chances for victory.	?	*
. It is doubtful that Claiborne?s services to the Union were entirely divorced from his immediate economic in-
49 CPaiborne] to Banks, December 12, 1863, ibid.
80	B. W. Sanders, New Orleans, to Banks, January 2, 1864, ibid.
51	B. W. Sanders, Havana, to Banks, January 22, 1864. ibid.