The russians bombed wall street?

Ben Everidge for Thomas

September 16, 1920 …

(This article is unique to Thomas, our Editor-in-Chief and author of Rescuing Nicholas: The Secret Mission to Save the Tsar, published in 2018. The Hutson brothers were his great-uncles.) 

The explosion ripped through the canyons of Wall Street, anchored by Federal Hall, where George Washington had taken his oath of office eons before. Debris planted in the bomb pummeled the iconic Morgan Bank, where J.P. lorded over the financial might of the United States of America in the modern era.

Thirty-eight people and a horse died 100 years ago this week in what would be labeled the first terrorist attack on U.S. soil.  Hundreds more were injured. Despite years of investigation, the FBI was never able to determine whether it was Russian Bolsheviks or Italian anarchists who blew up the horse-drawn carriage that September noon. 

The case remains officially unsolved a century later.

Lost in the September detail of the incident is a little-known fact that at the hour of the explosion, $900 million in gold was deposited at the bank.

One of the victims of the brutal attack was the Morgan Bank chief clerk, William Joyce, ­­­­­­­who was involved in the transaction just behind a plate glass window that was inches from the detonation.  Pockmarks from the deadly attack are still evident in the marble facade of the bank to this day. 

JP Morgan’s son, Junius, was also wounded but lived.  It was believed early in the investigation that JP himself might have been the target of the assassins, but it was quickly determined that JP was on a visit to Great Britain, a fact that, indeed, the attackers would have known.

The depositor of the gold, according to an independent investigator, was the intended target of the bomb, and he almost did die that day except for a few lucky breaks during the noon hour.

The depositor, who was declared dead more than two years before, ultimately disappeared from history again, fleeing from New York City for Eastern Europe.

Were Italian anarchists responsible for the deadly bomb on Wall Street on September 16, 1920?

Or were Russian Bolsheviks the culprit?  And, if so, why?

The Eyewitness Perspective

The New York City stop was the last known task a young eyewitness soldier knew Nicholas would make on his way to a safer life in political exile.  The tasks to be completed had been in the works since the American President and the British King, Nicholas’ cousin, had hatched the Christmas 1918 escape plan at Buckingham Palace at the end of the First World War.

Martin had gone to great lengths in a noticeably short period, under orders, to teach Nicholas a Southern dialect.  Their escape from Siberia would be remarkably tense and, at times, hugely violent.  But with excellent planning and execution by Allied intelligence and military forces, their mission was roundly successful – perhaps the 20th century’s most incredible rescue mission.

At one point, the plan was for the last Tsar of Russia to shelter in Tennessee or Kentucky. Michigan and Illinois, with their large Russian émigré community, were backups to that strategy. 

Chattanooga, Tennessee, was the first choice of William Gibbs McAdoo, the man who was charged with coordinating the Romanov rescue. McAdoo was the former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and head of the United States Secret Service. He was also an experienced railroad man and, now, for the evacuation mission, head of the American Red Cross in Siberia.

McAdoo also had another major advantage. He was the son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, the President who authorized the rescue mission. Chattanooga was the preferred exile location because it was McAdoo’s hometown before he served the nation in Washington, D.C.

The American Red Cross had assisted Wilson and George V in the Siberian rescue mission, providing a hospital train for the deception known among the American Expeditionary Forces Siberia as Special Train 28.  Wilson, fittingly enough, was the 28th president of the United States and thus the designation of the rescue train for Nicholas Romanov II, the not-so-dead “late” Tsar of Russia.

US Army Private Martin V. Hutson had been selected for the two-week mission to “acclimate” the Tsar to a Southern dialect on the recommendation of his older brother, George, who was assigned to the commanding general of the Army, General Black Jack Pershing. 

George Hutson would ultimately earn the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart for his World War I Europe deployment. 

The Romanov orders had been handed down to Martin from the commanding general of the American Expeditionary Forces Siberia, Major General William Sidney Graves, a trusted officer under Pershing and distinguished United States Military Academy graduate at West Point.

Martin, who himself came from Tennessee, spent two weeks every day with Nicholas, reading the former Russian ruler every newspaper and magazine the two could get their hands on, starting in Irkutsk and ending in Harbin, China, when Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and an unnamed daughter were handed off to British officials for the remainder of the trip to New York City.

That trip would take the Romanovs through Vladivostok, Russia, to San Francisco, California, aboard naval ships coordinated by a young Assistant Secretary of the Navy and an Admiral of the British Navy. 

Their names?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

The Intelligence Perspective

The Hutson brothers contended that the depositor of the gold, valued today at around $11 billion, was not earlier killed in Siberia. 

Three other people were killed, Martin Hutson claimed in his hour-long recording, their bodies chopped up with broad axes and crude oil poured on them in the effort to spirit Nicholas Romanov away from his intended demise.

George Hutson, Martin’s older brother and one of Pershing’s aides, had long believed that the 1920 Wall Street bomb was, in fact, the work of Russian Bolsheviks intent on actually killing Nicholas Romanov once and for all.  George and Martin knew where Nicholas was supposed to be and spent the rest of their lives trying to track down the “late” monarch’s trail through history.

The final Romanov evacuation plan had called for Nicholas and several family members to be whisked out of Siberia via Vladivostok and San Francisco.  They were to have safe political exile in the United States.

But the bomb disrupted that plan. 

The bomb disrupted a lot of plans and gave history cover to claim that the Romanovs had died a tragic death in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.

Two Stories, Two Brothers

When I first heard about Martin’s Siberian adventure from Martin himself, I was intrigued but skeptical.  Why Martin?  Could his story have been true?  Why would history have gotten it so wrong?

Over decades, I would dig deeper into my Great Uncle’s account when time and circumstances permitted. 

Martin had mentioned the train by number.  I found evidence of the train in the National Archives.  Martin shared the names of the participants.  I found evidence of the participants and their roles.  Science collided with fact.  I found counter-evidence that indicated why science might have been misled.

Nicholas Romanov lived.

The question now, related to George Hutson’s opinion about the Wall Street attack, which I also heard firsthand from George many years ago, is who deposited that $900 million in gold, according to official records? 

Was Nicholas Romanov on Wall Street in the Autumn of 1920?

More digging should conclusively reveal the answer over time. 

Time and evidence were stunningly revealing about the Siberian adventure, and I am confident I will soon confirm what happened on September 16, 1920.

In the meantime, our unofficial sleuthing continues. 

Maybe others will join the search for answers to determine what history has to share about Nicholas Romanov II's life and times.

Could George Hutson’s opinion and Martin Hutson’s experience change history as we know it?