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CHAPTER 3  NINETEENTHCENTURY INTELLIGENCE

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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Amateur spies came to the fore during the American Civil War. They proved highly effective,

none more so than the female secret agents who made their mark in the history of espionage.

Both the Unionists and the Confederates developed ad hoc intelligence agencies to gather information.

Spying was carried out on a wide scale because the nature of the war made it easy to do so. Both sides

spoke the same language and they looked alike, while political affiliations were mixed and did not rely

entirely on geography, meaning that pro-abolitionists favoring the Union lived in the South and

Confederate sympathizers were based in the North. The scarcity of fixed military positions enabled

spies to move between the lines with comparative ease.

Above: Elizabeth Van Lew

UNIONIST FIELD AGENTS

In the Unionist North, notable spy chiefs

included Alan Pinkerton—who later

created the Pinkerton Detective Agency—

and Colonel George H. Sharpe, who

provided intelligence to generals

Hooker and Grant and set up the

Bureau of Military Information.

The Bureau had as many as

seventy agents in the field,

and it collated their reports

along with intelligence from

captured prisoners and

enemy documents retrieved

from the battlefield. Sharpe

acted as a handler for Elizabeth Van Lew,

considered to be one of his best spies.

Another excellent source of information

came from slaves or former slaves, who

were intimately acquainted with the

Confederate South, their reports known

as Black Dispatches. Leading black spies

included George Scott, John Scobell, and

Mary Jane Richards, as well as Harriet

Tubman, who had already achieved fame

for her part in the Underground Railroad

for escaped slaves.

ELIZABETH VAN LEW

Living in the Confederate capital of Richmond,

Virginia, Elizabeth Van Lew was a convinced

abolitionist who had freed her own slaves in

1843, including Mary Jane Richardson (or

Bowser). Once war had broken out, Van Lew

assisted in the welfare of Union prisoners.

She then set up a spy ring—the Richmond

Underground—that included Richardson, her

most important source. Van Lew managed to

have Richardson taken in as a servant in the house

of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.

The Richmond Underground ran five intelligence

“depots”; the spies delivered reports to Van Lew,

who then assigned them to couriers to slip

through enemy lines to her Union handlers.

Right: Having herself escaped from

slavery, Harriet Tubman guided dozens

of people to escape to freedom along the

Underground Railroad before the Civil

War. During the war, Tubman was a scout

and spy for the Union Army.

Above: William A. Jackson, a slave

in the house of Jefferson Davis,

who spied for the Union