Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

by Karen Abbott

  From there they would make their way to Fort Monroe and relate everything they’d seen and heard to Union authorities: enemy troops were heading toward Charleston; the fortifications at Petersburg were formidable; there was a “most exciting” rumor that Lee was deserting the entire state of Virginia to reinforce Confederate troops in Tennessee. She knew that Northern papers would report the escapees’ arrival, including the detail that they came disguised in rebel uniforms, and that General Winder would want to know how they had gotten them.

  She and the detectives were nearly at the end of the eighty-foot hall, at the entrance to the secret room. She hoped that the prisoners would hear snippets of the detectives’ banter, that they would recognize there were three sets of approaching footsteps instead of just one. She willed them to stay quiet behind the sliding slab of a door.

  The detectives paused, standing in the window’s dusty light.

  LA BELLE REBELLE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  One night in late September, around nine o’clock, Belle sat at the window of her cell inside Carroll Prison, singing “Take Me Back to My Own Sunny South,” watching the Yankee passersby stop and gape upward. Two months into her second stint in jail, and she was undeniably, inescapably bored. Her rebel companion, Ida P., had been released after vowing to do no more harm against the Northern government. Prolonged flirtations with various prisoners and guards had yielded neither true love nor actionable information. And an illness was creeping upon her, slogging its way through her system. She trilled the final refrain of her song, rested her head against the bars, and closed her eyes, contemplating whether to sleep or cry. Before she could decide an object whizzed past her head, splitting the air beside her ear, thwacking the opposite wall.

  The Yankees were trying to kill her.

  She felt her way toward the gas and turned it on, following the pale strip of light. On the floor lay not a bullet but an arrow, an envelope affixed to its end. She tore it open and read the letter inside:

  Poor girl! You have the deepest sympathy of all the best community in Washington City, and there are many who would lay down their lives for you, but they are powerless to act or aid you at present. You have many very warm friends, and we daily watch the journals to see if there is any news of you. If you will listen attentively to the instructions that I give you, you will be able to correspond with and hear from your friends outside.

  On Thursdays and Saturdays, in the evening, just after twilight, I will come into the square opposite the prison. When you hear someone whistling “’Twas within a mile of Edinbro’ town,” if alone and all is safe, lower the gas as a signal and leave the window. I will then shoot an arrow into your room, as I have done this evening, with a letter attached. Do not be alarmed, as I am a good shot. . . .

  Do not be afraid. I am really your friend.

  C.H.

  At first Belle dismissed the note, certain it was a Yankee hoping to collect evidence against her, but caution yielded to curiosity. She bribed a sentinel, giving him oranges and apples in exchange for an india-rubber ball, which she split into halves. On the appointed nights, after hearing the lyrics “and each shepherd woo’d his dear,” Belle waited for the arrow and hurled the ball, her missive hidden inside.

  Her mysterious pen pal’s letters focused on politics rather than passion, offering updates about the Union army. Her old consort, Union general Nathaniel Banks, was attempting to gain a foothold in Texas, and General Grant left Louisville for Chattanooga, Tennessee, where his officers were starving under a Confederate siege. Occasionally a miniature Confederate flag came attached to the arrow, little tokens from the secessionist ladies of Washington. She slipped one into her bodice and pressed herself against the bars of her cell, waiting for the sentries to notice. One did, right away, and reached out to snatch it. Belle stopped him by raising a revolver to his temple.

  “The discomfited Yankee,” one witness reported, “suddenly let go of his rifle and stood, with eyes staring and mouth open, the embodiment of a person who had seen a supernatural apparition.”

  Belle cleared her throat until she had the attention of every prisoner on her floor, and declared, “These are the kind of men Lee whips.”

  She couldn’t shake her illness. Her stomach curdled, her nose bled, a crop of red spots bloomed on her skin. Her friend C.H.’s missives went unanswered. Another prisoner, a kindly old Confederate doctor, made the diagnosis: typhoid fever. Her mother tried to have her transferred to a hospital but was rebuffed by Secretary of War Stanton. “She is a damn rebel,” he reportedly responded. “Let her die there!” A Negro nurse sat on the edge of her bed, patting her forehead. She longed for her own Negro maid, Eliza, back home in the Valley.

  After three weeks the fever passed, and she felt well enough to write to General John Martindale, commander of the forces in Washington, requesting permission to walk daily in Capitol Square. To Belle’s surprise he agreed, on one condition: she must vow that, on her word of honor as a lady, she would communicate with no one, either by letter or by word of mouth. Her every step would be tracked by a corporal and a guard with loaded muskets. This precaution seemed warranted in light of recent newspaper reports stating she had “several official lovers in Washington.”

  Belle agreed, so desperate for a breath of pure air that she intended to keep her promise. But she couldn’t prevent throngs of Southern sympathizers, both ladies and gentlemen, from lining up in the square to watch her stroll past. During one walk a group of teenage girls, scarcely younger than Belle herself, laid a gift at her feet: a square piece of bristol board bearing a Confederate flag and her name, both brightly stitched in worsted. The Union corporal ordered the girls to leave the square immediately and confiscated the flag. Belle’s walking privileges were revoked, but the guard let her keep the present in exchange for five Federal dollars.

  She cradled it in her lap and traced the letters of her name, marveling at how many people knew it; the French had even bestowed their own title on her, “La Belle Rebelle.” She no longer belonged wholly to herself, a realization she promptly recorded for posterity. “Had I been a queen, or a reigning princess,” she wrote, “my every movement could not have been more faithfully chronicled at this period of my imprisonment. My health was bulletined for the gratification of the public; and if I walked or was indisposed, it was announced after the most approved fashion by the newspapers. Thus, from the force of my circumstances, and not through any desire of my own, I became a celebrity.” She encouraged rumors that she had been sentenced to death, a fate reversed only by President Lincoln’s clemency.

  Without her daily walks Belle’s fever returned, or at least she reported as much to Superintendent Wood. She fainted at the slightest provocation, landing prettily, one open hand to her brow. Her father, still ill and on leave from the Confederate army, traveled to Washington to negotiate her release. Belle wasn’t allowed to see him even after she learned he’d saved her: the Yankee government agreed to commute her sentence and banish her to the South. She would leave for Fort Monroe on the first day of December, and from there board an exchange boat for Richmond.

  She began preparing for her release, sending word through the prison that she needed certain items from the outside. A friendly sentry, made friendlier by a generous offer of Federal greenbacks, delivered the goods: a uniform meant for a certain Confederate major general (whom Belle declined to name); a few pairs of army gauntlets and felt hats; $20,000 in Confederate notes, $5,000 in Federal dollars, and nearly $1,000 in gold; several letters of introduction to Confederate officials in Richmond; and her most prized possession, a pair of field glasses she claimed had belonged to Stonewall Jackson. She packed away the clothing and glasses but hid the other items on her body, tying the bills to her hoops and sliding the letters into her drawers.

  Before Belle left Washington she begged to see her father, still sick and staying nearby with a niece, and too weak to come to her. Her request was refused, and by the time she departed she w
as in a foul and petulant mood, exacerbated by the “annoying and ungentlemanly” conduct of Captain James Mix, her escort and a former bodyguard of Lincoln’s, who had achieved some renown in the North by saving the president from an unruly horse. Upon her arrival in Fort Monroe twenty-four hours later her spirits had not improved, and in this mind-set she prepared to see Union general Benjamin Butler, the commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina. She was to be kept under Butler’s watch until her departure for Richmond, and although she had never met the general, she already thoroughly detested him.

  Belle was not alone in her enmity for the “Beast,” as he was called throughout the Confederacy, and every Southerner could readily catalog his offenses. The first occurred just after the start of the war, when he acted without orders and seized Baltimore, imposing martial law on the city and quelling secessionist ardor in Maryland. For this the Union army promoted him to major general and sent him to Fort Monroe, where he defied the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, refusing to return runaway slaves to their owners and considering them contraband of war, a policy subsequently adopted by other Union officials. But it was his brief tenure in New Orleans that most enraged Belle, especially his General Order No. 28—the “Woman Order,” as Butler inelegantly called it—which avowed that any female who by word, gesture, or movement insulted or showed contempt for any officer of the United States should be arrested and treated as a prostitute.

  Southerners of every rank and tier protested Butler’s reign of tyranny. Jefferson Davis labeled the general a felon, sentenced him to death in absentia, and commented that Northerners were “the only people on earth who do not blush to think he wears the human form.” A South Carolina man offered a $10,000 reward for Butler’s capture or delivery, dead or alive. Merchants sold chamber pots emblazoned with his face (and what a face: mothers taught their toddler children to “Make like Butler” by distorting their features and crossing their eyes).

  General Benjamin “Beast” Butler.

  (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Belle waited to enter Butler’s headquarters, hands on hips, one boot tapping. She considered not only the words she wished to say to the general but how she would later recall them; her memory of the encounter might be the only surviving one, and she needed perfect, precise lines. For inspiration she considered the infamous exchange between Butler and Eugenia Phillips, one of the spies in Rose Greenhow’s ring, after Phillips was arrested and sent to New Orleans. “I expect to be killed before I leave the South, by either you or Mrs. Greenhow,” Butler said. Eugenia let one eyebrow creep upward and replied, “We usually order our Negroes to kill our swine.”

  Belle stood at the doorway, waiting for one of Butler’s small and muddy eyes to rise; the other was weighed down by a drooping lid.

  “Ah, so this is Miss Boyd, the famous rebel spy,” he said. His smile employed only one side of his mouth and revealed a crooked picket fence of teeth. “Please be seated.”

  “Thank you, General Butler, but I prefer to stand.” She felt herself shaking—in anger, not in fear, she assured herself. The very sight of him—the sloping forehead, the brick of a neck, the intricate web of purplish veins etched beneath his skin—plucked a quiver in her chest.

  “Pray be seated,” he said again. “But why do you tremble so? Are you frightened?”

  “No,” Belle said, and then corrected herself, reaching for the words she’d so deftly arranged. “Ah! That is, yes, General Butler; I must acknowledge that I do feel frightened in the presence of a man of such world-wide reputation as yourself.”

  This pleased Butler, she could tell. He touched the tips of squat fingers together. “What do you mean,” he asked, “when you say that I am widely known?”

  Belle took a step closer.

  “I mean, General Butler, that you are a man whose atrocious conduct and brutality, especially to Southern ladies, is so infamous that even the English Parliament commented upon it. I naturally feel alarmed at being in your presence.”

  His smile collapsed as Belle’s widened. With glee she noted the “rage depicted on every lineament of his features,” and was already halfway out the door when he ordered her to leave.

  On Wednesday evening, December 2, officers arrived to escort Belle to the provost marshal’s office in Norfolk, where she found her luggage, two Saratoga trunks and a bonnet box, waiting for inspection. A man and two female guards set to work ransacking their contents, sullying her private underpinnings with their grubby Yankee hands.

  Belle assured them that such thorough searching was unnecessary, since she had just come from prison, but they continued digging, launching chemises and drawers into the air until they hit the bottom. They held each smuggled item aloft as if displaying a prize catch. Belle shrugged and said she had no idea how those things came into her possession. When the guards told her that General Butler would be the new owner of Stonewall Jackson’s field glasses, she dropped her face in her hands and wept.

  Three days later Belle boarded the Southern flag-of-truce vessel at City Point and began the twelve-hour journey up the James River to Richmond. In the Confederate capital she checked into the Spotswood Hotel, one of the city’s finest, where a drunken rebel soldier once rode his horse into the lobby and through the bar—an escapade that reminded Belle of her younger self, charging into her parents’ dinner party saddled on Fleeter, demanding to be included.

  Belle had been in Richmond for just a week when she learned from a Confederate captain that her father had died. She secluded herself in her room, waiting for word from her mother. When the letter came, it said that Benjamin Boyd spoke often of his oldest daughter in his last, lucid moments and exclaimed that she was “being torn” from him, a lamentation as universal as it was private, sung and recognized by people on both sides of the lines.

  WOMEN MAKE WAR UPON EACH OTHER

  LONDON AND PARIS

  After arriving in London, Rose accepted an invitation for tea with Thomas Carlyle, the eminent Scottish writer and historian whose essay “Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question” assailed the notion of racial equality and argued that emancipation in the British West Indies had been an economic disaster. He viewed the American Civil War as an unnecessary conflict, dismissing it as “a smoky chimney which had taken fire,” and she was counting on him to be an early ally in her mission.

  From her boardinghouse in Mayfair she took a hansom cab to Chelsea, taking in the tidy, flag-studded streets and sun-stippled views of the Thames, the heavy smells of shipping and tar. Carlyle lived in a redbrick house at 5 Cheyne Row, thickly corniced and wainscoted to the ceiling, each crevice and shelf toppling with books. He was taller than Rose had expected, with a slight, sinewy figure and grizzled hair. He greeted her wearing a dressing gown and slippers, and his brogue seemed to soften with each sentence he spoke.

  He raised his cup to his lips and asked, “What sort of looking animal is Lincoln?”

  As she launched into a detailed description of “the beanpole,” Carlyle rose abruptly, shook himself like a great dog, and declared “the flat nosed Negro of Haiti and Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter of the United States, as a worthy pair to stand side by side in history.”

  Rose murmured her agreement. Carlyle, appeased, sat down again and asked for a description of Jefferson Davis. He clamped his fingers over his eyes. “I see him,” he murmured. “God has made the situation for the man.”

  For hours they spoke about the “crimes and imbecility of the North” (in Rose’s words), and at midnight he walked her to the door. They bowed toward each other.

  “I will do anything for your country,” he said.

  “An article or few words from you, sir, will carry weight and would be deeply gratifying to our President and our people.”

  Carlyle promised to consider it.

  One of Rose’s most pressing concerns was finding a publisher for her memoir, which she was certain would rouse interest in the Southern cause. She met with Richard Bentley, �
��Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty,” as he preferred to be called, who offered her a contract stipulating that she split the profits for all sales in Great Britain, on the Continent, and in the United States. Rose agreed, reserving for herself the right of publication within the Confederate states, and dedicated the book to “the brave soldiers who have fought and bled in this, our glorious struggle for freedom.”

  The book attracted widespread attention, in both Europe and America. The Southern-sympathizing Standard gleefully recounted Rose’s unflattering portraits of Mary Todd Lincoln and observed, “Men may not war on women, but short of death—actual or social—women may, and habitually do, make war upon each other.” The Morning Post, which supported the Confederacy even as it denounced slavery, spent most of its review critiquing Rose rather than her work: “She boasts that she made herself as obnoxious as any man to the masters of the situation by her acts; and her words, as she reports them, leave nothing to be desired as to the rancour of her tongue. She unsexes herself, and then abuses her captors for want of observance and consideration of her sex.” Back in the United States, the New York Times said exactly what Rose had expected, calling the book “as bitter as a woman’s hate can make it” and concluding that “many may wonder, not that she was treated with such severity, but that she got off so easily.”