Bennett Young took over St. Albans,
brought Civil War to New England

A tall stranger, mistaken for a minister, dismounted and drew a brace of pistols.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m a Confederate officer and my men have come to take your town. Anyone who resists will be shot.”

That began a well-planned robbery as small groups of Confederate raiders were entering three banks in St. Albans, Vt., and taking what later was declared to be more than $200,000 in gold and silver coin, greenbacks and bank securities.

The Oct. 19, 1864, event was carried out “in the name of the Confederate States Government and in retaliation for the treatment of Southern citizens by the Federals forces under Sherman and Sheridan.”

The three groups of “bank robbers” then converged on the village green where their leader and other raiders held townsmen under guard. As other aroused citizens now realized what was happening, they began to fire at the raiders with shotguns and squirrel rifles from doors and windows. The raiders returned fire, one raider would be wounded, one citizen killed and two wounded.

The raiders then began tossing bottles of firebombs in an attempt to set buildings ablaze as they galloped out of town on the toll road that led north to the border of Canada. They thundered through the tollgates, bringing the gatekeeper out screaming that they had not paid the toll.

In less than 30 minutes it was over. Lt. Bennett H. Young and his 21 rebel raiders had brought the war to New England and fought the northern most land action of the Civil War.

Young and his men fled with the money into Canada where they were arrested by authorities and held in Montreal. There, in the subsequent court case, the raiders’ extradition was sought. The court ultimately decided that the soldiers were under military orders and that the officially neutral Canada could not extradite them to America. They were freed, but the $88,000 the raiders had on them was returned to Vermont.

Young, a native of Jessamine County, left home early in 1863 and slipped though enemy lines into middle Tennessee. He enlisted as a private in the 8th Kentucky Cavalry led by Col. Roy Cluke and began a military career that was full of what was described as “many adventures.”

Under Cluke, Young learned how to disrupt enemy communications and destroy supplies and how to operate inside Union lines. The 8th Kentucky joined up with Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s command in early summer of 1863 and Bennett participated in Morgan’s raid into south central Kentucky. He was among those fighting battles at Tebbs Bend and Lebanon and on into Indiana, Ohio and Virginia.

When Morgan’s men were surrounded near Salineville, Ohio, in July 1863 and surrendered, Young was confined briefly at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, then at Camp Douglas in Chicago. His attempted escape failed and he received a 30-day sentence in an underground dungeon. He later was successful in bribing a guard and escaping in 1864. He then made his way into Canada and contacted Confederate agents there.

Young left Halifax, Nova Scotia in June for Bermuda where he obtained passage on a blockade runner bound for the last open port of the Confederacy at Wilmington, N.C. At the mouth of the Cape Fear River, the blockade runner came under heavy fire from Union gunboats. Young volunteered to take the place of a lookout that refused to stay at his post because of the danger. Bennett helped guide the ship to safety under the guns of Fort Fisher.

Traveling to Richmond, Va., he met government authorities and received from Secretary of War James A. Seddon a commission of first lieutenant in the regular army and approval of his plans for retaliatory strikes in the North.

Young returned to Wilmington and, catching the same blockade runner outbound, he sailed to Bermuda. Before leaving, he met the commander of the Confederate raider CSS Florida and was offered a place on the ship’s staff. Bennett, however, turned it down to return to Canada.

Arriving in Toronto, Young began gathering a group of escaped Confederate prisoners of war for his missions. Most of them were Kentuckians of Morgan’s command.

Young soon became a secret agent carrying funds and information to agents in Chicago and New York. None of the operations were successful, however, most of it due to Federal agents infiltrating the organization and discovering its plans.

Then came the raid at St. Albans, which was chosen as it was an important rail hub and for its proximity to the Canadian border.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Young was excluded from President Andrew Johnson’s amnesty proclamation. He could not return home until 1868. Thus, he spent time studying law and literature in Ireland and at the University of Edinburgh. After being permitted to return to the United States, he became a prominent attorney in Louisville.

His philanthropic works were legion. Young founded the first orphanage for blacks in Louisville, a school for the blind, and did much pro bono work for the poor. He also served as president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, became an author and National Commander of the United Confederate Veterans.

In 1889, Young joined the United Confederate Veterans and for the rest of his life was active in all Confederate veteran affairs throughout Kentucky. He partnered with the United Daughters of the Confederacy on many memorial projects throughout Kentucky. Some of the projects in which he was the driving force were the Zollicoffer monument at Mill Springs, the Nicholasville Confederate monument, saving the Jefferson Davis Home in Todd County and turning it into a state park, building of the Jefferson Davis Highway and his greatest monument work, the Jefferson Davis monument at Fairview. The 351-foot high obelisk is second only in size to the Washington Monument.

The establishment of Kentucky’s Confederate Soldiers Home in Pewee Valley also is said to not have been possible without his efforts.