Jacob Thompson

Who was Jacob Thompson?

Jacob Thompson was the United States Secretary of the Interior, who resigned on the outbreak of the American Civil War, to become Inspector General of the Confederate States Army.

In 1864, Jefferson Davis asked Thompson to lead a delegation to Canada, where he appears to have been leader of the Confederate Secret Service. From here, he is known to have organised many anti-Union plots, and was suspected of many more, including a possible meeting with Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Union troops burned down his mansion in Oxford, Mississippi, home-town of William Faulkner, who based some of his fictional characters on Thompson.