Download Confederate Spies: Loreta Velazquez,Union Spies: Elizabeth Van

Confederate
Velazquez
Spies:
Loreta
Perhaps, the strangest spy during the American
Civil War was Loreta Janeta Velázquez. Not
only was she a spy during the latter stages of
the war but she also served as an officer in
the Confederate Army disguised as a man.
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1842, Velázquez met and eloped at age
14 with a Army officer from Texas who we know only as William.
Over the next several years Loreta traveled with him from post
to post.
At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Velázquez’s husband
resigned and joined the Confederate Army. She failed to
convince her fiancé to let her join him, so she acquired
two uniforms, adopted the name Harry T. Buford and moved
to Arkansas. There she recruited 236 men in four days, shipped
them to Pensacola, Florida and presented them to her husband
as her command.
Unfortunately, William was killed while demonstrating the use
of weapons to his troops. Velázquez turned her men over to a
friend and began to search for more things to do. She was
supposed to have served in the Battle of First Manassas. She
grew tired of camp life and again donned female garb to go
to Washington, D.C., where she spied for the Confederacy. She
claimed she met Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon
Cameron. When she returned to the South, she was assigned to
the detective corps. She later left for Tennessee.
In Tennessee, she fought in the siege of Fort Donelson until
the surrender. She was wounded in battle, but was not exposed.
She fled to New Orleans, where she was arrested, suspected of
being a female Union spy in disguise. After she was released,
she enlisted to get away from the city.
At Shiloh, she found the battalion she had raised in Arkansas
and fought in the battle. As she was burying the dead after a
battle, a stray shell wounded her. When the army doctor who
examined her discovered she was a woman, she again fled to New
Orleans and saw Major General Benjamin F. Butler take command
of the city. She gave up her uniform at that point.
Afterwards, in Richmond, Virginia, authorities hired her as a
spy and she began to travel all around the USA. At that time,
she married Captain Thomas DeCaulp; he died soon after in
a Chattanooga hospital. (An officer of that name is known to
have survived the war). She traveled north where officials
hired her to search for herself. In Ohio and Indiana, she
tried to organize a rebellion of Confederate prisoners of war.
After the war, Velazquez married a man identified only as
Major Wasson, and immigrated to Venezuela. After his death,
she moved back to the United States, where she traveled
extensively in the West, and gave birth to a baby boy. In
1876, Velazquez, in need of money to support her child,
decided to publish her memoirs. The Woman in Battle was
dedicated to her Confederate comrades “who, although they
fought in a losing cause, succeeded by their valor in winning
the admiration of the world.” The public reaction to the book
at the time was mixed—Confederate General Jubal Early
denounced it as pure fiction—but modern scholars have found
some of it to be quite accurate.
With the release of her book, Velazquez may have married for a
fourth time and is last documented as living in Nevada. The
date of her death is thought to be 1897, but there is no
supporting evidence for this. In response to those who
criticized the account of her life, she said that she hoped
she would be judged with impartiality, as she only did what
she thought to be right.
Union Spies: Elizabeth Van
Lew
In the shadowy intelligence war within the
Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew may have been
the most effective spy that the Union had
inside the Confederate capital of Richmond,
Virginia. The Richmond resident built and
operated a large and effective spy ring.
Elizabeth Van Lew was born in 1818 in in Richmond, Virginia to
John Van Lew and Eliza Baker, whose father was Hilary Baker,
mayor of Philadelphia from 1796 to 1798. Elizabeth’s father
came to Richmond in 1806 at the age of 16 and, within twenty
years, had built up a prosperous hardware business and owned
several slaves.
Elizabeth and her brother were dedicated abolitionists and
practicing Quakers. They spent large sums of money buying and
manumitting slaves. Her brother would go to the Richmond slave
market and buy entire families who were in danger of being
split up. He would then bring them to his home and issue their
papers of manumission.
At the start of the war Elizabeth began working on behalf of
the Union. Richmond was the site of the notorious Libbey
Prison and Elizabeth began a regular regimen of visits there.
She would
bring food, clothing, writing paper, and other
things to the Union soldiers imprisoned there. She aided
prisoners in escape attempts, passing them information about
safe houses and getting a Union sympathizer appointed to the
prison staff. Prisoners would pass her military intelligence
on Confederate troop levels and movements, which she was able
to pass on to Union commanders.
Van Lew also operated a spy ring during the war, including
clerks in the War and Navy Departments of the Confederacy and
a Richmond mayoral candidate. It has been widely suggested
that Van Lew convinced Varina Davis to hire Mary Bowser as a
household servant, enabling Bowser to spy in the White House
of the Confederacy
Van Lew’s spy network was so efficient that on several
occasions she sent Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant fresh flowers
from her garden and a copy of the Richmond newspaper. She
developed a cipher system and often smuggled messages out of
Richmond in hollow eggs.
Van Lew’s work was highly valued by the United States. George
H. Sharpe, intelligence officer for the Army of the Potomac,
credited her with “the greater portion of our intelligence in
1864-65.” On Grant’s first visit to Richmond after the war, he
had tea with Van Lew. Grant said of her, “You have sent me the
most valuable information received from Richmond during the
war.”
When Richmond fell to the Union Army, Elizabeth was the first
person to raise the American flag. Appointed by President
Grant as postmaster, served from 1869 until 1877. However,
many Richmond residents considered her a traitor and she
eventually asked the War Department for all of her records in
order to conceal the true extent of her espionage.
She petitioned the Federal government for reimbursement but
was turned down. Desperately in need of money, she turned to a
group of wealthy Bostonians who gladly collected money for the
woman who helped so many Union soldiers during the war.
Van Lew died on September 25, 1900, and was buried in Shockoe
Hill Cemetery in Richmond. Her grave was unmarked until the
relatives of Union Colonel Paul J. Revere, whom she had aided
during the war donated a tombstone. She is a member of
the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.
Confederate Spies: Belle Boyd
Belle Boyd is perhaps the best known
Confederate spy of the American Civil
War. Her career was primarily in the
Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. In fact,
the majority of her work was done in
her father’s hotel in Front Royal,
Virginia from the start of the war
until
her
arrest
on
July
29,
1862. Contemporaries noted that
“without being beautiful, she is very
attractive…quite
tall…a
superb
figure…and dressed with much taste.”
Isabella Marie Boyd was born in Martinsburg, Virginia on May
9, 1843 (several biographies say 1844), the eldest child of
Benjamin Reed and Mary Rebecca (Glenn) Boyd. She would later
describe her childhood as idyllic, surrounded by siblings and
cousins. She was a bit of a tomboy and reported that she
climbed trees and took part in other unfeminine activities.
In 1856, at the age of 13, Belle was sent to Mount Washington
Female College in Baltimore. After four years of education,
her parents arranged a debut in Washington, where she filled
the role of a fun-loving debutante. After this she returned to
Front Royal and her parent’s hotel in the Shenandoah Valley
town.
Front Royal was a small railroad town along the Alexandria,
Orange and Manassas Gap Railroad. As such it became an
important location for both armies to hold.
Her first encounter with the war took place in
either Front Royal or Martinsburg, depending on the account.
Union troops had occupied the area after an engagement at
Falling Waters on July 2, 1861. Two days later Boyd Shot and
killed a drunken Union soldier.
Boyd wrote in her post-war memoirs that he had “addressed my
mother and myself in language as offensive as it is possible
to conceive. I could stand it no longer…we ladies were obliged
to go armed in order to protect ourselves as best we might
from insult and outrage.”
She was exonerated by the commanding general Robert Patterson.
Boyd noted that “the commanding officer…inquired into all the
circumstances with strict impartiality, and finally said I had
‘done perfectly right.” She was 17 years old at the time.
By early 1862 her activities were well known to the Union Army
and the press, who dubbed her “La Belle Rebelle,” “the Siren
of the Shenandoah,” “the Rebel Joan of Arc,” and “Amazon of
Secessia.” In fact, the New York Tribune described her whole
attire, “…a gold palmetto tree [pin] beneath her beautiful
chin, a Rebel soldier’s belt around her waist, and a velvet
band across her forehead with the seven stars of the
Confederacy shedding their pale light therefrom…the only
additional ornament she required to render herself perfectly
beautiful was a Yankee halter [noose] encircling her neck.”
Some accounts say that she frequented Union camps seeking
information on troops strengths and movements. Other accounts
center much of her activity around her parent’s hotel in Front
Royal. She used a slave named Eliza Hopewell as a courier to
the Confederate command. Early on Hopewell was intercepted and
the information was discovered in a hollowed-out watch-case.
Boyd was warned that she was liable to be hanged for spying
and realized that she needed a better means of communication.
Boyd supposedly spied on a council of war held by General
James Shields at the hotel in mid-may 1862. She was reported
to have hidden in a closet and listened through a knothole.
Realizing the importance of the information Boyd rode through
Union lines, using false papers to bluff her way past the
sentries, and reported the news to Col. Turner Ashby, who was
scouting for the Confederates.
She then returned to town and when the Confederates advanced
on Front Royal on May 23, Belle ran to greet General Stonewall
Jackson’s men, braving enemy fire that put bullet holes in her
skirt. She urged an officer to inform Jackson that “the Yankee
force is very small. Tell him to charge right down and he will
catch them all.”
Jackson did and that evening penned a note of gratitude to
her: “I thank you, for myself and for the army, for the
immense service that you have rendered your country today.”
For her contributions, she was awarded the Southern Cross of
Honor. Jackson also gave her captain and honorary aide-de-camp
positions.
Belle Boyd’s career came to an abrupt end on July 29, 1862
when her Union officer lover gave her up to the authorities.
She was transported to Washington and jailed in the Old
Capitol Prison. She was held for a month and exchanged at
Fortress Monroe on August 29th. She was later arrested and
imprisoned a third time, but again was set free. Other
accounts say that she was arrested six or seven times by Union
authorities.
Arrested again in July 1863, Boyd was not a model inmate. She
waved Confederate flags from her window, she sang Dixie, and
devised a unique method of communicating with supporters
outside. Her contact would shoot a rubber ball into her cell
with a bow and arrow and Boyd would sew messages inside the
ball. In December 1863 she was released and banished to the
South.
She sailed to England on May 8, 1864 as a Confederate courier
but was arrested yet again. She finally escaped to Canada with
the help of a Union naval officer, Lieutenant Sam Hardinge,
and eventually made her way to England where she and Hardinge
were married on August 25, 1864. In England she became an
actress.
She returned to the United States after her husband’s death in
1866, a widow and a mother at 23. By then she had written her
memoirs Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison some of which was
exaggerated. Boyd continued her stage career after her return.
She billed her show as “The Perils of a Spy” and herself as
“Cleopatra of the Secession.”
On November 11, 1869. She married John Swainston Hammond in
New Orleans. After a divorce in 1884, Boyd married Nathaniel
Rue High in 1885. A year later, she began touring the country
giving dramatic lectures of her life as a Civil War spy.
While touring the United States (ironically, she had gone to
address members of a GAR post), she died of a heart attack in
Kilbourne City, Wisconsin (now known as Wisconsin Dells,
Wisconsin) on June 11, 1900. She was 56 years old. She was
buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Wisconsin Dells, with
members of the Local GAR as her pallbearers.
Union Spies: Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman had a career that started a
dozen years before the Civil War and
continued throughout it. After the war she
was active in the women’s suffrage movement
in New York until illness overtook her. This
remarkable African-American is a legend in
annals of human freedom.
She was born Araminta Harriet Ross in about 1820 to slave
parents, Harriet (“Rit”) Green and Ben Ross. Rit was owned by
Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was held
by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary’s second husband, and who
ran a large plantation near Blackwater River in Madison,
Maryland. Like most slaves of that era, she had no real idea
of her birth year and other years have been given for it.
Tubman was hired out at about 5 or 6 years old as a nursemaid
to a woman we only know as “Miss Susan” for her infant. She
was ordered to keep watch on the baby as it slept; when it
woke and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a
particular day when she was lashed five times before
breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She
found ways to resist, running away for five days, wearing
layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and
fighting back.
Over
the
years
Tubman
was
brutalized
by
beatings
and
whippings. On one occasion she suffered a severe head injury
that caused seizures and spells of unconsciousness for the
rest of her life. After her head injury, Tubman began having
visions and potent dreams, which she considered signs from the
divine. This religious perspective instructed her throughout
her life.
In 1840 her father was was manumitted, freed from slavery at
the age of 45, as stipulated in a former owner’s will, though
his real age was closer to 55. He continued to work as a
timber estimator for the same family that had held him as a
slave. Although Tubman later found out that the same
stipulations had been made for her mother and her children in
the same will, their owners simply ignored the will. They were
powerless to enforce the will.
When Tubman owner died in 1849, Tubman and two of her brothers
escaped before their owner’s widow could sell them. On
September 17, 1849, the three left the plantation that they
had been rented to but her brothers forced her to return with
them. Shortly afterward, Tubman escaped by herself with the
help of the Underground Railroad. Her final message to her
mother was “I’m bound for the promised land”.
The Underground Railroad was an informal, but well-organized,
system was composed of free and enslaved blacks,
white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among
the latter in Maryland at the time were members of
the Religious Society of Friends, often called Quakers. A
journey of nearly 90 miles, her traveling by foot would have
taken between five days and three weeks.
When she crossed into Pennsylvania, Tubman later recalled her
feelings. “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at
my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a
glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the
trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”
Upon reaching Philadelphia, Tubman considered her own
circumstances and that of her family. “I was a stranger in a
strange land,” she said later. “[M]y father, my mother, my
brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I
was free, and they should be free.”
Within a year she began her career as Moses, named by
abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, an allusion to
the prophet in the Book of Exodus who led the Hebrews to
freedom from Egypt. Over the course of her career in the
Underground Railroad, Tubman rescued some 70 slaves in about
13 expeditions, including her three other brothers, Henry,
Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She
also provided specific instructions for about 50 to 60 other
fugitives who escaped to the north.
In 1858, Harriet Tubman met and joined with John Brown. She
recruited supporters who for an attack on slaveholders. Brown
referred to her as “General Tubman”. However, for one reason
or another she was not present when Brown attacked the Federal
Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
At the start of the war, Tubman joined a group of
abolitionists who made their way to Port Royal, South
Carolina. The area had been seized by Union troops and was
used as a base of operations for the blockade fleet. Tubman
served as a nurse in the hospital, preparing remedies from
local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery. She
rendered assistance to men with smallpox; that she did not
contract the disease herself started more rumors that she was
blessed by God.
After the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in January
1863, Tubman began leading a band of scouts in the area around
Port Royal. Her group, working under the
orders of Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton, mapped the unfamiliar terrain
and reconnoitered its inhabitants. She
later worked alongside Colonel James
Montgomery, and provided him with key
intelligence that aided the capture
of Jacksonville, Florida.
On June 2, 1863, Tubman became the first woman to lead an
armed assault during the Civil War. Along with Montgomery, she
led a force on an assault on a collection of plantations along
the Combahee River. More than 700 slaves were freed during the
raid.
For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces,
tending to newly liberated slaves, scouting into Confederate
territory, and eventually nursing wounded soldiers in
Virginia. She also made periodic trips back to Auburn, New
York, to visit her family and care for her parents. The
Confederacy surrendered in April 1865; after donating several
more months of service, Tubman headed home.
After the war Tubman suffered financially for her service to
the Union. She did not receive a pension until 1899. In her
later years she worked for the women’s suffrage movement
alongside alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily
Howland.
The woman named Moses who helped her people to freedom died on
March 10, 1913 surrounded by family and friends. Her last
words were “I go to prepare a place for you.”
Confederate
Spies:
O’Neal Greenhow
Rose
One of the most renowned Confederate
spies of the early Civil War years was
Rose O’Neal Greenhow of Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Greenhow who was 48 or 49 when the
war began (her birth year is given as
1813
or
1814),
was
a
Washington
socialite who moved in the very highest
circles of society.
Rose Greenhow’s early life was not the easiest. She was born
at Port Tobacco, Maryland as as Maria Rosetta O’Neal. Both of
her parents died by the time that she was a teenager. She was
invited to live with her aunt, Maria Ann Hill, who ran a
stylish boarding house at the Old Capitol building in
Washington.
Through the assistance of her aunt, Rose met a number of
personages and frequented capital society. In 1935 she married
Dr. Robert Greenhow. He taught her history and gave her access
to government documents through his work in the
U.S. Department of State.
The Greenhow’s had eight children but only four of them lived
beyond infancy. Soon after her namesake last child was born,
her husband died. Meanwhile one daughter moved West and
another died.
Rose Greenhow’s sympathies were always with the Confederacy
due to her friendship with John C. Calhoun. Soon after the war
began, she was recruited by then-Union officer Thomas Jordan.
He supplied her with a 26-symbol cipher for creating encoded
messages. Jordan resigned his U.S. Army commission in May 1861
and received a captain’s commission in the Confederate States
Army. He would end the war as a brigadier general after which
he joined the Cuban Liberation Army.
On July 9, 1861, and July 16, 1861, Greenhow passed secret
messages to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard containing
critical information regarding military movements for what
would be the First Battle of Bull Run, including the plans of
Union General Irvin McDowell. Assisting in her conspiracy were
pro-Confederate members of Congress, Union officers, and her
dentist, Aaron Van Camp. Confederate President Jefferson
Davis credited Greenhow’s information with securing victory at
Manassas.
Greenhow’s spying career was shortlived. On August 23, 1861
Allan Pinkerton, head of the recently-formed Secret Service,
apprehended Greenhow and placed her under house arrest. Leaked
information was traced back to Greenhow’s home, and upon
searching for further evidence, Pinkerton and his men found
maps of Washington fortifications and notes on military
movements.
On January 18, 1862, Greenhow was transferred to Old Capitol
Prison. Her daughter, “Little Rose”, then eight years old, was
permitted to remain with her. Greenhow continued to pass along
messages while imprisoned. She was said to have sent one
message concealed within a woman visitor’s bun of hair.
Passers-by could see Rose’s window from the street. The
position of the blinds and number of candles burning in the
window had special meaning to the “little birdies” passing by.
Greenhow also on one occasion flew the Confederate Flag from
her prison window.
Rather than continue her incarceration, the Union government
deported her to Richmond, Virginia where she was hailed as a
heroine by Southerners. Jefferson Davis welcomed her home and
enlisted her as a courier to Europe. From 1863 to 1864,
Greenhow traveled through France and Britain on a diplomatic
mission for the Confederacy. While in Britain, Greenhow wrote
her memoirs, titled My Imprisonment and the First Year of
Abolition Rule at Washington, which sold well there.
In September 1864, Greenhow left Europe to return to the
Confederate States, carrying dispatches. She traveled on
the Condor, a British blockade runner. On October 1, 1864,
the Condor ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear
River near Wilmington, North Carolina, while begin pursued by
a Union gunboat, USS Niphon.
Fearing capture and further imprisonment, Greenhow fled the
grounded ship by rowboat. A wave capsized the rowboat, and
Greenhow, weighed down with $2,000 worth of gold in a bag
around her neck from her memoir, royalties intended for the
Confederate treasury, drowned.
Union Spies: Philip Henson
Union intelligence gathering during the American
Civil War was not centralized as it is today.
Very often, each major commander had his own spy
or spies that concentrated on gathering
intelligence in their particular area of
operations. Philip Henson was just such a spy for
General Ulysses S. Grant when he commanded
operations in the Western Theater. (This is the only known
picture of this daring spy.)
Henson was a native of Blount Springs, Alabama where he was
born on December 28, 1827. He traveled widely accompanying his
father, a Federal Indian Agent, on his travels to Kansas,
Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. At the start of
the war Henson was a storekeeper in Corinth, Mississippi.
Alabama Governor A.B. Moore and Montgomery Mayor A.J. Noble
appointed him Captain of the State’s Militia and the
Confederacy’s
Postmaster
General,
John
Henninger
Reagan selected him for the position of Field Supervisor in
the Confederate Post Office Department.
His
Post
Office
job
required
Henson
to
travel
widely throughout the Southwest. During one of these trips he
met with former Texas Governor Sam Houston who was a staunch
Unionist. Houston persuaded Henson to become a spy for the
Union Army. He had him travel to Illinois and meet with a
little-known Union general by the name of Ulysses Grant.
Henson swore an oath of loyalty to the Union, because, as he’d
attest to whenever asked about it, “I believed in it”. Thus
began a twenty-five year relationship between the two men that
would see them move together from Civil War battlefields to
the White House.
Henson’s first opportunity to assist Grant was when he met
with Confederate General Leonidas Polk, the “Fighting Bishop”.
Polk thinking that Henson was a loyal Confederate confided in
him that Confederate Generals Gideon Johnson Pillow and John
Buchanan Floyd were in command of Fort Henry and Fort
Donelson, respectively. Henson immediately advised Grant of
Polk’s admission that two “political” generals were in charge
of defending the two key forts.
Grant realizing that he was dealing with amateurs immediately
attacked Fort Henry with his naval and army forces. The fort
fell after a brief struggle. He then marched to Fort Donelson
where after a significant action delivered the first of his
famous “Unconditional Surrender” demands. The Confederate
suffered 13,846 total casualties out of a force of 16,171,
including 327 killed, 1,127 wounded and 12,392
captured/missing.
Henson was responsible for introducing Grant to the Southern
Unionists Andrew Jackson Hamilton and Charles Christopher
Sheats, known as “The Mossbacks of Nickajack”, resulting in
the enlistment of over 2,000 loyal Alabamans and Tennesseans
in the legendary 1st Alabama Cavalry US Volunteers.
In 1863 Henson traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi where
he convinced Confederate General John C. Pemberton (the CSA
commander of the city) that he would be an asset. Henson gave
Pemberton misinformation about the inhumane treatment
Confederate prisoners of war were supposedly receiving from
their Union captors.
Pemberton had him speak to units throughout the fortress city.
During these trips Henson was able to gather intelligence on
the Confederate defenses. Grant was able to use the
information to crack the formidable Confederate defenses and
force the city’s surrender in July 1863.
In 1864 Henson was arrested by Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest and imprisoned. Henson was able to escape from
prison after more than six months and escape to Union lines
where he was reunited with Grant. Forrest was to call
Henson “The most dangerous spy operating within the
Confederacy”. For his contributions to the war effort Henson
would receive brevets for the rank of Major.
After the war Henson remained in Grant’s service. After
the assassination of President Lincoln, Grant asked him to
conduct a “confidential and discrete” investigation to
discover any and all details of Lincoln’s death. It was a task
that continued during Grant’s Presidency and resulted in
brevets for the rank of Lieutenant Colonel being bestowed upon
him. Ultimately, it took over twenty years to complete.
Upon the election of U.S. Grant to the U.S. Presidency
(1869–1877), Henson became the first Special Secret Service
Agent of the United States of America, serving until Grant’s
death in 1885. Henson died in Paris, Texas at the home of his
eldest son, Phillip Edgar, a well-known cotton dealer, at
10:15 P.M. on Tuesday evening the 10th day of January, 1911.
Confederate
Spies:
Thomas Harrison
Henry
Perhaps, the best known Confederate
field spy was Henry Thomas Harrison. Due
to the book The Killer Angels and the
movie Gettysburg, based on that book,
Harrison has become known throughout the
land as General James Longstreet’s field
spy. However, he preferred to be called
a scout. Many historians credit him with
giving Longstreet the information that
convinced Lee to converge on Gettysburg.
Henry Thomas Harrison was born in Nashville, Tennessee in
1832. He was an actor who did not get many important parts
because of small stature. At the start of the war he joined
the 12th Mississippi Infantry at Corinth as a private.
By September, Harrison had become a scout/spy for General Earl
Van Dorn near Manassas, Virginia. On April 30, 1862 Harrison
was back in Corinth where he requested equipment for service
there from a General Gordon (probably George Washington
Gordon). In January 1863, Harrison was sending reports from
Holly Springs, Mississippi to Maj. Gen. William W. Loring
about the movements of Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the
Tennessee.
On February 20, 1863 Harrison reported to Secretary of War,
James Seddon, for service as a secret agent. On March 7th, he
was assigned to General Longstreet, he is dispatched to spy
for General D. H. Hill in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Almost immediately Harrison was arrested by Union troops near
New Bern, North Carolina and accused of spying. He was jailed
for about a month until Harrison convinced them that he was an
innocent civilian who was only trying to avoid conscription.
Released from jail, he immediately reported to General
Longstreet who was in Franklin, Virginia. Longstreet sent
Harrison to Washington in order to track the movements of the
Army of the Potomac. This was to begin the most impactful
phase of Harrison’s service.
Tracking the Union Army progress in their pursuit of the Army
of Northern Virginia, Harrison was able to gather information
on the size and routes of the enemy army. On June 28th,
Harrison made his report to Longstreet at Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania. By then the large Union Army was around
Frederick, Maryland and marching North. He also reported that
Joe Hooker had been replaced by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade.
Harrison’s information was plausible enough for Lee to halt
his entire army. Harrison reported that the Union had
left Frederick, Maryland, and was moving northward, which was
true. Longstreet’s chief of staff, Moxley Sorrel, said that
Harrison “always brought true information.”
As a result of Harrison’s information, Lee told all of his
troops to concentrate in the vicinity of Cashtown, PA, eight
miles from Gettysburg, thereby triggering the events that led
to the Battle of Gettysburg. Lee even said after hearing the
news from Harrison, “A battle thus became, in a measure,
unavoidable.”
Harrison’s service to the Confederacy after Gettysburg never
matched the importance of his reports before the famous
battle. He operated mostly in the North, gathering
intelligence in Washington and New York. In September 1863,
Harrison married Laura Broders in Washington.
After the war Harrison moved to Mexico with his wife and their
daughter but after some marital problems he moved to Montana
alone, prospecting for gold. Between 1867 and 1892, his exact
whereabouts are unknown. His wife believing that he was dead,
remarried in 1893.
In 1893, Harrison moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1901, Harrison
got a job in Cincinnati as a detective for the Municipal
Reform League. In 1912, he moved to Covington, Kentucky and
applied for a Confederate pension. On October 28, 1923,
Harrison died in Covington at the age of 91. He is buried at
Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.
Henry Thomas Harrison never attempted to capitalize on his
Confederate service. In his pension application there was no
mention of his service as General Longstreet’s field
spy/scout. He simply referred to himself as a Confederate
veteran soldier.
Sorrel knew nothing about Harrison’s identity and no one on
Longstreet’s staff even knew his first name. Longstreet must
have known because he obtained a photograph of Harrison for
his published memoirs, From Manassas to Appomattox. But
Longstreet continued to maintain his secrecy in this matter.
As a tribute to Harrison’s espionage, Longstreet wrote in an
1887 article for Century Magazine that Harrison provided him
“with information more accurate than a force of cavalry could
have secured.”
Union
Baker
Spies:
Lafayette
C.
Much of the Union intelligence
gathering was decentralized with the
principal commanders employing their
own network of agents. It has been
said that Ulysses S. Grant had at
least 100 spies throughout the Western
Theater. Other commanders had their
own networks. The President even had a
spy, William Alvin Lloyd, to report
directly to him.
One of the Union’s most daring spies was Lafayette Curry Baker
who was rough-and-ready character who was not afraid of some
violent work. Born in upstate New York in 1826, he moved to
Michigan in his teens. In 1849, Baker joined the thousands
who trekked to California after the discovery of gold.
Baker didn’t find gold but he found adventure. In San
Francisco, he became a member of the Vigilance Committee,
patrolling the fog-bound streets of the Barbary Coast at night
in search of desperate criminals, or so Baker later advertised
that adventurous episode of his life. In reality, he was a
bouncer at a saloon and a police informer.
At the start of the war, Baker returned to the East where
he endeavored to get an appointment as an officer.
Unsuccessful in New York, he journeyed to Washington and
sought an appointment with the General-in-Chief Winfield Scott
in 1862. Pestering Scott’s aides, he finally got an
appointment and dazzled the general with his plans for spying
on the Confederates in Richmond.
Scott explained to Baker that his going to Richmond would not
serve the Union Army’s needs. He needed detailed reports from
the fields, how many men were in the Confederate Army of
General P.G.T. Beauregard, where were they positioned, and
where were they headed? How many pieces of field artillery did
Beauregard have and how much rolling stock? All of this
important data could not be found in the tearooms of Richmond,
but in the field.
Baker assumed the identity of Sam Munson, a photographer, to
infiltrate the Confederate lines. He was detained by Union
troops who thought that he was a Confederate spy. Scott had
him released and he crossed into Virginia where he was
arrested by the Confederates as a spy.
He managed to get a note to General Beauregard and when he met
in person he convinced him that he was a photographer. To make
his story more believable, Baker gave Beauregard detailed
information of Union troop movements, positions of heavy gun
emplacements, and locations where ammunition and goods were
stored.
After further interviews with Jefferson Davis and VicePresident Alexander Stephens, Baker was released on Davis’
orders and given a pass that allowed to photograph any of the
southern military commanders, their troops, and camp sites, as
he saw fit. However, he had no glass plates for photographs
and that fact almost sent him to the hangman.
He was in Fredericksburg when he met several Confederate
officers who he had photographed earlier. They were angry
because they had not gotten their pictures. Growing
suspicious, they had him arrested as a spy and when a real
photographer revealed his camera to be useless, Baker realized
that he could be executed. Using a penknife, he managed to
loosen the bars and escape the prison and return to Union
lines.
General Scott was so impressed that he made Baker a captain on
the spot and put him in charge of his Intelligence Service.
However, the truth was more mundane. He was, indeed, captured,
and taken before Jefferson Davis who did not give him a pass
to photograph the whole of the Confederacy but listened for
some minutes to Baker’s inept lies and then pronounced him a
spy and ordered him held for trial.
Baker did escape from the Richmond jail, then wandered for
weeks through Virginia, living in shacks and the woods,
stealing food where he could find it, as he desperately tried
to
regain
the
Union
lines.
He
was
picked
up
in Fredericksburg as a vagrant and later held as a spy, but he
again escaped, this time with the help of local prostitute
whom he had been staying with, and finally managed to return
to Scott’s headquarters.
The information regarding Confederate forces he later relayed
to Scott he had learned from a Union officer he had met in the
Richmond prison and all of this information was outdated by
the time Baker passed it on to Scott.
It was through his service for General Scott that Baker
met Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton, who took Baker
under his own wing. He became the Secretary’s personal secret
agent, conducting close surveillance of those Stanton
distrusted most, other members in Lincoln’s cabinet, and highranking officers who were Lincoln’s appointments.
Stanton also wanted Allan Pinkerton out of the way as head of
the Union Intelligence Service. Pinkerton answered only to
Lincoln, and Stanton resented that. He, Edwin Stanton, should
be in complete charge of the war, not this well meaning but
uninformed Lincoln.
Stanton, through Baker’s intrigues, discredited Pinkerton,
and, equally, General George McClellan, who had taken over the
army, brilliantly organized and trained it to a peak fighting
machine but proved indecisive in battle. Baker spent much of
this time discovering McClellan’s mistakes and having reports
of his blunders brought before Lincoln, or leaked to the Union
press.
Pinkerton was relieved of duty after the Battle of Antietam
for a supposed inability to learn of the true strengths and
positions of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee.
Stanton proposed that Baker be promoted to command the
Intelligence Service with rank of full colonel.
Apparently, Baker’s techniques were identical to those he had
practiced in San Francisco as a vigilante. He terrorized,
threatened, and blackmailed suspects, both Union and
Confederate, to obtain information. For three years, he
continued to operate a haphazard espionage system for the
North but most of his information was learned second-hand from
scouts working directly for Union cavalry commands. He
continued to have some spies behind the Confederate lines but
Pinkerton had picked the best of these first.
Baker bragged that there is no single Confederate spy or agent
behind Union lines who is unknown to him. Yet, flourishing
within Washington were dozens of conspirators all plotting the
assassination of the President. One group met regularly only a
few blocks from Baker’s offices throughout the early part of
1865. Its leaders were, John Surratt, Jr. and a vainglorious
actor from an illustrious theatrical family, John Wilkes
Booth.
Within two days of his arrival in Washington from New York,
Baker’s agents in Maryland had made four arrests and had the
names of two more conspirators, including the actual
presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Before the month was
out, Booth along with David Herold were found holed up in a
barn and Booth was himself shot and killed. Baker was promoted
to the rank of brigadier general and received a generous share
of the $100,000 reward.
However, Baker was sacked from his position as government
spymaster by President Johnson who accused him of spying on
him, a charge Baker admitted in his book which he published in
response. He also announced that he had had Booth’s diary in
his possession which was being suppressed by the Department of
War and Secretary Stanton. When the diary was eventually
produced, Baker claimed that eighteen vital pages were
missing. It was suggested that these would implicate Stanton
in the assassination.
Lafayette C. Baker died in 1868, supposedly from meningitis.
However, his death was as mysterious as some parts of his
life. Using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer to analyze
several hairs from Baker’s head, Ray A. Neff, a professor
at Indiana State University, determined the man was killed
by arsenic poisoning rather than meningitis. He had been
unwittingly been consuming it for months, mixed into imported
beer provided by his wife’s brother.
The
Confederate
Service
Secret
Unlike the Union government, the
Confederate government did not find it
necessary to organize a large force of
detectives and spies for other than
purely military purposes. They organized
the Confederate Secret Service and
employed it for purposes they considered
purely military.
Meanwhile, the Union government had a need to send out agents
in pursuit of bounty jumpers, men who were fraudulently
discharged, traders in contraband goods, and contract
fraudsters. This use of capable individuals throughout the
North prevented their use against the Confederacy.
The Southern government had no such need and employed spies
primarily to discover the movement of Union troops and
supplies. Generals depended largely on the information they
brought, in planning attack and in accepting or avoiding
battle. It is indeed a notable fact that a Confederate army
was never surprised in an important engagement of the war.
They may have been overmatched on many occasions but were
never surprised.
The Confederates used a systems of couriers between Richmond
and a number of northern cities, including Washington,
Baltimore, New York and Boston. Agents in these cities would
insert personal ads in the newspapers using cipher code. Once
the papers inevitably reached Richmond the ciphers were
decoded and the information was routed the proper location.
Part of the Confederacy’s advantage was that the war was
primarily conducted on Southern soil. The Confederates were
able to intercept a great many Union couriers who were
carrying particularly sensitive information. On July 4, 1861
Confederate pickets captured a Union courier who had the
complete returns (rosters) of General Irvin McDowell’s Army of
Virginia.
“His statement of the strength and composition of that force,”
relates General P.G.T. Beauregard, in Battles and Leaders of
the Civil War, “tallied so closely with that which had been
acquired through my Washington agencies… that I could not
doubt them… I was almost as well advised of the strength of
the hostile army in my front as its commander.”
Using this valuable information General Beauregard was able to
position his troops accordingly and win the First Battle of
Manassas. In the opening of the war, at least, the Confederate
spy and scout system was far better developed than was the
Federal.
As the war unfolded the use of spies, scouts and agents became
more localized. Individual commanders used their own cadres of
spies rather than receiving information the long way around
from Richmond. This system was also used by the Union armies
and was the most efficient use of military intelligence
gathering.
In his Valley Campaign of 1862, General Stonewall Jackson
achieved a brilliant series of victories. However, it is a
known fact that although Jackson was a brilliant tactical
commander the services of the scouts and spies under Colonel
Turner Ashby played a key role in locating the Union forces.
Meanwhile, the Union commanders had no such advantage.
As the war moved into 1864, the Confederate government felt
the need to conduct secret operations in the North. Jefferson
Davis called upon several prominent Southerners to conduct
secret negotiations for peace with prominent Northerners,
including Horace Greeley. However, their correspondence with
Greeley became public and the negotiations failed.
The Confederate government attempted to use the Sons of
Liberty, sometimes called the Copperheads, against the Union
government. Led by Clement Vallandigham who had been exiled to
the South in 1863, the Sons of Liberty were seen by the
Confederate government as a counterweight to the Union central
government.
The Sons of Liberty would detach the states of Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio from the Union, if the Confederate
authorities would, at the same time, move sufficient forces
into Kentucky and Missouri to hold those lukewarm Federal
States. These five states would then form the Northern
Confederacy, compelling the Union government to stop the war.
The date for the general uprising was several times postponed,
but finally settled for the 16th of August. Confederate
officers were sent to various cities to direct the movement.
Escaped Confederate prisoners were enlisted in the cause.
Jacob Thompson, a Southern agent, furnished funds for
perfecting county organizations. Arms were purchased in New
York and secreted in Chicago.
The Confederate plot was revealed and many prominent members
of the Sons of Liberty were arrested. The garrison at Camp
Douglas, Chicago, was increased to seven thousand. The
strength of the allies was deemed insufficient to contend with
such a force, and the project was abandoned. The Confederates
returned to Canada.
Throughout the fall and winter of 1864, the Confederate Secret
Service conducted a series of operations in the North. St.
Albans, Vermont is the last place one would expect to have a
raid by Confederates during the latter part of the American
Civil War. But on October 19, 1864, the quiet Vermont, border
town was the site of a Confederate attempt to rob three town
banks in the name of the Confederacy. It would end with the
raiders being arrested by Canadian authorities and some of the
stolen funds returned to the Vermont banks.
Then there was the attempted capture of the USS Michigan which
was guarding Johnson’s Island and the release of the prisoners
incarcerated there. It ended in failure with the execution of
the Captain John Y. Beall of the Confederate navy for piracy
and spying.
There was an attempt to fire the city of New York by
Confederate agents and the Sons of Liberty on November 25,
1864. The incendiary “Greek Fire” that had been supplied to
Confederate agents failed to ignite properly. The Confederates
fled the city and returned to Canada. However, Robert Cobb
Kennedy was captured and hanged on March 25, 1865.
E very Confederate plot in the North was fated to fail. The
Federal secret service proved to be more than a match for the
Sons of Liberty and the Confederates. The Confederate’s
objectives included the cutting of telegraph wires, the
seizure of banks, the burning of railroad stations, the
appropriation of arms and ammunition and the freeing
of thousands of Confederate prisoners from Camp Douglas in
Chicago. Their operations were foiled by the Union secret
service. Some 106 men were captured, tried and convicted of a
variety of crimes.
The operations around Chicago were the last conducted in the
North by the Confederate Secret Services. The agents either
returned to Canada or made their way South where they arrived
just in time for the surrender of the Confederacy and the end
of the war.
The St. Albans Raid
St. Albans, Vermont is the last
place one would expect to have a
raid by Confederates during the
latter part of the American
Civil War. But on October 19,
1864, the quiet Vermont, border
town
was
the
site
of
a
Confederate attempt to rob three town banks in the name of the
Confederacy.
The idea of the raid originated in early 1864 when the
Confederate Congress passed a bill that authorized a campaign
of sabotage against “the enemy’s property, by land or sea.”
The bill established a Secret Service fund—$5 million in U.S.
dollars—to finance the sabotage.
As an incentive, saboteurs would get rewards proportional to
the destruction they wreaked. One million dollars of that fund
was specifically earmarked for use by agents in Canada. For
some time, agents there had been plotting far more than
across-the-border sabotage. They believed that their plans for
large-scale covert actions could win the war.
Canada was then a British possession and was officially known
as British North America. Though neutral and against slavery,
the British support had been towards the Southern Confederacy,
mainly due to King Cotton, a commodity that British mills
craved.
There were a number of Confederate agents stationed in Canada.
Some were native Southerners, like Captain Thomas Henry Hines,
who had ridden with Morgan’s Raiders in guerrilla sorties into
Kentucky and Tennessee. Others were disaffected Northerners
who were opposed to the war and were known as “Copperheads.”
The Confederates especially
recruited sympathizers from
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
where an estimated 40 percent of
the population was Southernborn. Among them were military
officers in civilian clothes and
politicians, such as Jacob
Thompson who had been Secretary
of the Interior under President
James Buchanan and Clement Clay,
former
U.S.
Senator
from
Alabama. They were ostensibly “commissioners” sent to Canada
with vaguely defined public roles as their cover.
Other politicians involved in plots were George N. Sanders,
who had taken part in Confederate operations in Europe, and
Clement L. Vallandigham, who had been a powerful member of
Congress from Ohio. He claimed he had 300,000 Sons of Liberty
ready to follow him in an insurrection that would produce a
Northwest Confederacy.
After an aborted attempt to free Confederate prisoners on
Johnson’s Island, near Sandusky, Ohio in Lake Erie, and at
Fort Douglas in Chicago failed miserably, Confederate
authorities in Canada came up with a new plan. Using escaped
Confederate prisoners-of-war, they would infiltrate the small
Vermont town of St. Albans, rob the three banks there and burn
the town to the ground. The ostensible reason was retribution
for Union attacks in the South.
The commander of the raid was Bennett H. Young, a Confederate
cavalryman who had been captured
at the Battle of
Salineville in Ohio ended Morgan’s Raid the year before. Young
had escaped to Canada and then made his way back the South.
Here he proposed raids on American border towns to rob banks
in order to raise money for the depleted Confederate treasury.
He was commissioned a lieutenant and returned to Canada.
In Canada the former
prisoners and planned a
15 miles south of the
raiders and in October,
cavalryman recruited other escaped
raid on St. Albans, a small town about
border. Eventually, he had 20 other
1864, his plan commenced.
On October 10th, Young and two others checked into a local
hotel, saying that they had come from St. John’s in Canada
East for a “sporting vacation.” Every day, two or three more
young
men
arrived.
By
October
19,
there
were
21 cavalrymen assembled.
At 3:00 PM on the 19th, the Confederate raiders struck,
simultaneously robbing three local banks. They quickly
collected $208,000. As the banks were being robbed, eight or
nine of the Confederates held the townspeople prisoner on
the village green as their horses were stolen. One towns
person was killed and another wounded. Young ordered his men
to burn the town down, but the four-ounce bottles of Greek
fire they had brought failed to work, and only one shed was
destroyed.
The raiders then made their way across the border back to
Canada,
where
they
were
arrested
by
British
authorities. A Canadian court decided that the soldiers were
under military orders and that the officially neutral Canada
could not extradite them to the United States. The Canadian
court’s ruling that the soldiers were legitimate
military belligerents and not criminals, as argued by American
authorities,
has
been
interpreted
as
a
tacit
British recognition of the Confederate States of America. The
raiders were freed, but the $88,000 the raiders had on their
person was returned to Vermont.
The leader of the raid, Bennett H. Young, was excluded
from President Andrew Johnson’s amnesty proclamation. He would
not
return
home
until
1868.
He
spent
time
studying in Ireland and Scotland. After returning home, he
became a prominent attorney in Louisville, Kentucky. His
philanthropic works were legion. Young founded the first
orphanage for blacks in Louisville, a school for the blind,
and did much pro bono work for the poor. He also worked as
a railroad officer, author, and National Commander of
the United Confederate Veterans.