Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

11. Union Espionage

  99 11 Union Espionage The most productive espionage operation of the Civil War on either side. Edwin Fishel, Secret War, on Elizabeth Van Lew’s espionage activities The glowing assessment of Elizabeth Van Lew’s espionage activities by Edwin Fishel, a leading expert on Civil War espionage, is all the more striking because he largely dismissed most accounts of spying in the war as inaccurate , exaggerated, and melodramatic. Van Lew, however, stands out among her contemporaries as the spymaster of the most effective espionage operation of the war. Inside the Confederate capital of Richmond, she ran an extensive network of sources and couriers covertly sympathetic to the Union cause, including merchants, farmers, and slaves. This network provided Union military commanders with key intelligence as they prepared their decisive assault on the Confederate capital. Van Lew, like the majority of Civil War spies, was motivated not by money but by ideological sympathy for her cause. She was passionately dedicated to the abolition of slavery and financed her espionage operation with her own funds to ensure a Union victory. She was born in 1818 to a wealthy merchant family in Richmond, and she never married and ostensibly lived the life of a Southern socialite. In her early years she was sent 100 The Civil War for schooling to Philadelphia, where moral reform groups actively supported the abolition of slavery. Her Northern education undoubtedly helped her develop the intense hatred of slavery that would alienate her from her Southern neighbors. After her father died years later, she freed his slaves, most of whom remained to work for her. She was as equally opposed to slavery as her Confederate counterpart Rose Greenhow supported it. Like Greenhow, she also exploited her social status to make possible her espionage activities.1 Van Lew’s exploitation of her social status required effective role-playing . Although she belonged to a respected Richmond family, her loyalty to the Confederate cause was suspect. The city was well aware that she had freed her slaves and, in addition, she played an active role in ministering to the increasing number of captured Union soldiers held in Richmond’s Libby Prison. She arranged for medical care for some prisoners, visited them in the local hospitals, and even risked lodging prison escapees in her Richmond mansion. Using her own funds, she arranged to provide prisoners with books, food, and money for bribes to secure better treatment from their jailers. At the same time, her humanitarian efforts on behalf of Union soldiers masked her espionage work. The books and food brought in and out of Libby Prison also served as covert means of transmitting intelligence. Hollow spaces in book bindings and false bottoms in food platters were undetected by prison guards and contained firsthand information from the prisoners about the Confederate army that otherwise would have reached the Union more slowly in an era of tortoise-like communications.2 Van Lew’s social status, as her biographer Elizabeth Varon notes, was “her most important asset” and enabled her to assist the Union both overtly and covertly.3 To accomplish this, Van Lew had to maintain a delicate balance by convincing the Confederates of Richmond that her charitable deeds for Union soldiers were obliged by the Christian faith of a proper Southern lady and were in no way incompatible with her loyalty to the Confederate cause. Van Lew played the role effectively, but she constantly feared her underground activities would be discovered. These fears proved to be justified—Confederate officials in Richmond indeed were increasingly suspicious of her activities, and they even launched an investigation of her family in 1864. 101 Union Espionage This investigation, not surprisingly, revealed that Van Lew held proUnion views but had done nothing to hurt the Confederate cause, so no further action was taken. In reaching this decision, Confederate officials took special note of her “wealth and position.” Given Van Lew’s status and gender , her role in espionage was unimaginable for the Confederates of Richmond : “Elitism and sexism disinclined Confederate authorities to believe a frail spinster lady capable of politically significant acts of disloyalty.”4 Van Lew’s social status was not the only protection for her espionage activities. She also developed primitive yet extremely effective clandestine tradecraft methods to protect her network and ensure the secure communication of her information. Her ingenuity in developing her own tradecraft is allthemoreremarkablebecauseshereceivednoespionagetrainingandlittle guidance from any Union intelligence officers. As one...