Spies
Hatch, Thom. The Blue, the Gray, and the Red: Indian
Campaigns of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA:
Stackpole, 2003.
Hauptman, Laurence M. Between Two Fires: American
Indians in the Civil War. New York: Free Press,
1995.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Civil War in the American
West. New York: Random House, 1991.
Moore, Frank, ed. Rebellion Record: A Diary of
American Events. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862.
Kevin Hillstrom
n
Spies
Spies and saboteurs occupy an ambiguous place in the
pantheons of Civil War history and legend. Those to
whom their services were provided often perceived them
as heroic figures who supplied vital information at considerable personal peril—and with little prospect that their
sacrifices and efforts would ever be publicly acknowledged. For some military strategists, political leaders,
and citizens in both the North and South, these spies
working behind enemy lines were the ultimate patriots.
The population in both the North and South
viewed any spy in their midst as the worst sort of treasonous scoundrel. A few spies and saboteurs—usually
women—were regarded a little more mildly, as misguided fools rather than immoral traitors. But most
agents caught gathering intelligence, serving as couriers
of classified information, or otherwise hindering the
domestic war effort were dealt with harshly. Executions
of convicted spies were commonplace.
Despite this edge, however—and despite their ability to line up a network of safe houses and courier lines
in the North within months of the onset of war—the
Confederates never really managed to gain a decisive
advantage in the realm of espionage.
Confederate Spies
The man charged with developing a Confederate spy
network capable of infiltrating the North was Major
William Norris (1820–1896), who also served the government in Richmond in a far more public role as head
of the Confederate Signal Bureau. During the course of
the war, Norris and his cohorts in Richmond benefited
enormously from the efforts of Confederate agents such
as E. Porter Alexander (1835–1910) and Thomas Nelson Conrad (1837–1905). Some of the most effective
spies for the Confederacy, however, were women. Rose
O’Neal Greenbow (1817–1864), who was a Washington
Cobbling Together Spy Networks
When the fireworks at Fort Sumter erupted in the spring
of 1861 and ushered in the Civil War, both the Union and
the Confederacy scrambled to cobble together intelligence-gathering networks that could track enemy movements, report on enemy resources and strategies, and
monitor the strengths and weaknesses of supply lines and
assorted military operations maintained by the other side.
In this realm, Union military strategists did not
enjoy a significant advantage over their counterparts in
the South. In 1861 the federal authorities in Washington did not have any sort of well-established intelligence
apparatus in place to which they could turn; prior to the
war there simply had never been a pressing need for such
an entity (though a smattering of U.S. diplomats and
other officials in Europe and elsewhere did provide some
basic information-gathering functions). Moreover, as
Donald Markle (1994) points out, the Union had an
established government with various departments that
could be infiltrated, whereas in the initial stages of the
war there was essentially no centralized Confederate
government to infiltrate (1994, p. xvii).
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Female
spies, including Rose Greenbow, often took advantage of
nineteenth-century stereotypes that regarded women as less able to
participate in the intricacies of war. Using their social connections
to learn important information about enemy movements,
fortifications, and strategies, successful women spies proved to be
excellent sources of detailed information during the Civil
War. The Library of Congress
Confederate spy Mrs. Rose Greenbow (1817–1864).
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Spies
‘‘BELLE’’ BOYD AND PAULINE CUSHMAN
Some of the most notorious—and successful—spies on both sides
of the Civil War were women. Perhaps the most colorful was Maria
Isabella ‘‘Belle’’ Boyd (1844–1900), known as ‘‘the Cleopatra of the
Secession.’’ Born in Martinsburg in what is now West Virginia, Boyd
began her espionage work at the age of seventeen. When some
drunken Union soldiers entered the family home on July 4, 1861,
and insulted Belle’s mother, the teenager drew a pistol and shot one
of them. As a result, a detachment of Union soldiers was posted
around the house and the family’s activities were monitored. Belle
took advantage of this close contact to charm one of the officers
into revealing military secrets. It was a pattern she followed on other
occasions, along with eavesdropping on Union officers through a
knothole in the upper floor of the local hotel.
Boyd was not universally admired in the Confederacy in spite
of her repeated success in obtaining Union military secrets. She was
a flamboyant dresser, preferring richly colored clothes and wearing a
feather in her hair. She also traveled alone, often on horseback, and
visited Southern officers in their camp tents—behavior that shocked
other women. Arrested twice and imprisoned for espionage, Boyd
was released both times. In 1864 she went to England, where she
met and married an officer in the Union Navy, Samuel Wylde
Hardinge. After his death, she remained in England and began a
career as an actress.
In 1869 she returned to the United States and remarried. She
divorced her second husband in 1884 and married a third husband
in 1885. A year later, Boyd began to give lecture tours across the
United States about her adventures as a Confederate spy. She died
in Wisconsin of typhoid fever in 1900.
Boyd’s most celebrated counterpart on the Union side was
Pauline Cushman (1833–1893), who had become an actress before
socialite with access to some of the capital’s most important political operators, was perhaps the most famous of
these agents, but others such as Antonia Ford (1838–
1871) and Maria ‘‘Belle’’ Boyd (1843–1900) also delivered valuable information on Union troop movements,
defensive priorities, and military strategies to grateful
recipients down South.
Women were particularly effective agents—for the
Union as well as the Confederacy—precisely because
nineteenth-century notions of female inferiority were
so deeply ingrained in the thoughts and attitudes of
Northern and Southern men. It was hard for many to
imagine that women could possibly be engaged in
espionage, and for those female spies that were caught,
treatment was far more lenient: Not one of the women
caught spying for either side was threatened with execution (Williams 2005, p. 139).
As the war progressed, Southern spymasters also
became adept at gleaning important military intelligence
from Northern newspapers, some of which were stunGALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
the Civil War. Cushman’s husband, a musician who had joined the
Union Army, was killed in 1862. While on tour with a theatrical
troupe in Louisville, Kentucky, Cushman began to fraternize with
Confederate officers. She obtained battle plans and, concealing
them in her shoes, attempted to carry them back to the Union lines.
Cushman was caught by Braxton Bragg’s troops and sentenced to
death by hanging, but was saved three days before her scheduled
execution by a Union advance and Confederate retreat.
According to some sources, Cushman then disguised herself as
a Union cavalry major and became known as Miss Major Cushman.
By the spring of 1865 she was already giving lectures around the
country on her work as a Union spy. Cushman’s later years were
unhappy, however. Her children both died in 1868. She moved to
San Francisco and married a second husband in 1872, but was
widowed again in less than a year. She married a third husband in
1879 and moved with him to Texas but separated from him in 1890.
By 1892 she had moved back to San Francisco and was living in
poverty.
Cushman’s last days were spent working as a seamstress and
cleaning lady. She became addicted to opium to relieve the pain of
severe arthritis, and died of an overdose in December 1893. Cushman is buried in the national cemetery at the Presidio in San
Francisco, where her gravestone identifies her as a Union spy.
REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christen, William J. Pauline Cushman, Spy of the Cumberland: An Accounting
and Memorandum of Her Life. Roseville, MN: Edinborough Press, 2005.
Scarborough, Ruth. Belle Boyd, Siren of the South. Macon, GA: Mercer
University Press, 1983.
ningly careless about revealing Federal troop movements
and other information about Yankee military operations
(the South did not hemorrhage important military information in the same way, mostly because it had far fewer
papers). In addition, Rebel military commanders and
scouts in the field received a steady diet of intelligence
on enemy movements, strength, and morale from members
of the civilian population. This information, provided by
farmers, field hands, housewives, hunters, storeowners, and
other Southerners from every walk of life, became a veritable flood during the last two years of the war, when Union
troops were making ever deeper incursions into the Confederate heartland. This intelligence ultimately was insufficient to stem the Yankee tide, but it did make Union
military objectives considerably harder to achieve.
Union Spies
Leading architects of Union intelligence-gathering efforts
during the Civil War included Allan Pinkerton (1819–
81
Spies
1884), founder of the legendary Pinkerton Detective
Agency, and Provost Marshal Marsena R. Patrick
(1811–1888). These and other administrators not only
coordinated the activities of Union spies in the South,
such as Philip Henson and Timothy Webster (1821–
1862) (the latter was perhaps the most famous of the
male spies utilized by the North), they also worked to
ferret out spies and saboteurs in their own midst. In the
latter regard, Northern spymasters were much more effective than their Confederate counterparts. Their greater
level of success was attributable in part to the fact that
even before the war began, the Federal government had
identified many Southern sympathizers in Washington,
DC, and other population centers. In addition, the
South’s ability to detect spies became progressively
weaker as the war went on as Confederate difficulties with
virtually every aspect of military operations intensified.
Like the South, the North had its share of notable
women spies, including Mary Gordon, Carrie King, and
Pauline Cushman (1833–1893). Perhaps the most
famous woman to gather meaningful military intelligence
for the North was Elizabeth Van Lew (1818–1900). A
wealthy socialite, Van Lew cultivated a reputation for
bizarre behavior that helped disguise her involvement in
the Underground Railroad and increased her ability to pass
on important information involving Confederate strategies
and troop movements. Van Lew’s chief ‘‘lieutenant’’ in
these efforts was Mary Elizabeth Bowser (c. 1840–??), a
former slave educated by Van Lew who managed to obtain
employment as a dining room attendant to Confederate
President Jefferson Davis (1808–1889).
Another important source of military intelligence
was a spy network nurtured into an effective weapon by
Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885). Under
the guiding hand of Grant and General Grenville M.
Dodge (1831–1916), this networkevolved into an effective provider of military and political intelligence. By the
latter stages of the war, ‘‘a large secret service force
operated all over the Confederacy,’’ recalled Union Colonel George E. Spencer (1836–1893). ‘‘It was probably
the most effective secret service in the federal army and
General Grant came to rely on the information received
from it’’ (Perkins 1929, p. 105).
As Federal armies made deeper incursions into the
South, the information provided by undercover spies
was also supplemented by information from antisecessionist Southerners, as well as those looking to curry
favor with the new authorities in the region. In the early
years, these ordinary Southerners were furtive in providing assistance, but they became increasingly bold in the
war’s final months, when the Confederacy’s death rattle
had become audible to all. Finally, Yankee armies in
the field received a great deal of valuable intelligence
from fugitive slaves, many of whom carried valuable
information about enemy positions and dispositions.
Some of these ‘‘informers’’ were so eager to help defeat
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Major Pauline Cushman (1833–1893), spy and actress. An
unsuccessful actress, Pauline Cushman was caught as she attempted
to smuggle information about Confederate plans. Sentenced to
death, she escaped from enemy hands during the confusion of a
Union military attack and later toured the United States telling her
story. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
the slaveholding South that they delayed their journey
northward in order to guide Union forces to vulnerable
supply depots and other potential military targets.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bakeless, John. Spies of the Confederacy. Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1970.
Davis, William C., and the editors of Time-Life Books.
Spies, Scouts, and Raiders: Irregular Operations.
New York: Time-Life Books, 1985.
Feis, William B. Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence
War from Belmont to Appomattox. Lincoln, NE:
Bison Books, 2004.
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Foraging and Looting
Fishel, Edwin C. ‘‘The Mythology of Civil War
Intelligence.’’ Civil War History 10, no. 4
(1964): 344–367.
Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How
Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of
the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press,
2001.
Gaddy, David W. ‘‘Gray Cloaks and Daggers.’’ Civil
War Times Illustrated July 14, no. 4 (1975):
20–27.
Leonard, Elizabeth D. All the Daring of the Soldier:
Women of the Civil War Armies. New York:
Penguin Books, 1999.
Markle, Donald E. Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War.
New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994.
Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Women in the Civil
War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1994.
Perkins, Jacob Randolph. Trails, Rails and War: The
Life of General G. M. Dodge. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1929.
Varon, Elizabeth R. Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True
Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the
Heart of the Confederacy. Oxford University Press,
USA, 2005.
Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War:
Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York:
New Press, 2005.
Kevin Hillstrom
n
Foraging and Looting
The practice of foraging by military personnel increased
exponentially during the course of the American Civil
War. At the outset of the conflict, Rebel and Yankee
soldiers alike mostly viewed the civilian populations in
North and South—and the property they owned—as
firmly outside the sphere of military action. As the war
progressed, however, these restrictions on contact with
civilians—some self-imposed on moral grounds, others
in adherence to explicit military rules prohibiting foraging and looting—became frayed and in many cases were
discarded altogether.
There are very important differences between foraging and looting. Foraging was sanctioned by the laws and
customs of war, although it was approached with some
squeamishness at the beginning of the war. Looting
involved taking non-food items for non-military uses,
and was sanctioned neither by the laws and customs of
war nor by officers on either side. This gradual turn to
foraging and looting was especially true of Union soldiers
operating in the Confederate states, where most of the
war was fought. This is not to say that Union soldiers
were the only culpable party; Confederates were no less
likely to forage and loot, given the opportunity. In the
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South, however, the Union army faced shifting attitudes about war strategy and increased frustration about
perceived civilian culpability in guerrilla activity that
prompted an outright embrace of looting and foraging.
Foraging in the Countryside
Food was the first area in which soldiers engaged in
large-scale theft from civilians. In its earliest stages, the
practice of ‘‘living off the land’’ as a way of supplementing meager and unvaried commissary rations was done
lightly and with an almost quaint concern for propriety
and ethics. For example, soldiers in both armies freely
picked apples, pears, cherries, and other fruit from trees
they passed while on the march, but they were less
sanguine about consuming field crops because they
knew that production of the latter was directly due to
the exertions of farmers and farmhands. The same ethical
issues confronted soldiers who came across cellars and
smokehouses containing private food stores. Because
many soldiers came from rural circumstances themselves,
they knew the long, hot hours that went into raising
field crops and filling storage cellars and smokehouses,
and the thought of absconding with the fruits of those
labors troubled many a conscience.
Over time, however, the attitudes of many soldiers
toward supplementing their diet with food found on the
march changed markedly. Food rations from the military
commissaries of both armies were notoriously meager, of
limited variety, and wretched in taste, and soldiers who
had been choking down hardtack and salt pork for weeks
at a time understandably were tempted by the livestock,
fruit, and vegetables that they came across in enemy
territory. Once individual members of a company or
regiment crossed an ethical line by taking food from
civilians for their own consumption, the behavior almost
inevitably spread to other members of the company or
regiment, like a fast-spreading virus.
Another one of the key elements in the institutionalization of foraging within military units was gaining
approval—or at least tacit acceptance—of the practice
from officers. Many enlisted men accomplished this by
implicating officers as beneficiaries of their predation.
Officers who received and kept a portion of the bounty
from foraging expeditions were in no position to rein in
the practice. As accomplices, their main concern was to
maintain appearances. As a result, some officers who
were ‘‘on the take’’ engaged in elaborate charades in
which they publicly exhorted troops in their charge to
kept their hands off private property, then waited in their
tents for soldiers to bring them their share of the spoils.
Lee in the North
The two major occasions on which Confederate forces
had the opportunity to forage at length came in 1862
and 1863, when General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870)
led invasions into Maryland and Pennsylvania. During
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