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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

51

CONFEDERATE SPIES

On the Confederate side, Captain Thomas Jordan had

established a spy ring in the Washington area even before

the war began. Jordan soon transferred operational

control to his star agent, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, and

acted as her handler before he moved on to a more

conventional military career.

The Confederacy sent secret agents to Britain—

officially neutral—to negotiate covert deals. This was

more difficult than it seemed, especially when the North

established a naval blockade of the South. Confederate

spy James Bulloch set up an office in Liverpool to buy

cotton from the South in exchange for armaments and

other war supplies. He also arranged for the purchase

and construction of the famous commerce raider,

CSS Alabama. According to Northern officials,

Bulloch was “the most dangerous man in Europe.”

ROSE O’NEAL GREENHOW

A well-known society hostess in Washington, D.C., the widowed

Rose O’Neal Greenhow was staunchly pro-slavery. Remaining in

Washington after the outbreak of war, she was recruited as a

Confederate agent. In July 1861, she forwarded vital information

about the movements of General McDowall’s Union army, which

helped secure a Confederate victory at the Battle of First Bull Run.

Alan Pinkerton tracked the leak back to Greenhow and had her

placed under house arrest. Greenhow continued to supply intelligence

to the Confederacy until she was deported to the South in June 1862.

She sailed to Britain in 1863, acting as

an unofficial agent for the Confederate

government, but drowned on her return

after her ship ran aground while

attempting to run the Union

blockade off North Carolina.

Right: Rose O’Neal Greenhow

and her daughter pictured in

prison in Washington, D.C.,

in 1862.