He was called “The Mysterious Prisoner,” but to John George Ryan, the most baffling mystery was why he was in jail.
Ryan was a Canadian who came south to do his part for the Confederate States. He joined the Army at Crawfordville near Columbus, Miss., and was in Company B of the 12th Mississippi, Armistead’s Division. Later he served as a scout and a spy, helped organize the 18th Arkansas Cavalry and, for a time, fought under the command of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.
After the war ended, Ryan, who had achieved the rank of captain, was paroled at Jackson on May 12, 1865, and made his way to Vicksburg then upriver to Memphis. He was standing at the desk in the Gayoso Hotel, just 10 days after his parole, when a man approached and asked if he was John George Ryan, late of Confederate service. Thinking the man must be someone he had met during the war, Ryan extended his hand, but the man pulled back his coat, revealing an officer’s badge and advising him that the provost marshal wanted to see him in his office immediately.
Ryan could think of nothing that might jeopardize his parole. He had written a letter to a newspaper expressing satisfaction at Lincoln’s death, but, if that was a crime, most Southerners were also guilty.
At the provost marshal’s office, he was thoroughly searched and his personal possessions were taken, leaving him nothing but his worn-out Confederate uniform. He was given a receipt for the $16 taken from him. He was then taken to prison, “dumbfounded at my situation,” he later wrote, for no one would even hint at the reason for his arrest.
Heavy balls and chains were cold-welded to Ryan’s ankles and he was chained to the floor.
Several days later, Ryan was taken in a closed carriage to board the City of Alton and, at Cairo, Ill., he and his guards were put on a train for Baltimore.
He still had no clue why he was being held. If there were any charges against him, he was not told. Even his guards didn’t know the reason for his arrest, one telling him that all he knew was that he had heard a hint that “you are a very important prisoner.”
A newspaper he saw at Harrisburg told the story. Ryan glanced in disbelief at the headline: “I found that I was supposed to be John H. Surratt, one of Lincoln’s assassins.”
The news had spread: at Baltimore a mob might have killed him had his guards not acted quickly. In a ride to Washington, in an Army ambulance, soldiers with fixed bayonets waited for him to make a false move. In the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, he was held in a cell, where, ironically, Mary Surratt, John Surratt’s mother (also accused in the Lincoln conspiracy) had been confined.
In the jail, another prisoner was shot and killed by a guard who mistakenly thought he was Ryan. Ryan was then put in a sweat box, a dungeon-like room with vermin and rats and made almost unbearable because of the steam from the cook house and the stench from sewers.
For some untold reason, Ryan was transferred in September to the jail in Vicksburg, where his situation greatly improved. He was allowed to have company and write letters. He asked Gov. Benjamin Humphreys and Sen. William Lewis Sharkey for help.
The provost marshal at Vicksburg, Capt. C.R.E. Koch, was curious about Ryan’s imprisonment — especially a slender man shackled with ball and chain. Koch listened to Ryan’s story and concluded he was telling the truth. He appealed to Gen. H.W. Slocum, who agreed that no one should be held without being charged and directed an inquiry from the war department.
After a thorough investigation, Capt. Koch ordered the fetters removed, gave Ryan the best quarters in the jail and, as time passed, placed Ryan under parole and allowed him to spend the afternoons out of jail on condition that he would return at sundown and be locked up.
On Oct. 25, 1865, an order was issued by Gen. Peter Osterhaus that Ryan be released, but it was Nov. 8 before it was carried out. He was at last a free man but in a city where few knew him. He had no decent clothing, no money and he was far from his Toronto home.
Capt. Koch reported the case to Gen. Osterhaus, asking that transportation to Memphis be provided for Ryan. The general flatly refused. Koch turned to the owners of the opera house in Vicksburg, and a benefit was planned. On the evening of Nov. 17, sounds of gaiety filled the theater as a packed house paid to celebrate the release of Capt. Ryan. A letter from him to the Vicksburg Daily Herald expressed his thanks and asked that “the Great Giver of all good ever smile” upon those who came to his aid.
Shortly after the event, the district commander of Union troops at Vicksburg recommended every officer on his staff brevet rank promotion except Capt. Koch “because of his unwarranted sympathy for a rebel” even though Koch had given four years of loyal service in the cause of the Union.
Ryan decided to settle in Pine Bluff, Ark., where he and two friends published The Southern Vindicator. The carpetbagger government charged Ryan with “obstructing reconstruction and inciting disturbance of the peace by incendiary publications.” Nothing came of the charges, but, later, Ryan was arrested for violating a military order. That charge also was dropped. Ryan wrote not only anti-government articles, but also poetry and some Southern patriotic rhymes.
For a while, Ryan returned to Canada but then made a trip to Washington, where he sought reimbursement for his false imprisonment. He soon settled in Chicago, where he practiced law and was a leader in the Ex-Confederates Association. He worked tirelessly to make sure that the graves of Southern boys who had died in an Illinois prison were properly marked and that a memorial be established at Oakwood Cemetery. His work received the thanks of President Jefferson Davis.
Ryan died at his Chicago home and his funeral was held there on May 9, 1895. He was buried with other Confederates at Oakwood Cemetery.
Ryan never received an apology from the government for his treatment. In 1867, after Surratt was found, Ryan went to Washington to his trial and sat very near the man.
He wrote that, “While I could discover no resemblance between us, the papers declared we looked enough alike to be twins.”
Just because he resembled someone else, Ryan said, did not justify his being so cruelly treated.
STORY Gordon Cotton
IMAGES Courtesy of Old Court House Museum
