by Karen Abbott
“left no stain”: Ibid.
“insult and outrage”: Ibid., 73.
Washington was still practicing appeasement: Sigaud, Belle Boyd, 16.
“plucky girl” and “do it again”: Coffin, Stories of Our Soldiers, 47.
any soldier who insulted a lady: Boston Post, July 15, 1861.
“The old ass thinks he can starve us out”: Richmond Dispatch, May 18, 1861.
Merchants reopened for business: Berkeley County Historical Society. “Martinsburg, West Virginia,” 10–11. Gold and silver were scarce by 1862.
“thronged the streets in perfect security”: New York Times, July 6, 1861.
They operated on varying levels of importance and authenticity: Gaddy, e-mail, June 2013.
“did a little spying”: Bakeless, Spies of the Confederacy, 130.
slipping questions between the pauses: Belle left no record of the exact questions she posed to her guards, but on July 5 a Martinsburg correspondent reported a rumor that McClellan’s column was “two days’ march from us”; New York Times, July 6, 1861.
although she kept the pistol that killed him: New York Times, July 20, 1862.
lettres de cachet: Boyd, In Camp and Prison, 78.
“lovely girl” named Sophia B.: Ibid.
“a loud, coarse laugh”: Sigaud, Belle Boyd, 100; Sandburg, Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, 504.
She summoned the bravery: Boyd, In Camp and Prison, 77.
Ward Hill Lamon . . . had intervened on her behalf: Sigaud, Belle Boyd, 19. If President Lincoln intervened, it would have been at Lamon’s behest.
“Thank you, gentlemen of the jury”: Boyd, In Camp and Prison, 78.
“My little ‘rebel’ heart”: Ibid.
“Miss D. was a lovely”: Boyd, In Camp and Prison, 91.
“intrepidity and devotion”: Ibid., 92.
Her first cousin . . . was a spy himself: Louis Sigaud, “William Boyd Compton, Belle Boyd’s Cousin,” Lincoln Herald 67 (Spring 1963): 22–23.
“at home on a horse’s back”; “a good deal of boy myself”: Coffin, Stories of Our Soldiers, 44.
where Confederate soldiers engraved their names: Miller, Kartcher Caverns, 24.
She even trained her beloved horse: Sigaud, Belle Boyd, 25.
she began riding as a courier: Boyd, In Camp and Prison, 83.
expected to deliver it orally: Gaddy, e-mail, March 2013.
the challenge being “Stonewall”: Ibid.
“We have the same old signal”: Reid Hanger, Diary, October 20, 1861.
one, a boy exactly her age: Clarksville (TX) Standard, July 27, 1861.
“Where are you going?”: Coffin, Stories of Our Soldiers, 49.
exchanges detailing a coordinated effort: OR, September 7, 1861, ser. 1, 5:587.
“I have no papers”: Dialogue from Coffin, Stories of Our Soldiers, 49.
Admirable Self-Denial
“One case I can never forget”: Edmonds, Nurse and Spy, 46.
“simply eyes, ears, hands”: Ibid., 58.
“I was not in the habit”: Ibid., 60.
its most depressing form: Ibid., 55.
Greeley removed the “Forward to Richmond!” banner: Foote, Fort Sumter to Perryville, 85.
“On every brow sits sullen”: Ward, Burns, and Burns, Civil War, 60–61.
“grace and dignity”: Edmonds, Nurse and Spy, 61.
“hatred of male tyranny”: Fort Scott Monitor, January 17, 1884.
able to bend a quarter: Ward, Burns, and Burns, Civil War, 61.
“By some strange operation of magic”: Eicher, Longest Night, 101.
“The army under McClellan began to assume”: Edmonds, Nurse and Spy, 61.
“perfect pandemonium”: McClellan’s Own Story, 67.
all work would be suspended on the Sabbath: Vermont Journal (Windsor, VT), September 14, 1861; New York Times, September 8, 1861.
“utmost decorum and quiety”: Vermont Journal, September 14, 1861.
splendid: Edmonds, Nurse and Spy, 61.
watching the festivities from a carriage: Ward, Burns, and Burns, Civil War, 61.
“They received him with loud shouts”: Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 8:133.
“Under the auspices of the ‘Young General’”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 35.
infested by maggots and weevils: Billings, Hardtack and Coffee, 115.
“the President is nothing more than a well-meaning baboon”: quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 364; Sears, Young Napoleon, 132.
“If the men pursue the enemy”: Haydon, For Country, Cause and Leader, 4.
she could be arrested for prostitution: Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 124. Commanding officers were likely to have feared censure from superiors for allowing a woman to serve.
“one of the inmates of a disreputable house”: Ibid.
“implacable enemy” of her sex: Fort Scott Monitor, January 17, 1884.
“going down the line”: Wright, City Under Siege, 129.
names of brothels: Lowry, Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, 63–64.
An estimated fifteen thousand black, white, and mulatto streetwalkers: Furgurson, Freedom Rising, 207.
“handle a gun”: Lowry, Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, 24.
“truly wife-like in their tented seclusion”: Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 52.
“Almost all the women are given to whoredom”: Clinton, Public Women and the Confederacy, 18.
“Oh, how my heart has ached”: Edmonds, Nurse and Spy, 64.
“was in the habit of eating rebels”: Dannett, She Rode with the Generals, 209.
“cow-bell dodge”: New York Times, September 25, 1861.
trading tobacco and newspapers and buttons from their coats: Philadelphia Inquirer, October 21, 1861.
Munson’s Hill: Charleston Daily Courier, September 23, 1861.
With Emma leading the way: Edmonds, Nurse and Spy, 62.
The Birds of the Air
offal rotting three feet deep: Leech, Reveille in Washington, 102.
whole situation amusing: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 39.
every movement and act: “H” to Rose Greenhow, Greenhow seized correspondence.
“The Southern women of Washington”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 39.
“Ape” Lincoln: Tagg, Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, 73.
“touching simplicity”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 49.
“a short, broad, flat figure”: Ibid., 201.
gaudy flowers: Ibid., 202.
“I don’t think”: Ibid., 202.
“It gives a quaint look”: Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 167.
$40,000, likely in donations from private citizens: Tidwell, April ’65, 60.
three gunshots from the provost marshal’s office: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 37.
“thereby creating still greater confusion”: Ibid., 38.
“expects to surprise you”: These letters were pieced together from fragments after Rose’s arrest. Proceedings of the Commission Relating to State Prisoners, Records of the Department of State, RG 59, E962, National Archives.
“Tonight, unless Providence has put its foot”: “H” to Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Greenhow, seized correspondence.
“information on the movements”: Mortimer, Double Death, 36.
“Chief of the United States Secret Service”: Fishel, Secret War for the Union, 54.
“In operating with my detective force”: Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 247.
“a sort of synonym for ‘detective’”: Ibid., 156.
“bland gentleman with distinguished black whiskers”: Taft Bayne, Tad Lincoln’s Father, 139–40.
“What’s wrong with Mrs. Greenhow?”: Ibid.
“Very well”: Ibid.
“That is treason”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 29.
“My remarks were addressed”: Ibid.
“Madam, if he insults”: Ibid., 30.
“Oh, never mind”: Ibid.
“b
eware”: Ibid.
“McClellan is vigilant”: Proceedings of the Commission Relating to State Prisoners.
“his manner of polishing”: Waugh and Greenberg, Women’s War in the South, 37.
“Lt. Col. Jordan’s compliments”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 55.
she showed it to Senator Wilson: Ibid.
“McClellan is very active”: Proceedings of the Commission Relating to State Prisoners.
“an occasional and useful visitor to my house”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 38.
The Confederate States of America had established a Post Office Department: Wright, e-mail, December 2011.
“McClellan’s excessive vigilance”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 38.
“always very sorry that no opportunity”: Ibid.
“Do not talk with anyone about news”: Proceedings of the Commission Relating to State Prisoners.
a customary closing among the betrothed: Gaskell, Compendium of Forms, 233.
“I was slow to credit”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 40.
She began urging secessionist friends: Ibid., 57.
fastening a pearl-and-ivory tablet: Martha Elizabeth Wright Morris, “Memories,” diary, Wright Morris Papers.
The Secret Room
background on Calvin Huson: Albany Evening Journal, October 19, 1861; Philadelphia Inquirer, October 19, 1861; US Census, 1860.
“aid and comfort” to a “Black Republican enemy”: Ely, Journal, 166.
enemas consisting of oil of turpentine: Beach, American Practice of Medicine, 402.
In tears, she told Congressman Alfred Ely: Ely, Journal, 166.
“You dare to show sympathy”: Van Lew, “Occasional Journal.”
moved into her home: Ibid.
Salt, which used to sell: Coulter, Confederate States of America, 220.
placed ads seeking hunting dogs: Ibid.
stamped with figures of lions: John Albree notes, Box 1, Folder 6, Elizabeth Van Lew Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William & Mary.
“not a man of much intellect”: Van Lew, “Occasional Journal.”
“I would give my right arm”: Ibid.
background on Mary Carter West Van Lew: Hall, e-mail, October 2011.
“niggers”: Hall, e-mail, March 2013.
“The Negroes have black faces”: Albree notes, Elizabeth Van Lew Papers, College of William & Mary.
which had been built: Hall, e-mail, March 2013.
Mary Jane had married another Van Lew servant: Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy, 166.
They began sleeping in separate chambers: Hall, e-mail, March 2013.
the escape of eleven prisoners: Gibbs to Winder, September 7, 1861, OR, ser. 2, 3:718.
usually horse or mule meat: Speer, Portals to Hell, 125.
“I should have perished for want”: Testimony of Lewis Francis, US Congress, Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 477–78.
“The custard was very nice”: Van Lew, “Occasional Journal”; Wheelan, Libby Prison Breakout, 87.
“God help us”: Van Lew, “Occasional Journal.”
somehow slipped past their guards: Norwich (CT) Morning Bulletin, August 29, 1861.
several soldiers from New York: New London (CT) Daily Chronicle, October 12, 1861.
distinguished by a bit of red ribbon: San Francisco Bulletin, October 11, 1861.
the secret room: Albree notes, Elizabeth Van Lew Papers, College of William & Mary.
“dread and fear the Yankee”: Brock Putnam, Richmond During the War, 102.
he could leave Church Hill and work: Hall, e-mail, March 2013.
an ad in the Richmond Dispatch: Richmond Dispatch, August 14, 1861.
“get suitable servants”: Silber, Landmarks of the Civil War, 38.
Mary Jane was highly educated: Historians have long debated the role Mary Jane Richards/Mary Jane Bowser (often called Mary Elizabeth Bower) played in Elizabeth Van Lew’s espionage ring. In 1910 Elizabeth’s niece, Annie Randolph Van Lew Hall, gave an interview in which she named Bowser and described her as a “favorite” servant of the Van Lews. During the war, she said, “Mary sort of disappeared” from the Van Lews’ home, a disappearance that coincided with her employment at the Confederate White House. Bart Hall, Annie’s great-grandson, told me that he heard about Mary Bowser from his grandfather (Annie’s son), an army captain during World War I: “Because of my grandfather’s interest in intelligence, his mother [Annie, then in her early seventies] conveyed to him the information [about the ring] she had learned from her aunt when visiting her in Richmond in the 1880s and early 1890s.” In 1867 Reverend Crammond Kennedy, the secretary for the American Freedmen Union Commission, wrote in the American Freedman that Bowser, “while appearing as a slave, was in the secret service of the U.S. She could write a romance from her experience in that employment.” In an 1867 letter to a Freedman’s Bureau official, Bowser herself wrote of “having been in the service . . . as a detective”; John Reynolds interview with Annie Hall, William Gilmore Beyer Papers, UTA; Hall, e-mail, November 2011; Mary Richards to G. L. Eberhardt, April 4, 1867, Frank Wuttge Jr. Research Files, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. For a discussion of Mary Bowser’s identity and various aliases, see Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy, 165–68. I use “Mary Jane” in the text to distinguish her from Mary Van Lew, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law.
Stakeout
three of his best detectives: Mortimer, Double Death, 103.
Pinkerton strolled its perimeter: Scene of the stakeout based on Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 253–66.
he flipped the slats of the blinds until the parlor: Ibid., 256. Rose’s home probably had operable louver bifold shutters, which were popular with the middle class by the mid-nineteenth century. Wright, e-mail, September 2011.
Captain John Elwood: Rose’s visitor was most likely Captain Elwood, Fifth Infantry. Pinkerton uses a pseudonym, “Captain Ellison,” in his memoir Spy of the Rebellion. Bakeless, Spies of the Confederacy, 39; Van Doren Stern, Secret Missions, 61; Louis A. Sigaud, “Mrs. Greenhow and the Rebel Spy Ring,” Maryland Historical Magazine 41–42 (1946): 177.
Hard to Name
In reality the Confederate troops numbered: McPherson, Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom, 296.
“by the sound of gongs”: Sears, Young Napoleon, 164.
“the panic is great”: Proceedings of the Commission Relating to State Prisoners.
plum-sized swellings: Lowry, Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, 104.
“black wash”: Bumstead, Pathology and Treatment of Venereal Diseases, 418.
“Wash as fast as you can”: Marten, Civil War America, 116–17.
“plain-looking” and modestly dressed: Brown, Dorothea Dix, 303.
“To me, nothing in the whole of human actions”: Jerome Robbins, journal, Robbins Papers.
“I felt as if an angel had touched me”: Fort Scott Monitor, January 27, 1884.
“had no higher ambition”: Ibid.
“In our family the women were not sheltered”: Ibid.
“I had a very pleasant conversation”: Robbins, journal.
“if there were instances of it in the Bible”: Dannett, She Rode with the Generals, 20.
“I visited my friend Thompson this evening”: Robbins, journal.
“a pretty little girl”: Fort Scott Monitor, January 27, 1884.
“I arose greatly refreshed”: Robbins, journal.
“I revere as a blessing”: Ibid.
“I can do it all”: Sears, Young Napoleon, 125.
“a delicious morsel for our thirsty souls”: Robbins, journal.
“My time is greatly eased”: Ibid.
“the only young lady correspondent”: Ibid.
told Jerome she didn’t feel well: Ibid.
Crinoline and Quinine
The want-ad columns in newspapers: Van Doren Stern, Secret Missions, 318.
A Doctor Line: Hartzler, Marylanders in the Confederacy, 52.
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A Postmaster Line: Hastedt, Spies, Wiretaps, 193.
met at the home of a Mrs. Jack Taylor: Bush, Louisville and the Civil War, 77.
The proprietor of a nearby boardinghouse: Ibid.
“could take hints quickly”: Pavlovsky, “Riding in Circles,” 272.
she reached into her purse and produced a white dog skin: Atlanta Constitution, October 10, 1919.
“Some of the old and ugly ladies”: George Cadman to Esther Cadman, May 24, 1862, Cadman Papers.
“Some of the boys met the woman Belle Boyd”: Marvin, Fifth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers, 144–45.
At other times she wore a rebel soldier’s belt: New York Tribune, June 4, 1862.
she could recite the names of every general: Ibid.
seized twenty-one thousand bushels of wheat: Long and Long, Civil War Day by Day, entry for October 16, 1861.
“My dear Beauty”: A copy of this note, in Belle’s handwriting, belonged to Sue Stribling Snodgrass, a longtime Martinsburg resident whose sisters were Belle’s childhood playmates. Sue’s great-granddaughter, Lyn Snodgrass, kindly shared the note with me.
One day the 28th Pennsylvania: Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 419.
“I had been confiscating and concealing”: Boyd, In Camp and Prison, 77.
Some merchants accepted sewing pins: Wright, e-mail, December 2013.
newspapers printed suggestions for ersatz brews: Augusta (GA) Daily Chronicle & Sentinel, August 25, 1861.
Powers Weightman and Rosengarten Sons: Flannery, Civil War Pharmacy, 99–100.
A farmer named Thomas A. Jones: Taylor, Signal and Secret Service, 20.
some of them conducted by nine-year-old Robert Fitzgerald: Guardian, September 18, 2007.
Some male agents used an acorn-shaped brass contraption: Cathy Wright told me that a visitor brought in this “anal acorn,” which had belonged to her Civil War veteran ancestor.
One woman managed to conceal: Pryor, Reminiscences, 223.
Another found a functioning pistol: Royce, Genteel Spy, 41–42.
Mothers packed quinine in sacks of oiled silk: The American Civil War Museum owns two such dolls.
offering to deliver letters to Richmond for $3 each: Newark Daily Advertiser, July 30, 1862.