William Alvin Lloyd (July 4, 1822 – March 17, 1869) was an American con man, convicted felon and minstrel troupe impresario who, under the guise as steamboat and railroad guide publisher, claimed to be employed during the Civil War as a personal spy for President Abraham Lincoln.
Finally opening his own tailoring business, Lloyd married and fathered two children but abruptly left his home and family in 1846 to follow a traveling minstrel troupe, eventually assuming the duties of manager, marketer and prominent impresario.
Between bouts of failure, poverty, blackmailing, swindling and serial bigamy, as he traveled throughout the Northeast and Midwest with his troupe, Lloyd was often on the run from the police, leading new minstrel bands and publishing a steamboat and railroad guide, an anti-abolitionist, southern right mouthpiece that excoriated Abraham Lincoln and his administration.
When the Civil War began and his latest minstrel band folded because of his hard-handed management and his failure to pay his performers, along with his pro-Confederate stance, he decided he must go south.
[1] On July 13, 1861, William Alvin Lloyd, in desperate need of money, came to President Abraham Lincoln to request a passport to allow him travel into the Confederate States of America.
[1] Within a day or two he had bought his way out and for the next few years crisscrossed Dixie, collecting monies owed him and trying to revive his dormant "Steamboat & Railroad Guide".
In the following four years Lloyd remained in the Confederacy researching for his publications, and allegedly providing human intelligence (HUMINT) to President Lincoln.
[5] Lloyd and his business partners had a well established presence in the Confederacy prior to the war, which afforded them an easier time moving about the country.
President Grant, per his papers, on May 27, 1865, endorsed reimbursement to Mr. W. Alvin Loyd and forwarded the action to the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who in turn handed it to Judge Advocate Joseph Holt's office for examination.
In spite of what might be considered unreliable information and little proof, Lloyd ultimately received $3,427.20 in gold and walked away, to pursue a variety of careers before dying on March 17, 1869.