Albert D. Richardson

Albert Deane Richardson (October 6, 1833 – December 2, 1869) was a well-known American journalist, Union spy, and author. He wrote a book about his own experiences and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Richardson was shot on two occasions, the second time fatally, by a jealous husband of the woman Richardson was in love with.

Timeline

Born in Franklin, Massachusetts, October 6, 1833

Obtained first job with newspaper, Pittsburgh Commercial Journal, 1851.

Married Mary Louise Pease, April 1855.

Correspondent for the Boston Journal, 1857.

Edited The Western Mountaineer of Golden City, Colorado, 1860.

Journalist for the New York Daily Tribune.

Captured by the Confederates at Vicksburg, May 3, 1863.

Wife and daughter died.

Escaped Salisbury, North Carolina, prison, December 18, 1864.

Shot by Daniel McFarland, March 14, 1867.

Wrote Through to the Pacific for the New York Tribune, May–June, 1869.

Shot again by Daniel McFarland, November 25, 1869.

Married Abby Sage McFarland, November, 1869; marriage performed by Henry Ward Beecher.

Died December 2, 1869 (McFarland acquitted in a sensational trial).

Civil War imprisonment and escape

Richardson wrote for the New York Tribune owned by Horace Greeley, and traveled to battlefields during the American Civil War to report on the war, often with fellow journalist Junius Henri Browne.

Richardson and Browne were imprisoned for 20 months in seven different prisons, confined successively at Vicksburg, Jackson, Atlanta, Richmond, and Salisbury, North Carolina, prisons. On December 18, 1864, after 20 months of imprisonment, he escaped from Salisbury, along with Browne. They traveled together more than 400 miles through hostile country, and reached the Union lines on January 14, 1865. His list of Union soldiers who died at Salisbury, published in the Tribune, is the only authentic account of their fate.