Martha Cassell: A Very Rank Rebel

   On the morning of February 6, 1864, a long list of names to whom unclaimed letters at the St. Louis Post Office were addressed was published in the Daily Missouri Democrat. One of the names was Martha Washington, an alias that twenty-three-year old Martha Cassell had adopted to communicate with Confederate prisoners and soldiers. After reading the notice in the newspaper, the black-eyed, black-haired Miss Cassell headed for the post office later that morning. Unbeknownst to her, she was walking into a trap.
   Martha was born in Marion County, Missouri, about 1840 to dentist John F. Cassell and his wife, Ann. Shortly after Martha’s birth, the family returned to Maryland, where Martha’s older siblings had been born, but they came back to Marion County in the late 1840s and took up residence near Palmyra, where Dr. Cassell had his dental practice.
   Martha, or Mattie as she was often called, went to St. Louis in late 1863 to live with an older sister, Mary Squire. During her stay in St. Louis, Martha began sending and receiving letters to and from several Confederate prisoners and soldiers, but it wa her correspondence with Lewis Rogers, alias F. M. Kaylor, that got her into serious trouble.
   A native of Boone County, Rogers had served in the Missouri State Guard early in the war, but he later took to the bush as a guerrilla. He stayed with his uncle in Marion County in 1863, at which time he likely became acquainted with Martha Cassell. He was captured in St. Louis in mid-September 1863, accused of being a notorious guerrilla and a “hard case,” and lodged in the Myrtle Street Prison. At the request of Rogers’ uncle, Martha began a correspondence with the young man. Rogers escaped sometime in November, roamed into northern Missouri, and then ventured into Clark County, Illinois, where he tried to incite “an insurrection among Copperheads.” (Copperhead was a pejorative term for a Northern citizen who nominally favored the Union but who opposed the war.) While Rogers was on the lam, he resumed writing to Martha Cassell. Their exchange of letters while he was in prison was through legal, military channels, but by corresponding with a Rebel fugitive, Martha was now breaking the law.
   What Martha didn’t know was that Union authorities had already been alerted that someone in St. Louis had apparently been corresponding with the fugitive Rogers under the name Martha Washington, and they were waiting her her on the morning of February 6 when she called at the post office. Although the content of the letter Miss Cassell picked up that day was relatively harmless, she was arrested, charged with corresponding with the rebel enemies of the United States, and committed the St. Charles Street Female Prison.
   Miss Cassell protested that she had picked the suspicious letter up for a friend, but Union officials did not believe her, especially after she was unable to identify Martha Washington, her supposed friend. After her arrest, other, more incriminating letters from Rogers came to light. In the most damning one, he told Martha about the uprising he'd help instigate and said he was proud of his exploits. He said he wanted to “see a Civil War and wild desolation sweep the North.”
   Martha remained in prison for several months, with her health deteriorating, before her case was finally tried by military commission in late June 1864. Described as “a very rank rebel” by one Federal officer, Martha was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment in the Missouri State Penitentiary for the duration of the war. It was late August, however, before she, along with Pauline White (see last week’s post), were sent from St. Louis to Jefferson City.
   Influential allies, including Missouri Supreme Court justice John D. S. Dryden, soon got involved in Martha’s case, and President Lincoln pardoned her in late October, while her friend Pauline spent another eight months in the state prison. After the war, Martha went home to Marion County, where she married Washington West in 1868. She apparently died shortly afterwards (a demise hastened perhaps by the unhealthful conditions she experienced in prison), because there is no trace of her after the marriage and her husband was back home living with his parents in 1870
   This post is condensed from a chapter in my book Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.