Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 105, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1917 — Famous Secret Service Agents in Civil War [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Famous Secret Service Agents in Civil War

How Belle Boyd wdn a victoryfor Stonewall JacksonExploits of Tim Webster and Elizabeth Kan Lew for Union cause-Many interesting personalities of those other war times brought to mind by Memorial Day.

TONEWALL JACKSON’S Valley campaign was one of ~ the great deeds of history. Not since Nap.>h'»n lime have men so gUSK dazzled as they were by that greaF exploit of his. Yet Stonewall might have gone down the Valley in defeat had it not been for a little college girl named Belle Boyd. On May 23, 1802, after Jackson (had routed Banks and driven him in confusion up the line of the Shenandoah, he wrote this letter: “Miss Belle Boyd: I thank you for myself and for the army for the Immense service that you have rendered your country today.” The Union General Shields was quartered at Miss Boyd’s house. He held a council of war there. Miss Boyd bored a bole in the floor of her chamber, which was over Shield's room, and lay there with her ear to It throughout the night. The next morning Stonewall Jackson was in full possion of the plans for a great battle, and was able to defeat the Unionnrmy. She kept* - up her valiant work for the Confederacy until the Union officers began to suspect her. and Jackson ordered her to move from her Shenandoah arrested by the Federtils anti had flirted her way to liberty—for she was a pretty girl, despite the libelous photographs of her. In Winchester. Jackson conferred upon her a commission as captain in the Confederate army. By this time the whole North had become aware of the services she was, rendering the Confederacy, and every officer and private was on tire, alert to get. her. Yet she escaped untiflSM.’w’hen she Was caught on a blockade runner. Her captor lost his heart to her, deserted the navy, and married her, and the prince of Wales, afterward Edward VII. atLeniled the wedding. -* Belle Boyd is the most famous of the spies, hut there are many others who deserve at least as much fame as she won. One of them was Elibabeth B. Van Lew, who had the incredible courage to act as a —Union - -spy in R iehmond ih roughOUf the war. There was not a moment during those four years when Lizzie Van Lew could hear a step behind her on the street without expecting to have somebody tap her on the shoulder and say, “You are my prisoner.” She did not confine her activities to spying and reporting what she had discovered to the Union generals: she hid escaped prisoners in her house, she dealt out messages to soldiers in Libby from their homes; her resources were endless. One of her favorite devices was a metal platter wßh-a-dmible bottom, in which she used to pretend to convey food to tlu* prisoners. Once a Coiifc.l.-i ;ii.- soldier, whose suspicion had been aroused, insisted on examining it: but that day Lizzie, who had teen expecting some move of this kind, had filled the false bottom not with secret messages but with scalding water, and the soldier dropped it with a shriek. Lizzie Van Lew had a secret recess in her house, a hiding place for dispatches. Sometimes she would move a hand idly toward this recess, and an hour or two biter some old negress. apparently dusting the foom. would slip her hand back of the mantel and find a dispatch which would go to Grant that da vr It vvas-Lizzie Van Lew who stole the body of Col. Ulric Dahlgren and smuggled it out of Richmond. one of the most daring exploits of the vvaf. Rosa B. Greenh'ow was a Confederate spy in Washington who dazzled the Union in the early days of the war. It was one of her assistants, a Miss Duval of Washington, who brought Beauregard the first news of McDowell’s advance and enabled him and Johnson to foil the Federal plans for the' campaign'of Bull Run. Mrs. Greenhow wnt Miss Duval to Beauregard on July » iv " j ng Idm lhe first news <»f ihe contemplated advance, and on July 16 she sent him word of the forces and the contemplated movement of the Union army. He promptly wired the information Davis, mid the word wns-sent to Johnson, which resulted in his advance and the terrible downfall of the Northern cause. The Northern secret service was technically under the direction of Gen. Lafayette C. Bakei, a man without scruple. After the war Baker Insisted on taking to himself most of the credit for what had been done In detective work, but as a matter of fact the. best work done in the war was done by volunteers, men and women, who were willing to risk a shameful death to serve their country. Many of them were private soldiers; some were enlisted among Allan Pinkerton's detectives. Of these the most famous was Timothy Webster, dne Of the lived. Webster succeeded in getting the South to believe in him to such an extent that he came near being made the colonel of an Alabama regiment; •nd in Baltimore he was a member of the Knights at Liberty. He even becatub a trusted emissary of the Confederate war department at Richmond, •nd at Pittsburgh a Union mob tried to lynch him •a a Confederate spy. Nothing saved him but the arrival of Allan Pinkerton, with a drawn revolver. «Dd Webster and Pinkerton bucked against the wall nnd stood off the mob until help arrived. Webster was fipally Captured in Richmond, ant!

was betrayed by one of his associates, who confessed to a man he supposed to be a Uatholic priest. The man was not a priest, but a disguised Confederate soldier. The secrets of the Confessional, of course, did not apply in such a case, and the brave spy was hanged. Hattie Lewis, Webster’s sweetheart, got an audience with Mrs. Jefferson Davis and begged her, with tears in her eyes, to save the man she loved. Instead, Hattie Lewis Herself was convicted of being a Union spy and served a year’s imprisonment. There was one girl who won the rank of major in the Union army. She was Pauline Cushman, an actress, who became one of the best and most famous spies in the Union army. Often and often " "Major Pauline noted-as-a sort-of advance guanl to the Federal army. Twice the Confederates captured her. lint on both occasions she escaped. The first time she came near being released after a first search, but a second revealed the fact that in a hidden recess In her garters there were orders from Thomas. She was about to he hanged when Thomas captured Nashville and saved her. Secretary Stanton commissioned her as major in the Union army, and she was the only woman who held that rank except Maj. Belle Reynolds, the wife of a captain in the Seventieth Illinois, who went to the war with her husband and performed such prodigies of valor that Stanton honored her with a commission. Sam Davis, the boy spy of the Confederacy, left an imperishable record of heroism. was only fourteen when he joined the Confederate service, at first as a private soldier. His talents as a spy-werg-greaL and throughout Bragg’s long warfart* in Tennessee he continually made use of the brave little fellow. Davis was finally betrayed and.jeaptureiLliuNaslixil le.—He- - was takenbefore Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, whose story of the hearing makes a companion, piece to the last days of Nathan Hale. Here is the story as General Dodge tells It: . “I took him to my private office and told him it was a very serious charge brought against him; that he Wits a spy, and from what I found upon his person, he had accurate information .in regard to my army, and I must finow where he obtained it. I told him he was a young man and did not seem to realize the danger he was In. Up to that time he had said nothing, but then he replied in a most respecffiil and dignlfie<l"jnanner: “ ‘General Dodge. I knots the danger of my situation, and I am willing so take the consequences.' “‘I know that DI have to die. but I will not tell where T got the Information. And there is no power on earth that can make me tell. You are doing your duty as a soldier, and I am doing mine. If I have to die. 1 do so feeling that I am. doing my duty to God and my oountry.’ “I pleaded with him and urged him with all the power that I possessed to give me some chance to save his life, for I had discovered that he was a most admirable young fellow; with the highest character and strictest Integrity. He then said: ’lt is useless to talk to me. I do not intend to do it. You can court-martial me, but I will not betray the trust reposed in me.' "Hr thanked me for Hie interest I had taken in him, and I sent him back to prison. I immediately called a court-martial to try him." Even then the boy received offers of liberty if he would betray his confederate. He would not.

The only thing lie wrote was a short note to his mother saying that he had been captured and was to be hanged and was not afraid to die. As he stood on the scaffold a messenger arrived from General Dodge promising him immunity if he -would reveal fhe-ideiitity of his confrdertrfev-The- . rope was around his neck: the boy answered: “If I had a thousand lives I would lose them all here before I would betray my friends dr the confidence of my informant." Then be turned to the executioner and said casually, “I am ready.” The trap was sprung and one of the heroes of the Confederacy was dead. He was then sixteen years old. There was an underground railroad of Confederate sympathizers running through Maryland and Virginia, headed by Custis Grymes of Virginia. He came of the family which gave a wife to George Washington, and many of his emissaries were high-born women. One was a clergyman. Rev. Dr. Stuart, an irreproachable Episcopalian. When the dashing but hopeless raid on Vermont by a Confederate force in Canada was. ordered in 1864. Grymes sent a girl named Olivia Floyd, who e?meea led the order 4a her hair, 11 wat he fa shion then for women to wear a early net over their locks; and Olivia hid' the documents there and ”maffe“awild ride onTf bitter ratd ntght'trrtn the tines, where sin* delivered tin* oi*ders„thaL. resulted in the attack of St. Albans. Gen. Jim Lane had a woman spy named Elizabeth W. Stiles, whose husband was murdered before her eyes by Quantrell’s guerrillas in 1862. Border warfare was merciless-; there was something Indian about it. Mrs. Stiles devoted her life ta wngeance. She wasuqulte deliberate about it. She.went East and put her children in school. an d-then came back to the West and put herself under Lane’s orders. She faced death many a time; once she arraigned before Sterling “Price himself,~but she made him believe she was a Confederate spy, and he gave her a horse and firearms and sell! her on her way. Ong Union spy. Mack Williams, found himself in the Confederate line face to face with his own brother, a Confederate soldier. “I’m a Yankee spy,” said Williams; “you’re a rebel. Betray me if you want to-; it’s your duty.” It was a hard and delicate question, but the ties of nature won out over patriotism. General Baker lias recorded the fact that for two years a farm near Fairfax Court House was frequented by Union officers, none of whom had the least suspicion that a daughter of the house was a Confederate spy. She was. Baker says, “a young and decidedly good-looking woman, with pleasing, insinuating manners?’' She appeared to be a violent Union symirtlthl/.ei. yet al night she used to go out and meet Colonel Mosby and give him the information she had gained from the credulous Union officers. Baker finally caught her by sending a woman spy who gained her conJ fidence. —New York Times.