CIVIL WAR SPIES ON BOTH SIDES WORE PETTICOATS – ROSE GREENHOW AND ELIZABETH VAN LEW.

Rose Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew were but two of hundreds of women who were employed as spies for the Confederate and Union causes during the War Between the States, but their exploits are noteworthy nonetheless. Rose O’Neal Greenhow had become a leading figure in Washington, D.C. social circles by virtue of a rich, well- known physician husband. In the decade before the war commenced, she was widowed and endured the bitter trial of losing five of her eight children. As the Civil War approached, Greenhow acted on her intense commitment to the Confederate objectives by running an expanding ring of agents. Her considerable social connections and expertise facilitated indiscernible information gathering from politicians and diplomats, and this information was turned over to Confederate General P.G. T. Beauregard and other compatriots. Greenhow procured crucial information in July 1861 regarding Union strategy for the upcoming attack on Manassas, Virginia, and transmitted it to Beauregard via an encrypted communication concealed in the hair of teenage messenger, Bettie Duvall. Confederate President Jefferson Davis later acknowledged the vital contribution Greenhow made to the victory of the Confederate forces at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas).

The next month, Allan Pinkerton, director of the recently established Secret Service, took her into custody and, both she and her youngest daughter, Little Rose, spent time in prison. Upon release in 1862, Jefferson Davis dispatched her on a diplomatic assignment to Europe, where she was received by Napoleon III and Queen Victoria, and her engagement to a British nobleman took place. Greenhow’s return home in 1864 was marked by ill fortune, beginning with the beaching of the ship on which she was traveling, off the North Carolina coast, following a brush with Union forces. Attempting to flee by rowboat, the weight of the gold she was carrying – meant for the Confederate coffers – precipitated her drowning.

Elizabeth Van Lew grew up in an affluent, slaveholding Virginia family but embraced the abolitionist creed when an adult, greatly influenced by her education at a Quaker school in Philadelphia. Following the loss of her father in 1843, she persuaded her brother to give the family slaves their freedom. During the war, Van Lew and her mother became visitors to the Union prisoners of war at the infamous Libby prison, supplying them with food, medicine, and clothing. Her aid did not stop there, for she assisted in escapes, smuggled messages, and secured important information pertaining to Confederate plans, her sources being the guards as well as the prisoners.

Union General Benjamin Butler recruited Van Lew as an agent towards the end of 1863. Shortly thereafter, she was commanding a spy ring operating out of Richmond. Relying on the assistance of her servants, encrypted communications reached Union officers, frequently written with invisible ink and concealed in hollowed–out eggs or vegetables. Van Lew took part in the recruitment of more agents for her ring, and was responsible for a prominent Libby Prison official joining. In the end, she paid dearly for her support of the Union and her clandestine activities, for not only did she become an outcast in her community but impoverished also. The family of one of the many Union soldiers she helped, who was himself a grandson of Paul Revere, supported her until she died at the turn of the century.