Spies of the Confederacy (review)

74CIVIL WAR HISTORY light, Price becomes an earnest Missourian of southern persuasion forced into the Confederacy when his attempts to secure Unionism on his own terms failed. Others may not be persuaded of his timetable, but in his delineation of this neglected figure Shalhope has done students of the trans-Mississippi a distinct service. William E. Parrish Westminster College (Missouri) Spies of the Confederacy. By John Bakeless. (Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1970. Pp. viii, 456. $7.95.) Confederate spies were strikingly effective in gathering and transmitting important military intelligence during the Civil War. Very often this intelligence was put to good use by Confederate leaders, notably Stuart, Jackson and Lee. Specifically, spy reports contributed heavily to Union defeats at First and Second Manassas and Fredericksburg, and enabled Lee to stave off Grant's superior army as long as he did. Jackson understood the need for internal security better than any other Civil War commander. Union security, abominable in the early years of the war, improved somewhat but remained lax, even by common sense standards, to the end. And Federal officers were often gullible to the point of stupidity in their relations with Confederate women, most of whom were gay, flirtatious, attractive and firmly committed to the Lost Cause. These are some of the conclusions derived from Dr. Bakeless' entertaining and generally well documented account. Though written in a style more appealing to the taste of the Civil War buff, professional historians should not dismiss this volume. Bakeless, a former intelligence officer, knows the limitations of official records, newspapers and memoirs gilded by age. For example, he reports, without accepting at face value, the story of one spy, Captain Thomas Conrad. Conrad claimed to have once smuggled two foreign emissaries, one British and one French, from Washington to Richmond where they were to negotiate an intergovernmental loan to the Confederacy. Bakeless thinks something was afoot which historians would find intriguing. But he concludes that Conrad, whose narrative of his wartime exploits has proved to be unusually reliable , surmised too much about the alleged mission. Among those northerners whom Bakeless believes to have babbled carelessly military secrets is Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate committee on military affairs. Wilson was apparently bewitched by the charms of Rose Greenhow, flamboyant operator of an effective spy ring in Washington in the early months of the war. The Confederates also profited immensely from the activities of one or more sympathizers who hung onto their posts in the War Department and from an agent in Lafayette Baker's counter-intelligence service. Described at length are the deeds of Belle Boyd, but the author rightly argues that the Conrad spy ring which operated throughout the war in BOOK REVIEWS75 the capital and the accomplishments of Frank Stringfellow, Stuart's extraordinarily competent "scout," were far more valuable to the rebels. On the other hand, the author assumes, in passing, that the Knights of the Golden Circle effectively assisted Confederate agents, a dubious assumption considering what is presently known about that over-blown secret society. Notes are at the end of the book. They refer only to page and paragraph in the text (which contains no footnote numbers). Occasionally the portion of the text paragraph which is documented is not the portion one wishes to check, an annoyance in an otherwise commendable work. H. H. Wubben Oregon State University The Image of Lincoln in the South. By Michael Davis. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971. Pp. x, 205. $7.95.) This study partially answers a need that has been keenly felt by all those interested in the elusive impact of Abraham Lincoln on the South. Arguing now and then perhaps too much for his hero's benefit (because after all there has never been anything close to unanimity in the South over Lincoln's image), Mr. Davis first outlines what he considers the fundamental doctrines and peculiar outlook regarding Lincoln that was generated by the secession crisis. The remainder of his space is devoted to the way in which the President influenced the climate of southern opinion on the eve of the war and his reputation in the South during and after the...