Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

by Karen Abbott

  After a moment of hesitation, Mary Jane agreed to the plan.

  Elizabeth selected her finest walking dress, pinning a calycanthus flower to the collar to ward off the smells of the city, and smoothed the dark blond curls that wreathed each temple. Broad cedar trees rose along Grace Street, shading and dappling the lawns, sketching shadows that shifted with each fetid breeze. She hurried on through Church Hill, the homes strung along like magnificent beads, every other one a different style—Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne—as if the inhabitants all longed for a different time and place.

  It was a fifteen-minute stroll to the Confederate White House, a route that took her past Seabrook’s Warehouse, the train depot, the Medical College of Virginia. Every few blocks she turned her head halfway, checking to see if she was being followed. By all appearances this was just a simple social call, one refined Southern lady extending a courtesy to another—a visit Elizabeth needed to make now, while the war was still new and the rebels were holding their own.

  The Confederate White House.

  (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The Confederate White House stood at the corner of Twelfth and Clay Streets, a gray-stuccoed neoclassic mansion set high on a hill, overlooking the slave markets in Shockoe Valley. The house was one of very few in Richmond that had a proper water closet; a cistern on the roof collected rainwater to flush the toilet and then emptied waste directly onto Clay Street. The servants’ quarters, where Mary Jane would live, were located in an adjoining outbuilding. A diverse group of slaves, free blacks, and immigrants tended to Jefferson and Varina Davis and their four children and organized the daily operations of the home, the cost of which averaged $2,800 per month—this, when the average Virginia farmer earned $137 per year. Katherine, the Irish nanny, supervised play in the nursery and the backyard, where Jeff Davis Jr. shot imaginary Yankees with his miniature cast-iron cannon. Jim Pemberton worked as the president’s enslaved manservant, and his wife, Betsy, as an enslaved maid. Another Irishwoman, Mary O’Melia, acted as general housekeeper and devoted companion to Varina, helping the First Lady dress in the morning and overseeing receptions for Confederate officials. William Jackson, the president’s enslaved coachman, prayed daily for his boss’s defeat.

  Elizabeth navigated her way to the front steps, and Henry, the enslaved butler, welcomed her into the entrance hall, where life-size statues of Comedy and Tragedy clutched gas lamps and loomed in mute judgment. She was led into the drawing room, done entirely in French rococo, red damask adorning each wall and chair. Varina’s Parian ware figurines of goddesses and cherubs, a collection that her husband dismissed as “trumpery,” cluttered every surface. In the center of the room stood a Carrara mantel with goddesses engraved in the marble. Every evening before bed, Varina’s boys, Jeff and Joe, stopped to kiss them.

  Elizabeth eased herself into a settee across from Varina Davis. The First Lady was pregnant, due to give birth just before Christmas, and had forgone silk and hoop skirts for a sacque dress, petticoat, and maternity corset, threaded with cords instead of steel for greater flexibility. In another place and time the two women might have been friends. Despite her elevated position, Varina, too, was viewed warily by old Richmond blue bloods. Society ladies, even the ones who professed to like her, whispered about her dark skin and “tawny” looks, calling her a mulatto and a “squaw” behind her back. They thought her too sarcastic, too blunt, too crude. During a summer dinner party, when a guest lamented that the underwear for an entire Confederate regiment had been made with two left legs—most men “dressed right,” requiring a more generous cut on that side—she horrified everyone by laughing out loud.

  Then there was the troubling matter of her Northern kinfolk and associations: her paternal grandfather was a former governor of New Jersey, and Varina, like Elizabeth, had been educated in Philadelphia (her mother’s family hailed from Mississippi, and she jokingly called herself a “half-breed Yankee on one side and Confederate on the other”). Richmond authorities had begun screening mail and arresting people for writing to relatives in the Union, a policy that did not deter Varina in her own correspondence. She trusted, rightly, that her social status and gender gave her immunity from formal investigation, if not from suspicion.

  Pregnancy was not a topic of polite conversation, and so Elizabeth and Varina chatted about the holiday season—how lovely that the Davis children were gathering some of their old treasures for the orphans’ tree. And the New Year’s Day open house promised to be delightful, especially with the unseasonably warm weather—which one newspaper called a “harbinger of gladness in the future”—and high spirits after the recent Confederate victory at Ball’s Bluff (a pity, though, that Lincoln seemed poised to release Mason and Slidell and end the Trent Affair). How many callers did President Davis expect? Would the Armory Band play on the lawns? Elizabeth had heard about the carriage accident Varina suffered back in October—how fortunate that her injuries weren’t grave.

  First Lady Varina Davis.

  (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  (t the right moment Elizabeth segued into the reason for her visit. She understood that the First Lady was seeking qualified help. Might Elizabeth recommend one of her own staff, Mary Jane, “an excellent house servant who never faltered in the dining room or parlor?” True, Mary Jane was not terribly bright, but Elizabeth found her to be a dedicated, hardworking girl. It was the least she could do to help, especially at this busy tim)

  Varina accepted, and Elizabeth prepared her servant for the move. If all went smoothly, the Confederate White House would be Mary Jane’s home for the duration of the war. She would act the part of the simple, illiterate maid, obsequious in manner and bumbling in speech. No one would notice her slyly weaving herself into the routines and customs of the home. No one would think twice when she cleaned the president’s library, lingering as she dusted the desk piled with maps of fortifications and statistics about his troops. No one would guess she could comprehend, let alone memorize, entire discussions between Davis and his generals. She knew how to be invisible, to render herself merely the sum of others’ projections, and she would be ready whenever Elizabeth gave the word.

  [ PART TWO ]

  1862

  NOT YOUR IDEAL OF A BEAUTIFUL SOLDIER

  THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, VIRGINIA

  One January morning Belle donned her dark green riding dress, accessorized with a lieutenant colonel’s pair of shoulder straps and a wool felt hat, a feather pinned to its crown. She saddled Fleeter and, riding astride, began galloping through the streets, defying both social convention and Martinsburg’s law against traveling faster than at a canter. Confederate soldiers, currently in control of the town, were busy building earthworks fortifications along its perimeter, stabbing at the frozen ground with shovels and picks and piling woven bundles of brush. Waving, she continued, crossing the arched stone bridge over Opequon Creek and plunging into the valley. It unfurled for miles beyond, carpeted alternately by field and forest, bare branches like upturned spiders’ legs scrabbling at the sky, snow-dappled mountains fencing her in on all sides, an exquisite but interminable trap.

  She was tired of the long, dark slog of winter, spent under her mother’s close and fretful watch. After the skirmish over the bottle of whiskey, Mary Boyd—appalled by the incident and concerned about Belle’s increasingly dangerous behavior—began imploring trusted Confederate soldiers to chaperone her. Captain John Q. Winfield of the 7th Virginia Infantry obliged, taking Belle to a wedding reception in Martinsburg and delighting in her company. “She is quite a favorite with me,” he wrote to his wife, “possessing an originality and vivacity, no-care-madcap-devil-of-a-temperament that pleases. Her mother who is much of a lady and had shown me much kindness asked me to take her daughter under my charge.”

  Another soldier, Private J. C. Webb of the 27th North Carolina Infantry, was equally charmed. “Not what I call a beauty,” he decided, “but a handsome woman
” who seemed she would “dare do anything she made her mind up to, regardless of consequences.” Belle assured him that she had been much more reserved before the war, and offered Webb a ride in her private carriage. She also had a brief romance with one Dr. Cherry, a wealthy thirty-five-year-old soldier originally from Mississippi, and told everyone they would marry in February—a date she never intended to keep.

  Fun diversions, all of them, but Belle longed for spring and the return of the war, with all of its “perils and its pleasures, its griefs and its joys.” She feared that the enemy might forget her very existence unless she took measures to remind them. The Virginia papers reported daily updates on General George McClellan, who remained ill from typhoid fever despite the best efforts of his doctor and cheerful serenades from a regimental brass band. He conducted all business from his bed—not that there was much to do, since he had no immediate plans to attack the Confederates and take Richmond. On January 10 an exasperated President Lincoln called a council at the White House and spoke frankly with his aides. “I am in great distress,” he confessed. “If something is not done soon, the bottom will be out of the whole affair, and if General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it, provided I could see how it could be made to do something.” He was equally frustrated with events in the western theater, save for the capture of Paducah, Kentucky, by Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant. The Union military command had split into three separate departments—the Department of Kansas, the Department of Missouri, and the Department of the Ohio—and no one could agree on a strategy for operations.

  Belle rode northwest, heading toward Morgan County, the frigid wind slapping her cheeks. Her greatest adventure over the winter had occurred only inside her mind. During a ride just like this one, she told neighborhood friends, she happened to run into two Confederate officers, one of them a cousin. There was a sudden crack of a rifle, causing Fleeter to spook and tear off in a panic. She clenched the reins, pulling back and seesawing left and right, ordering him to stop, willing him to be calm with her calm. His defiance infuriated her, and she could do nothing but hang on and let him take her through the valley wherever he wished to go. After his panic subsided, she continued in that direction for several miles, eventually entering Union territory. The rebel officers didn’t dare follow.

  Without hesitation, she rode straight up to the Union officers in command of the picket.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said sweetly, “you must know that I have been taking a ride with some of my friends. My horse ran away with me and has carried me within your lines. I am your captive, but I beg you will permit me to return.”

  One of the officers stepped forward and bowed. “We are exceedingly proud of our beautiful captive,” he replied, “but of course we cannot think of detaining you.” A pause, and then his tone turned conspiratorial: “May we have the honor of escorting you beyond our lines and restoring you to the custody of your friends? I suppose there is no fear of those cowardly rebels taking us prisoners?”

  Belle smiled, although inwardly she seethed: “They little thought how those words, ‘cowardly rebels,’ rankled in my heart.” She smoothed the anger from her voice. “I had scarcely hoped for such an honor,” she said. “I thought you would probably have given me a pass, but since you are so kind as to offer your services in person, I cannot do otherwise than accept them.” Then she, too, spoke as if they shared a private joke, adding, “Have no fear, gentlemen, of the cowardly rebels.”

  Belle and two Union officers rode off. As soon as they crossed back into Confederate territory, her rebel friends appeared from behind a cluster of trees. She reveled in all four men’s “surprised and embarrassed” expressions, breaking the silence with a laugh.

  “Here are two prisoners that I have brought you,” she told her friends, and then turned back to the Union officers. “Here are two of the ‘cowardly rebels’ whom you hoped there was no danger of meeting!”

  The Union men were silent for a moment, studying her.

  “And who, pray, is the lady?” one of them asked.

  She bowed and replied, “Belle Boyd, at your service.”

  “Good God!” the officer gasped. “The rebel spy!”

  “So be it, since your journals have honored me with that title.”

  The Union men offered no resistance as Belle and her friends escorted them to headquarters, where the officer in command ordered them to be detained. “Let us hope they have profited by the lesson,” Belle concluded her story, and announced her motto for the new year: “All was fair in love and war.”

  Although the war remained on pause for the Army of the Potomac, Confederate general Stonewall Jackson went on the march despite the winter weather. He was preparing for his Valley Campaign, the goal of which was to unnerve the Union, prevent Washington from reinforcing McClellan, and keep Virginia in the Confederacy. “If this Valley is lost,” he said, “Virginia is lost.” Nine thousand Confederate soldiers started at Winchester, Virginia, and moved toward Bath in the western part of the state. The general was intent on disabling long stretches of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, tearing up tracks and torching depots, and firing shots and shells at dams on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.

  Night after night the sky dropped snow and hail, turning the roads so slick that the men had to march in side ditches. Horses were unhitched from the cannon and wagons and sent forward through the woods, leaving the troops to pull the cargo with ropes and chains. Soldiers slipped and fell, firing their guns on the way down. Together they slept on the ground, their blankets freezing fast to the earth; several men never woke up. Belle’s father told her that some complained about Stonewall staying in the town hotel, warm in bed—“when, all of a sudden, there was a motion under a blanket nearby, and up rose a tall, stalwart figure . . . he had slept out there through all that sleet storm with his boys.”

  General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

  (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Belle idolized Stonewall Jackson from the moment her father enlisted in his brigade, harboring fantasies that alternated between the familial and the romantic. She once dreamed that the general entered her bedroom while she slept, his eyes resting “sorrowfully upon me,” while her father stood silently behind him. “I was dumb,” Belle recalled, “or I should have spoken, for I did not feel alarmed. As I looked upon these two standing together, General Jackson turned and spoke to my father. I remember the words distinctly: ‘It is time for us to go.’ And, taking my father’s hand, he led him away, adding as he did so, ‘Poor child!’” On other occasions Belle indulged in more amorous thoughts about the general, and was overheard “giving vent to romantic desires to occupy his tent and share his dangers.”

  Stonewall Jackson had just turned thirty-eight years old and looked, some said, more scarecrow than human, with eerily bright blue eyes and a mangy brown mass of beard. His preferred uniform consisted of a threadbare single-breasted coat left over from his service in the Mexican War, a battered kepi with a broken visor worn low to conceal his eyes, and an oversize pair of flop-top boots for his size-fourteen feet. His horse, Fancy (whom everyone else called Little Sorrel), stood only fifteen hands high, and Jackson rode him with his feet drawn up so as to avoid dragging them on the ground. He spoke seldom and almost never laughed. On the rare occasions when he did, he tossed back his head, let his mouth gape open, and made no sound whatsoever. Once an injured Northerner, captured by Jackson’s men, asked to be lifted to up to catch a glimpse of the general. He stared at Jackson for a moment, and then, in a tone of disbelief and disgust, exclaimed, “O my god! Lay me down!”

  Jackson was as idiosyncratic as he was brilliant; his peculiar habits and tendency toward hypochondria became as legendary as his skill on the battlefield. He thought of himself as being “out of balance,” and even under fire would stop to raise one arm, waiting for the blood to rush down his body and establish equilibrium. He refused to eat pepper because it made his left leg weak. A
partial deafness in one ear often made it difficult for him to detect distant artillery fire or to determine the direction from which it came. Convinced that every one of his organs was malfunctioning to some extent, he self-medicated with a variety of concoctions, inhaling glycerine and silver nitrate and ingesting a number of ammonia preparations. “My afflictions,” he told his sister, a Unionist, “I believe were decreed by Heaven’s Sovereign, as a punishment for my offenses against his Holy Laws.”

  Twice a day, rain or shine, Jackson slipped away from camp and found a secluded field. He perched on the edge of a fence and prayed for an hour, hands clasped, face turned upward, tears spilling, mouth forming noiseless words—a ritual that may or may not have had something to do with a recurring fear that he was possessed. He was reluctant even to read a letter from his wife (whom he called “my little dove”) on Sundays. He forbade profanity, alcohol, and mingling with the camp followers, although he considered himself a genuine and ardent admirer of true womanhood, and was said to never pass a lady—of high or low degree—without tipping his filthy cap.

  Despite his piety he was utterly unfazed by the prospect of murder or death. “He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat,” one Confederate soldier declared, “and he’d drop it himself.” He ordered the execution by firing squad of a soldier, a father of four, for assaulting a man of higher rank. The general prayed over the incident and found, as he always did, that God’s will matched up with his own. During one battle, he inquired sharply about a missing courier and was told the young man had been killed. “Very commendable, very commendable,” Jackson muttered soberly, and put the matter out of his mind.