Samuel
Belle folded the letter and placed it in her desk drawer. How exactly was she supposed to plan a wedding with her betrothed in prison?
Chapter 70
Mary Jane
August 1863
The courier came promptly the morning after August 21 to deliver the news of the failed coup. Jefferson Davis read the missive in the dining room, his face falling more with every line.
“Thank you,” he told the soldier before getting up from the table to escort him out of the dining room. Mary Jane, ostensibly dusting in the hallway, caught the president’s glance for a brief second before he retreated back into the room, this time shutting the door behind him.
She immediately proceeded to the back of the house and hung a black skirt on the line. Her conviction that she needed to act quickly only grew stronger the rest of the day. Although she acknowledged that it could be her intense fear getting the better of her, it seemed that voices grew hushed when she entered the room, and the other servants’ steps became more cautious around her. In the evening, without waiting until she was dismissed, Mary Jane headed to the nearly empty outbuilding and threw what little she owned into a small bag and then walked down the hill to Shockoe Bottom. Heading east on Broad Street, she kept her pace casual as she passed the old negro prison, now converted to one for white soldiers, and turned up Church Street as dusk fell.
The Van Lew mansion was quiet and dark, but Miss Lizzie must have been waiting next to the door because it opened as soon as Mary Jane stepped onto the portico.
“The coup was overthrown?” Miss Lizzie asked when she’d shut the door behind Mary Jane.
She nodded.
Miss Lizzie folded her gnarled hands in front of her. “Praise be to God this war will be over soon.” She led Mary Jane to her former room, telling her that she would be leaving before dawn and then bidding her goodnight.
“Goodnight,” Mary Jane returned. She set a nightshirt on the bed before calling out a hesitant, “Miss Lizzie?”
Miss Lizzie turned toward her, a hand on the doorknob.
Once again, Mary Jane thought better of making a confession, even though she figured it would be the last time she would see her presumed half-sister for a long time. “Thank you for all that you have done for me.”
Miss Lizzie’s face relaxed. “Thank you, Mary Jane. You’ve served your country well.” She made to leave, but paused before saying, “I will miss you.”
“And I, you.”
“You should get some rest,” she instructed before she left.
Mary Jane finished getting changed and then pulled the covers back on her old bed before climbing in. Oftentimes when she’d slept in that same room, she felt bitterness over her lot in life. But now, her feelings of trepidation for her impending journey were mixed with a quiet satisfaction with all she’d accomplished.
Miss Lizzie came for Mary Jane at what seemed the middle of the night, leading her out the unused servants’ door at the back of the house. A farm wagon was attached to two horses, including one of Miss Lizzie’s cherished white stallions. A man hopped off the front of the wagon upon seeing the women approach.
“Mary Jane,” Miss Lizzie said in a whisper. “I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Garvin. Mr. Garvin, this is Mrs. Bowser.”
If Miss Lizzie saw Mary Jane startle in recognition at the name, she gave no sign.
The man extending his hand was not the same Mr. Garvin that Mary Jane had befriended at the Davises.’ Although he had the same kind eyes, this Mr. Garvin was much younger, his dark skin unlined and his frame well-muscled.
He directed Mary Jane to the back of the cart and, in a low voice, instructed her to lie down. Another of Miss Lizzie’s servants appeared with a shovel and hoisted something on top of Mary Jane.
“Is that manure?” Mary Jane hissed.
“Yes. We’ve got to get you through the lines, and this is the best way,” Miss Lizzie murmured from the side of the wagon.
Mary Jane gave a sigh of resignation, breathing through her mouth instead of her nose.
Despite her putrid surroundings, the revolving of the wagon wheels lulled Mary Jane into a sort of suspended state of consciousness. She wouldn’t call it sleep, but, judging by the position of the sun, a great amount of time had passed before they finally halted.
“You can come out of there now,” Mr. Garvin’s resonant voice called.
Mary Jane crawled out of the wagon with as much dignity as she could manage. Mr. Garvin offered her a hand, but she declined. Although his nose was wrinkled against the smell, he refrained from commenting on her disheveled state. He retrieved her bag from the front of the cart and gestured toward a flowing stream. “You can get cleaned up there.”
“Where are we?” Mary Jane asked when she returned, washed of the most offensive smells and clad in somewhat fresher clothes. It was mid-afternoon, but Mr. Garvin already had started a campfire to warm up food.
He leaned over to stir the fire with a long stick. “We’re in Union territory now. You needn’t worry about being caught anymore.”
Mary Jane sat on the ground across from him. “It was that easy?”
Mr. Garvin flashed her a brilliant smile. “I am quite experienced with running contraband.”
“I knew your father,” Mary Jane stated. “How is he?”
“We got him out safe as well, and he’s currently stirring up trouble in Philadelphia.”
She met his grin with a small one of her own. “Is that where we’re headed?”
Mr. Garvin poked at the fire. “Miss Lizzie told me to bring you to where your husband is stationed.”
“No.”
He nearly dropped the fire stick. “No?”
“He was only my husband because Miss Lizzie arranged our marriage. Now that I’m in free territory, I want to make it on my own.”
“But Mrs. Bowser…”
“Mary Jane.”
“Mary Jane.” Once he got the words out, he didn’t seem to know what else to say. “You don’t love him?” he asked finally.
She avoided his eyes and stared at the fire instead. “I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone.”
He set the stick down. “Now I don’t think that’s true. My father told me all about the fearless woman he’d met at the Confederate White House. I know what you did for the Union.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“If you’ll forgive my boldness, ma’am,” he said as he rose from his seat, coming around to sit beside her. “Some white people say we’re an inferior race, that we don’t have human sentiments. But they are wrong—we most certainly do. And those sentiments include the capacity to love.” He put a hand over hers. “You deserve to experience unconditional trust and affection for someone who has those feelings in return.”
Mary Jane’s first instinct was to pull her hand away, but something inside prevented her from doing so. “Maybe you’re right.”
He squeezed her hand before letting go to draw his knees up to his chest, folding his arms on top of them. “You’re free now, and your life can be what you make of it. Someday that will be true for all of our brothers and sisters.” He met her eyes. “Thanks in part to your bravery, the South cannot hold out much longer. All of our struggles will have been worth it, for they will eventually result in a Union victory.”
Mary Jane turned her head to watch the setting sun. “And an everlasting freedom for all of our people.”
* * *
Epilogue
A Note on Fact Versus Fiction Regarding the Characters in Underground:
Although Underground is a work of fiction, I attempted to relay the stories of the real-life people the best I could. However, while researching, I quickly discovered that many authors, particularly Loreta Velasquez and Allan Pinkerton, took fictional liberties with their autobiographies, so even their supposed true stories might ring a little fantastical. What follows is a synopsis about the fates of the characters as best we know.
Belle Boyd married Samuel Hardinge in August of 1864. He had been dismissed from the Union navy over the Captain Henry debacle—no longer was he a Yankee. The happy marriage quickly disintegrated when the pair ran short on funds, causing Belle to tell the press that she would have rather been back in the Old Capitol Prison than endure the suffering of poverty. The two finally relocated to England, where Samuel turned to drinking. Although the couple was becoming more estranged, they still had a baby girl in 1865.
Belle wrote her memoirs and published them under the title Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. She also took to the stage to supplement her income, starring in the comedy The Lady of Lyons. When Samuel began seeing another woman, Belle decided to take advantage of President Andrew Johnson’s promise of amnesty to former Confederates and returned to the United States. She filed for divorce, stating that she was so anxious to be rid of her husband that she would demand no alimony. From then on she claimed to be a widow, although Hardinge still lived.
Soon Belle married another Yankee, a self-proclaimed fan of her theatrical performances. Four children and two stints in an insane asylum followed. When she was forty, she disowned her eldest daughter by Hardinge for being “ruined.” To further illustrate her point, she wounded her daughter’s lover by shooting him with a revolver.
Although the scarcity of acting gigs had caused Belle to once again become poor, she managed to find money to purchase a plate and high chair for the first grandson of her old servant, Mauma Eliza. Belle died at the age of fifty-six in what is now Wisconsin Dells. Near the end of her life, she was quoted as saying, “I thank God that I can say on my deathbed that I am a virtuous woman.”
Hattie Lewis Lawton was the hardest character to pin down for this novel. As one of the first women detectives, she clearly had both the justification and impetus to frequently change her name. Indeed, Allan Pinkerton sometimes referred to her as Carrie Lawton, but Pryce Lewis, in his own memoirs, wrote of a Hattie Lewis. Most of what I could find of her were unsubstantiated rumors: both Rose Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew mentioned her in their autobiographies, although Van Lew was not aware that “Mrs. Webster” was actually an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Not much else is known about her work, especially considering the records of the Pinkerton Agency were lost in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. I therefore took great liberties in Hattie’s backstory and motivation for becoming a detective. What we do know was that there was a female employee of Pinkerton who operated under the alias H. H. L and who assisted in preventing Lincoln’s assassination before his inauguration as well as accompanying Timothy Webster on his fateful trip to Richmond. Mrs. Webster is mentioned a few times in the Richmond Examiner as being a prisoner of state who was held at first in Castle Godwin and then in Castle Thunder. There is also a note from Mrs. Wester to Jefferson Davis in which she pleaded to be freed, asking to “go home where I may seek some spot, and unnoticed pass the remainder of my dreary, dreary days.” After her release in December 1862, Hattie disappeared from the historical record all together. It is this author’s hope that her remaining days were not all dreary and that, someday, someone will discover what happened to Hattie.
Mary Jane Richards Bowser, like Hattie, went by many names. Her baptism record from St. John’s Church in 1846 listed her as Mary Jane, “a colored child belonging to Mrs. Van Lew.” Most of the other Van Lew slaves were baptized in the First African Baptist Church of Richmond, so it was clear that Mrs. Van Lew and her daughter Elizabeth treated Mary Jane differently from the rest of their slaves, even at an early age. The Richards were cousins of the Van Lews, so it is possible her last name originated from their ownership. Later in life she would tell contradicting stories of her parentage, once claiming that her mother was a Van Lew slave and that “her father was a mixture of Cuban-Spaniard and Negro,” although she also one declared that she never knew her parents.
On August 21, 1860, the Richmond Whig reported, "Mary Jones, alias Mary Jane Henley, a likely mulatto girl, about twenty years of age, arrested for being without free papers, was committed for nine days. She was sent to the North about nine years ago, by a highly respectable lady of this city, for the purpose of receiving a thorough education, after completing which she went to Liberia." It was not soon after she returned from Liberia that she found herself in the slave jails of Lumpkin’s Alley.
Mary Jane did indeed marry Wilson Bowser on April 16, 1861 (the day before Virginia seceded), once again in Saint John’s Church. The official record stated they were "(colored) servants to Mrs. E. L. Van Lew." Although there is no other record of their relationship, or intention for marriage for that matter, a Wilson Bowser enlisted with the 27th US Colored Infantry, giving his age as 44 in 1863. If this was the same man, he was more than two decades older than his wife. Soon after the capture of Richmond by Union troops, Mary Jane Richards was teaching former slaves to read and write. She never again used the last name Bowser, although Wilson Bowser was still living at that time.
After the war, Mary Jane traveled North to give speeches about her wartime experiences, using the pseudonyms Richmonia Richards and Richmonia R. St. Pierre. In 1867 she wrote a letter to her employer—she had helped found a freedman’s school in Georgia—to inform him that she had married and signed it Mary J. R. Garvin. She continued to argue for equal rights for blacks in both the North and the South until she too disappeared from the records, at the probable age of 28.
Loreta Janeta Velasquez wrote a hotly contested book called The Woman in Battle, originally published in 1876. In it she claimed to have participated as Harry Buford in the battles of Bull Run and Shiloh, among others. At first I took her portrayal of her adventures with a grain of salt, knowing it made for a great story, but also that some of her timeline conflicted with known events. However, upon reading William C. Davis’s well-researched book, Inventing Loreta Velasquez, I realized that Loreta was nothing more than a 19th century con-artist, who probably never saw a battle in her life. Although she declared herself to be the descendent of Cuban aristocrats, she was probably born in New Orleans and resorted to prostitution as a teenager to make ends meet. There is no record of her marrying before Tom De Caulp, who was indeed a Confederate soldier that eventually defected to the Union. His real name was most likely William Irving, and he had a son by his first wife, whom he never divorced and who was still living when he married Loreta. In her novel, Loreta claimed he died in battle, a convenient death for the husband of someone who claimed to be devoted to the Confederate cause and who couldn’t bring herself to relay his desertion.
After the war, Loreta was involved in various schemes, including gold-mining out West and raising money for a non-existent railroad. She married at least three more times and had a son, or possibly two. She continued to change her story every time she spoke to the press, so it is difficult to discern what was fact from fiction. She died in a mental hospital in 1923 when she was around eighty years old.
Want to know why Loreta’s name was mentioned during Lincoln’s assassination trial? Visit www.kitsergeant.com to find out!
* * *
Selected Bibliography
Abbott, Karen. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War. Harper Perennial, 2015.
Boyd, Belle, and Sam Wilde Hardinge. Belle Boyd In Camp and Prison. London: Saunders, Otley, and, 1865.
Davis, William C. Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist. Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.
Enss, Chris. The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Guilford, CT: TwoDot, an Imprint of Globe Pequot, 2017.
Mortimer, Gavin. Double Death: The True Story of Pryce Lewis, the Civil Wars Most Daring Spy. New York, NY: Walker & Company, 2010.
Nolan, Jeannette Covert. Yankee Spy: Elizabeth Van Lew. New York: Messner, 1970.
Recko, Corey. A Spy for the Union: The Life and Execution of Timothy Webster. Jefferson, NC: McFarland
& Company, Publishers, 2013.
Pinkerton, Allan. The Spy of the Rebellion: True History of the Spy System of the United States Army during the Civil War. New York, NY: GW Dillingham, 1900.
Scarborough, Ruth. Belle Boyd: Siren of the South. Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Pr., 1983.
Velazquez, Loreta Janeta, and C.J Worthington. The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velasquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army. Hartford, CT: T. Belknap, 1876.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my critique partners: Ute Carbone, Theresa Munroe, and Karen Cino, for their comments and suggestions. I am eternally thankful to the gracious Kathy Lance for her superb editing skills. And as always, a special thank-you goes to my wonderful family, especially Tommy, Belle, and Thompson, for their unconditional love and support.
L’Agent Double
Spies and Martyrs in the Great War
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review
Although this book is based on real events and features historical figures, it is a work of fiction. Most of the dialogue and incidents in the story are products of the author’s imagination and should not be construed as historical fact.
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