In January 1862, Massachusetts governor John Andrew arranged for Tubman to travel to Beaufort, South Carolina, to assist in the Union war effort—probably in the capacity of relief worker dealing with the hundreds of escaped slaves, or “contrabands,” arriving at the Union camps. Voluntarily refusing soldiers’ rations to avoid creating a perception among the freedmen that she received preferential treatment, and drawing no Union pay, she supported herself through purchase and resale of supplies, baking “gingerbread pies,” and brewing root beer to sell to soldiers. Through her relief work, she developed a human intelligence network of “contrabands” (freed slaves) and freedmen who knew the local area. She passed information on Confederate locations and troop movements to Generals Stevens, Sherman, and Hunter; in January 1863 she received $100 for scouting, which she and her scouts used to support themselves and to bribe informants.
In February 1863, Col. James Montgomery—a veteran of John Brown’s guerrilla campaign in Kansas—took command of the Second South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, a regiment of freedmen. He and Tubman developed a close working relationship. In June he used intelligence about Confederate troop locations and naval mines that Tubman and her network of scouts provided to develop plans for a raid up the Combahee River.
On the night of June 1, 1863, Montgomery, Tubman, and three hundred men of the Second South Carolina penetrated twenty-five miles upriver into Confederate-held territory on two steam-powered gunboats. On June 2, encountering little opposition, they burned plantations and barns; destroyed rice mills and equipment; flooded fields to ruin summer crops; confiscated rice, corn, cotton, horses, and livestock worth thousands of dollars; destroyed the pontoon bridge at Combahee Ferry; and freed around seven hundred and fifty slaves.
In four years of service, Tubman received only twenty days’ rations from the government, as well as small sums of money that she used primarily to pay scouts.
After the war Tubman spoke frequently about the inequity in black and white soldiers’ pay. She also made numerous unsuccessful attempts to claim back pay and a pension. To support her family and to continue her resettlement and relief work on behalf of freedmen, she raised hundreds of dollars, borrowed funds, and told her story to journalists. The most famous set of interviews, published in 1869 by Sarah Bradford as Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, is flawed by Bradford’s sentimental style, hasty authorship, factual inaccuracies, exclusion of large parts of Tubman’s story, imposition of her own cultural prejudices on the narrative, and use of stereotyped dialect to convey her subject’s speech patterns. However, the book’s commercial success enabled Tubman to pay down debts.
Despite her illiteracy, Tubman left a permanent record of her life—an important contribution to America’s historical record. She is said to have had a remarkable memory; her description of the Combahee River Raid in an interview with journalist Emma P. Telford of Auburn, New York, nearly matches verbatim the description she gave to Bradford thirty-four years earlier. The excerpt below is taken from Telford’s 1905 manuscript, now housed at the Cayuga Museum of Art and History.
They gave us Colonel Montgomery, one of John Brown’s men, to command the expedition. And three gunboats and all colored soldiers and we found where the torpedoes was and saw that we could find another channel. When we went up the river in the morning, ’twas just about light, the fog was rising over the rice fields and the people was just doing their breakfast and was going out to the field.
I was in the forward boat where the Colonel and Captain and the colored man that was to tell us where the torpedoes was. The boats was a quarter of a mile apart, one after the other, and just about light, the Colonel blowed the whistle and stopped the boat and the Captain and a company of soldiers went ashore. About a quarter of an hour after he done blowed the whistle, and when the sun got clear, so that the people could see the boats, you could look over the rice fields, and see them coming to the boat from every direction. I never seen such a sight.
[Harriet “becomes convulsed with laughter” at the recollection.]
Some was getting their breakfasts, just taking their pots of rice right off the fire, and they’d put a cloth on top their head and set that on, rice a-smoking, young one hanging on behind, one hand around the mother’s forehead to hold on, t’other hand digging into the rice pot, eating with all its might. Some had white blankets on their heads with their things done up in ’em and them that hadn’t a pot of rice would have a child in their arms, sometimes one or two holding onto the mother’s dress; some carrying two children one astride of the mother’s neck, holding onto her forehead, and in her arms; appears like I never seen so many twins in my life. Some had bags on their backs with pigs in them; some had chickens tied by the legs; and so child squalling, chickens squawking, and pigs squealing, they all come running to the gun boats through the rice fields just like a procession.
Thinks I: these here puts me in mind of the children of Israel, coming out of Egypt. When they got to the shore, they’d get in the rowboat, and they’d start for the gunboat; but others would run and hold on so they couldn’t leave the shore. They wasn’t coming and they [ain’t] nobody else come. The soldiers beat ’em on the hands but they wouldn’t let go. They was afraid the gunboats [would] go off and leave them. At last the Captain looked at ’em and he called me. They called me “Moses Garrison” down there. Said he: “Moses, come here and speak to your people.”
Well they wasn’t my people any more than they was his’n,—only we was all negroes—’cause I didn’t know any more about ’em than he did. So I went when he called me on the gunboat, and they the shore. They didn’t know anything about me and I didn’t know what to say. I looked at ’em for about two minutes, and then I sung to ’em.
Come from the East;
Come from the West;
Among all the glorious nations
This glorious one’s the best;
Come along! Come along! Don’t be alarmed,
For Uncle Sam is rich enough
To give you all a farm.
Then they throwed up their hands and began to rejoice and shout “Glory!” and the rowboats would push off.
I kept on a-singin’ until all were brought on board. We got eight hundred people that day, and we tore up the railroad and fired the bridge. And we went up to a big house and catched two pigs and named the white pig Beauregard and the black pig Jeff Davis.
When we got back to Hilton Head in the morning, and landed there nine hundred contrabands, I took a hundred of the men to the recruiting officer and they enlisted in the army. Colonel Whittle said I ought to be paid for every soldier as much as a recruiting officer; but laws! I never got nothing.
Elizabeth Van Lew
(1818–1900)
Union Spy
Elizabeth Van Lew, from Richmond, Virginia, led a network of white and African men and women who relayed messages regarding Confederate operations to Union generals and helped Union soldiers escape from Richmond prisons. Her spy network relied on invisible ink and coded messages. She placed literate freedwoman Mary Bowser in the household of Confederacy president Jefferson Davis. After the war, President Ulysses S. Grant, for whom Van Lew and her network had supplied vital intelligence during the war, appointed her postmaster of Richmond. She employed African Americans, and she has been credited with modernizing the Richmond postal system. She was dismissed from the position in 1877, possibly because of her gender and partisan politics. In her later years she continued to support women’s rights and African American rights. According to David D. Ryan, editor of Van Lew’s published diary, Van Lew buried her “Occasional Journal” for safekeeping. Just over half of the seven hundred pages survived. After the war, the War Department destroyed many records of her activities for her safety. The excerpts that follow are from the journal, published in 1996 as A Yankee Spy in Richmond: The Civil War Diary of “Crazy Bet” Van Lew.
Sept. 27, 1864
This lady was afterward taken from her home, and made to answer su
ch questions as they pleased to propose, but, true to friendship, they learned nothing from her. Doswell had also other friends of the same family brought before him and forced to testify. One of them a clergyman of this city, the Rev. Philip B. Price, a man of superior excellence of character, was told when he could say and think of nothing to betray the mistress of this house, “to refresh his memory.” The whole and sole object was to obtain by persecution the possession of their property, and imprison and badger a lady upwards of sixty years of age whose standing and character were impeachable, and who, without some sworn lie, they dared not molest. One who never did aught against their “dear young government,” and was ever kind to their people, in whose home, for humanity’s sake, the Confederate private ever found a friend. I shall ever remember the pale face of this dear lady, her feeble health and occasional illness from anxiety; her dread of Castle Thunder and Salisbury, for her arrest was constantly spoken of and frequently reported on the street. . . .
Our true hearts grew brave. Love of our country in its trials absorbed our being; enthusiasm lightened gloom. Fine patriotism principles and strengthens character. I have known the best of men feel their lives in danger from their partners in business & from their sons-in-law, who felt differently from them. Some aged parents endured much from their children who were disloyal. Ministers lived ever under a siege of terror. I was afraid to even pass the prison. I have had occasion to stop near it, when I dared not look up at the windows. Have turned to speak to a friend and found a detective at my elbow. Strange faces could sometimes be seen peeping around the columns and pillars of the back portico, & I can name gentlemen, some of our oldest and best citizens, who trembled when their door bell rang, fearing arrest.
Towards the close of the war Jeff Davis was earnest to have a writ of Habeas Corpus again suspended and to be clothed with fullest power. Visitors were watched. When the cold wind would blow on the darkest & stormiest night, Union people would visit one another. With shutters closed & curtains pinned together, how have we been startled at the barking of a dog and drawn nearer together, the pallor coming over our faces & the blood rushing to our hearts, as we would perhaps be tracing on a map [General William Tecumseh] Sherman’s progress and Sherman’s brilliant raids, or glorying in our Federal leaders. Then to follow the innocent visitor to the door, to lower the gas as, with muffled face, they said good night & the last words were often, “Do you think I am watched?” Such was our life.
Belle Boyd
(1844–1900)
Confederate Spy
Maria Isabella “Belle” Boyd, from Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), began her work as a Confederate spy at the age of seventeen. Following a skirmish at nearby Falling Waters on July 2, 1861, Federal troops occupied Martinsburg. On July 4, Belle Boyd shot and killed a drunken Union soldier who had insulted her mother. Boyd frequented the Union camps, gathering information and acting as a courier. Eavesdropping through a peephole, she discovered the military plans for units under the command of Union Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks and rode fifteen miles on horseback during the night to inform Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, quartered nearby in the Shenandoah Valley. Several weeks later, when she realized Jackson was about to attack Front Royal, she ran onto the battlefield to provide the general with last-minute information about the Union troop dispositions. Jackson captured the town and acknowledged her contribution and her bravery in a personal note. Boyd was arrested at least six times, but managed to avoid incarceration until July 29, 1862, when she was finally imprisoned in Old Capitol Prison in Washington DC. In 1864 she sailed for England, where she began writing her memoir and performed on stage. She returned to America in 1866, a widow and mother, and lectured on her war experiences, billing her show as “The Perils of a Spy” and herself as “Cleopatra of the Secession.” The following are excerpts from her 1865 memoir Belle Boyd: In Camp and Prison.
The village was at their mercy, and consequently entitled to their forebearance; and it would at least have been more dignified in them had they been content to enjoy their almost bloodless conquest with moderation; but, whatever might have been the intentions of their officers, they had not the inclination, or they lacked the authority, to control the turbulence of their men. . . .
Those hateful strains of “Yankee Doodle” resounded in every street, with an accompaniment of cheers, shouts, and imprecations.
Whiskey now began to flow freely. . . . The doors of our houses were dashed in; our rooms were forcibly entered by soldiers who might literally be termed “mad drunk.”
[Boyd describes the ransacking of homes, the shots fired through windows, “chairs and tables hurled into the street.” When the soldiers reach Boyd’s house, they begin a mad search for rebel flags; however, Boyd’s maid has already beat them by tearing down the flag from upstairs and burning it.]
They had brought with them a large Federal flag, which they were now preparing to hoist over our roof in token of our submission to their authority; but to this my mother would not consent. Stepping forward with a firm step, she said, very quietly, but resolutely, “Men, every member of my household will die before the flag shall be raised over us.”
Upon this, one of the soldiers, thrusting himself forward, addressed my mother and myself in language as offensive as it is possible to conceive. I could stand it no longer; my indignation was roused beyond control; my blood was literally boiling in my veins; I drew out my pistol and shot him. He was carried away mortally wounded, and soon after expired.
Our persecutors now left the house, and we were in hopes we had got rid of them, when one of the servants, rushing in, cried out—“Oh, missus, missus, dere gwine to burn de house down; dere pilin’ de stuff ag’in it! Oh, if massa were back!”
The prospect of being burned alive naturally terrified us, and, as a last resource, I contrived to get a message conveyed to a Federal officer in command. He exerted himself with effect, and had the incendiaries arrested before they could execute their horrible purpose.
In the mean time it had been reported at head-quarters that I had shot a Yankee soldier, and great was the indignation at first felt and expressed against me.
[Boyd explains that a commanding officer arrived to investigate, questioned all the witnesses, and finally declared that Boyd had “done perfectly right.”]
Sentries were now placed around the house, and Federal officers called every day to inquire if we had any complaint to make of their behavior. It was in this way that I became acquainted with so many of them[—]an acquaintance “the rebel spy” did not fail to turn to account on more than one occasion.
• • •
General Shields [Union Army] introduced me to the officers of his staff, two of whom were young Irishmen; and to one of these, Captain K., I am indebted for some very remarkable effusions, some withered flowers, and last, not least, for a great deal of very important information, which was carefully transmitted to my countrymen. I must avow the flowers and the poetry were comparatively valueless in my eyes; but let Captain K. be consoled: these were days of war, not of love, and there are still other ladies in the world besides the “rebel spy.”
The night before the departure of General Shields, who was about, as he informed us, to “whip” Jackson, a council of war was held in what had formerly been my aunt’s drawing room. Immediately above this was a bed-chamber, containing a closet, through the floor of which I observed a hole had been bored, whether with a view to espionage or not I have never been able to ascertain. It occurred to me, however, that I might turn the discovery to account; and as soon as the council of war had assembled, I stole softly up stairs, and lying down on the floor of the closet, applied my ear to the hole, and found, to my great joy, I could distinctly hear the conversation that was passing below.
The council prolonged their discussion for some hours; but I remained motionless and silent until the proceedings were brought to a conclusion, at one o’clock in the morning. As soon as the coast was cle
ar I crossed the court-yard, and made the best of my way to my own room, and took down in cipher everything I had heard which seemed to me of any importance.
I felt convinced that to rouse a servant, or make any disturbance at that hour, would excite the suspicions of the Federals by whom I was surrounded; accordingly I went straight to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and galloped away in the direction of the mountains.
Fortunately I had about me some passes which I had from time to time procured for Confederate soldiers returning south, and which, owing to various circumstances, had never been put in requisition. They now, however, proved invaluable; for I was twice brought to a stand-still by the challenge of the Federal sentries, and who would inevitably have put a period to my adventurous career had they not been beguiled by my false passport. Once clear of the chain of sentries, I dashed on unquestioned across fields and along roads, through fens and marshes, until, after a scamper of about fifteen miles, I found myself at the door of Mr. M.’s house. All was still and quiet: not a light was to be seen. I did not lose a moment in springing from my horse; and, running up the steps, I knocked at the door with such vehemence that the house re-echoed with the sound.
It was not until I had repeated my summons, at intervals of a few seconds, for some time, that I heard the response, “Who is there?” given in a sharp voice from the window above.
“It is I.”
“But who are you? What is your name?”
“Belle Boyd. I have important intelligence to communicate to Colonel Ashby: is he here?”
“No; but wait a minute: I will come down.”
The door was opened, and Mrs. M. drew me in, and exclaimed in a tone of astonishment—“My dear, where did you come from? and how on earth did you get here?”
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