Spies in Hoop Skirts

For a woman to be a good spy in the Civil War she’d have to be fearless, dedicated, or just plain reckless. In or out of disguise, she was good at keeping and stealing secrets. She might be a teenager, a mother, sister or a wife. Whatever side she served, she was in a dangerous business. If she was captured the penalty was harsh:  imprisonment or execution would likely be her fate, because as a spy she would have no protection under martial law. She lived with danger, knowing at any moment she might be unmasked. Whether she was a seducer, an eaves-dropper, a gun-toting code maker or code breaker, she lived on the edge – a different kind of soldier fighting in a war that lasted four long years and probably claimed at least one person she knew or loved.

Elizabeth Van Lew: A famous female spy for the Union, keep reading about her.

For the Union

Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society

Elizabeth Van Lew (1818-1900)

Elizabeth Van Lew was a tiny, birdlike southern belle, living in a mansion in Richmond, Virginia, the capitol of the Confederacy,  and was Union General Ulyssess S. Grant’s most valuable spy. She loved her home state, but hated slavery more. “Slave power is arrogant,” she wrote, “is jealous and intrusive, is cruel, is despotic.”  Educated at a Quaker school in Philadelphia, these abolitionist views put her at odds with her neighbors’ way of life well before the Civil War even began. In fact, she employed the family’s former slaves as spies, including her friend, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, who worked in the home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Elizabeth’s secret spy network in Richmond, consisting of businessmen, laborers, and former slaves, was vast and accomplished at furnishing intelligence to the Union throughout the war.  She gathered intelligence from captured Union soldiers held at the infamous Libby Prison, often smuggling out their messages in false-bottomed egg baskets, or in hollowed-out shoe soles. She even hid escaping Union soldiers in a secret space in her attic.  She was always in danger and under suspicion, but no one could ever prove she was a spy.  Elizabeth continued her work until the end of the war. She chose to stay in Richmond, in her old mansion, in a city she loved. She was shunned by most of Richmond and labeled a traitor to the south for the rest of her long life. Elizabeth Van Lew risked everything – friends, fortune, comfort, health, and life itself – all for her one absorbing desire that slavery be abolished and the Union preserved.

Mary Elizabeth Bowser

Photo provided by James A. Chambers U.S. Army Deputy, Office of the Chief, Military Intelligence

Mary Elizabeth Bowser (born Mary Jane Richards circa 1838) was a freed slave working in Elizabeth Van Lew’s household. As it was against the law to educate slaves in the south, Ms. Van Lew sent Mary to be educated in Philadelphia.  After undergoing spy training, Mary was sent to work at the home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. While there, she was able to read official documents and overhear important conversations, which she reported to Miss Van Lew and her spy network at great personal risk. She was said to have a photographic memory, an important asset for a spy!

Kate Warn

Kate Warn was the first female Pinkerton detective in American history. Shortly before the start of the Civil War in February, 1861, Kate was working undercover, embedded with Maryland secessionists outside Baltimore when she learned of a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln as he changed trains in Baltimore on his way to DC.  Kate’s intelligence convinced her boss Detective Allan Pinkerton, who founded what would become the Secret Service, that the plot was real and that the president was in imminent danger.  Pinkerton urged Lincoln to allow Kate to protect him as he traveled.  Disguised as a sister and her invalid brother, Kate and Lincoln survived the train ride, escaping what would later be called the “Baltimore Plot.”
Pinkerton wrote a lot about Kate, a self-styled young “widow,” who came to his Chicago office with the nerve to answer his ad for a detective- not a clerk or secretary, as would have been usual and socially acceptable at the time.  Amazingly, Kate’s true name and identity have eluded Civil War historians, genealogists, and students of spy craft for one hundred and fifty years, having been confused by the aliases she used throughout her life:  Kate Warn, Kate Warne, Kate Warner, Mrs. Barley, Mrs. Cherry, Mrs. Warren, and lastly as she lay dying with something close to her real name, “Angie M. Warren.”
Kate’s experience was clearly very unusual.  Most women living in the 19th century would not have nearly as many opportunities as women do today.  If a girl lived in a city, she might be able to go to school- if one of the very lucky few, she might make it to college, become a teacher or governess, learn to play music, and possibly speak another language. More often, girls would get married young, become the property of their husbands, and raise children.  Many women were illiterate, and none had the right to vote– so don’t take it for granted that you live in a world that encourages you to read and write!

For the Confederacy

Rose O’Neal Greenhow
Courtesy Library of Congress

Perhaps the most notorious Confederate spy, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a native of Montgomery County, Maryland, was beautiful, seductive and dangerous. A widowed Washington socialite before the Civil War, Rose had many friends in high places; ex-President James Buchanan and dozens of society’s elite frequented her elegant townhouse.
When the war began, Rose made no secret of her undying support for the Confederacy.  Thomas Jordan, a dashing US army officer who was ready to join the Confederate army recruited Rose Greenhow to act as his informant and pass information to the Rebels whenever possible. It was a perfect fit. Rose hated Yankees and the “abolition North,” calling the American flag “the symbol of murder, plunder, oppression and shame.” Rose gathered information throughout the war, often from well-placed lovers, and with her own army of forty-eight female couriers– fanatically devoted young women willing to ferry Rose’s coded dispatches throughout the Capitol and across the lines– her spy network was formidable.
Even though she was arrested, Rose had the goods on so many DC bigwigs that she was not tried for treason. When she refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States, she was exiled to the Confederacy and lauded by President Davis as a heroine:  “The woman who helped defeat the Yankees at Bull Run.”  Finally, Rose was given a large amount of money (gold coins) and sent on a secret mission to Europe for the Confederacy.  While in Paris it is thought she tried to gather support for the Confederacy. After two years abroad, in August of 1864, Rose was smuggled aboard the Condor, a blockade running ship bound for the United States. Chased by Federal ships in the North Carolina waters, the Condor foundered sighting an enemy ship heading straight for it. Rose demanded a lifeboat but her clothing was so laden with gold coins, she drowned as waves broke over the craft. She was buried with Military honors and remains a beloved Confederate heroine to this day.

Belle Boyd
Courtesy Library of Congress

When she was seventeen, Belle Boyd shot a Union soldier who tried to take down a Confederate flag flying outside her home in Martinsburg, Virginia.  “He spoke badly to my mother,” Belle allegedly told the shocked Federal officers who would keep her under close watch from then on. After Belle became too close to some of the officers, she was sent to her family in Front Royal, Virginia. Undaunted, using one of her female slaves as an assistant, Belle went to work as a courier, taking messages from one Confederate general to another during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign. She was arrested by Union forces in 1862 and sent to the Old Capitol Prison. After being captured and released several times, Belle was again arrested in 1864 trying to send important Confederate papers to England.  Shortly after, she went to Europe and married a Union naval officer, one of the very men who had previously arrested her.
In 1865, Belle became an actress and went on tour telling enraptured audiences about her escapades as a Confederate spy. Twice widowed, three times married, Belle died in Wisconsin in 1900. The Cleopatra of the Confederacy still thrills when her memoirs, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, are read by people of all ages. Civil War women spies ruled!