This is from the American Civil War Research Database :
James W. Boyd
Residence
Madison County TN;
Enlisted as a 1st Lieutenant (date unknown).
He was listed as:
* POW (date and place not stated)
Promotions:
* Capt
He also had service in:
"F" Co.
TN 6th Infantry
Sources used by Historical Data Systems, Inc.:
- Index to Compiled Confederate Military Service Records
- Information provided by HDS subscribers
- Research by Christine Miller
(c) Historical Data Systems, Inc. @
www.civilwardata.com
NOTES:
The following was submitted by:
Dr. Chris Miller
Department Coordinator, Department of General Education
Davenport University
220 E. Kalamazoo St.
Lansing, MI 48933
517-367-8244
To amend your records, James W. Boyd of the 6th Tenn Infantry, Enlisted as Lt, promoted
to Capt.
He was part of company F (Madison County, Jackson Tenn) which ceased to exists and
was combined with other companies, including Company L which did not go to Shiloh but
Corinth. (letters of William Augustus Nobles,
http://www.geocities.com/sixth_tennessee/Nobles.html)
There, as part of Van Dorn's Army, he joined the Scouts, which upon passage of the
Partisan Ranger Act, in April '62 (see )
would take on increasing importance in the Mississippi theater. All cavalry scounts in
this theater would be partisans, irregulars, not regular cavalry. This made it difficult
for all generals to accept them, with the lessons of Missouri and Quantrill on their
mind. One General who did buy into the idea was a brigadeer in Van Dorn's army,
John B. Villepigue. Capt. James W. Boyd is next seen in charge of training scouts and
secret service while attached to Villepigue's Brigade, from the time Van Dorn enters
Mississippi until he is replaced by Pemberton (see a handwritten letter from Boyd
to Secretary of War Stanton, when Boyd is a prisoner in Carroll prison, February 14, 1865.
Images and transcription of original in Turner-Baker Papers microfilm set. Roll 135,
Frame Numbers 411-413). Here he gives his credentials with this army quite clearly.
He is offering his services to Stanton, in exchange for getting out of prison, as he
has a large family that needs him, and like many Tennesseans, he was essentially a
Union man anyway.
He does not, however, tell what he does next. This information he retains as a man of
honor and so do others that possess it, until all who can be harmed by it have passed on.
Shortly after the death of General Lunsford Lomax, John Singleton Mosby gives an
interview to Carolyn Harper Long in which he states:
General Lomax was with McCulloch in West Tennessee and after McCulloch was killed he
was with Van Dorn. In the Fall of 1862 he was ordered to Richmond on a special mission.
He was then detailed back to Van Dorn just before Christmas. He was a Lt. Colonel and
placed in command of the 11th Virginia Cavalry. When Lomax was in Richmond he learned
of his future transfer to Virginia. He had a scout sent up from Tennessee to assess
the military information situation and to set up partisan scouts in the valley. Up to
that time everything in this area had been disorganized and difussed [sic] and
relatively ineffective. Lomax wanted a scouting system identical with the very excellent
system which existed in West Tennessee. He picked his men from amongst the scouts in
West Tennessee and selected a man by the name of Boyd. He had been a railroad detective
and he was among the best they had. He arrived in Richmond several days before Lomax
left and Boyd proceeded on to Staunton where he was met by one of Winder's detectives
by the name of Turner. Boyd recruited and trained some 35 to 40 men in Rockingham,
Shenandoah and Augusta counties and formed them into the Linville Partisan Rangers.
He taught them the fine points of scouting, telegraph line tapping, use of blasting
powder, and all the other things a good scout needs to know. Boyd was one of Van Dorn's
best scouts and did a fine job of setting up the partisans in the Valley.
Lomax had also arranged for me to begin independent operations in Loudon County to the
North. I got started about the first of the year. At that time I only had a few men,
less than a dozen but we soon expanded and trained the men we had. We never were a
large group nor were we designed to be a large fighting force. We had to form up and
dissolve into the countryside in a few minutes. Secrecy was our greatest ally. We didn't
drill like regulars and we had no permanent camps to provide that camp drudgery so
disliked by regulars. We used dinner bells and whistles to signal with and to cause
assembly. ...
In June of that year my outfit was designated the 43rd Battalion Partisan Rangers.
But on his way back to Tennessee Boyd was captured and in fact did not get back to
Tennessee before Lomax was transferred to Virginia. In February, after the capture of
Boyd became known, the Linville Rangers were put under the command of Jake Cook but
they were never officially recognized by the Confederate government and they were never
paid. But they were active throughout the valley and they provided good information to
Lomax. (This article was copyright by Beth Rhoades in the Baltimore Sun in 1920.
Mosby had asked Caroline not to publish it until after his death, which she thought
a little unfair, since they were about the same age. Beth Rhoades was her executor.)
The story of Boyd's capture appears in the records of Lafayette Baker's National
Detective Police in October 1863. He was captured in his home. It is stated that he
agreed to go to Johnson Island to inform on the activities there in exchange for his
life. As his wife was suffering from chronic bronchitis, it was clear to him that his
family needed him alive, so he agreed to the bargain. The obituary of Caroline Boyd
in December 1864 or Jan. 1865 in the West Tennessee Whig states that her husband,
Captain James W. Boyd, of the 6th Tennessee Infantry, CSA, was "now a prisoner of war."
Boyd was released from prison, only to become a prisoner of fate. Mosby's statement
continues:
Between the first of October of 1864 and the end of March of 1865 there had developed
no less than five serious plots to get rid of Lincoln in one way or another. Before
long the plotters began to interfer with each other and it was suspected that before
long government detectives would make wholesale arrests. Instead it seems as if most
of the detectives were waiting to see who would come out on top so that they could
line up with the winners. During that winter of 1864-65 the capture plan kept being
delayed by one thing after the other ...Men who were sent to Booth from my command were
told that he could not move yet for one reason or another and so on and on it went.
I was by this time convinced that the man was not up to the job. He had brought people
into the plan who were totally unreliable and it was clear that he had a poor head for
organization of such an undertaking. Also, by this time events had moved along to the
point where inaction would mean lost opportunities and with these lost opportunities,
the loss of Richmond and the war. Booth was prepared by a man of proven abilities,
Captain James W. Boyd, the Tennessean....Then John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln."
Compounding Boyd's difficulties was now he was working for both sides, with the same
loyalty and commitment he gave to every task. He was picked up by the rescue party,
along with Davey Herold, a known Booth associate--so says the testimony of a detective
from Baker's organization, who was trailing the real Booth when the order reached him
to return to Washington as Booth was dead. While this evidence cannot be corroborated--
in fact, contemporary historians (see Steers and Kauffman) have gone to great lengths
to prove both that the detective never existed and he is wrong, testimony given at the
trial indicates that there actually were two sets of fugitives, Booth and Hynson and
Boyd and Herold. How do we know? 1) the men who stopped at Mudd's were Booth and Hynson.
Hynson gave his own name because he knew Mudd knew him. Not knowing whether Mudd knew
Booth, he gave a false name for Booth. Neither Mudd nor anyone on his property, from
among servants or guests, identified under oath, the other person as Davey Herold.
Herold was tall, lankey, with a heavy growth. Hynson was short, clean shaven, not even
peach fuzz. At this time Booth shaves, according to testimony. 2) When the pair arrives
at Garrett's farm, Boyd gives his name as Boyd. He has a mustache, and in fact, the
mustache on the corpse is identified as curling around his mouth. 3) The lieutenant
who receives Herold as he runs from the barn hears him cry: "Who is that man you shot
in the barn?" The officer replies: "You know very well who it is. It is Booth." "That
is not Booth. He said his name was Boyd." Now, this is not a time when someone would be
predisposed to lie. He recanted later, but who wouldn't say whatever the interviewers
wanted you to say, if you thought you were going to walk away at the end? And everyone
who knew him said Herold was impressionable. He may have even been convinced by that
time it was Booth. Maybe. 4) In his diary Booth refers to his companion as praying
for him day and night. In the first released version of the diary, someone has put
in the bracketed name of [Davey Herold] though this does not appear in the diary itself.
No one had ever, in fact, heard Davey Herold utter a prayer or pious word. Ed Hynson,
however, was noted for his piety, a product of a catholic education and fervent in
religious practice. 5) Hynson's mother was the sister of the doctor who identified
Booth's body. He confessed he was reluctant to do so. The scar on the back of the neck
was the only identifying characteristic, and in a time of war, how many men could be
found with similar markers.
The last section requires proof that does not exist. Historical truth in assassination
history takes the back seat to official stories. If political forces would move in the
direction of exhuming the remains of the alleged Booth, it would be easy enough to find
the descendants of James W. Boyd, to prove conclusive he was the man in the barn. Till
then, the first part of the story, through Mosby's statement, is verified in print.
The rest is conjecture but in many cases conjecture is all we have and is not a
victim of such rapid opposition.