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

8. The Spy in the Union Capital: Rose Greenhow

  81 8 The Spy in the Union Capital Rose Greenhow I am a Southern woman, . . . born with revolutionary blood in my veins! Rose Greenhow, a Confederate spy My Imprisonment, Kindle edition, location 707. No one epitomized the Confederate advantage of “stay-behinds” in proSouthern Washington more than Rose O’Neal Greenhow. Although she had no direct access to secrets, “Rebel Rose,” her moniker among Southern sympathizers, ran a network of spies for the Confederacy that included sources from every level of Union society. Greenhow’s motivation for espionage was purely ideological. She was born to slaveholding parents in Maryland, and her hatred of abolitionists was forged at an early age when her father was murdered by a slave. Her proslavery views were nurtured in childhood by John Calhoun, the former US vice president who was a frequent visitor to her home and one of the most ardent defenders of slavery and states’ rights.1 Rose O’Neal married Robert Greenhow, a State Department lawyer of considerable financial means, and she soon became a popular Washington socialite. After her husband’s untimely death, the widow Greenhow attracted male admirers who helped extend her influence in the capital. Invitations to her parties were coveted in Washington society, and prominent 82 The Civil War figures like Secretary of War William Seward and Senator Stephen Douglass were regular attendees. Even James Buchanan, the only unmarried president, was often a late-night visitor, which set tongues wagging in the capital. One of Greenhow’s closest contacts was Senator Henry Wilson, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, and his letters to Rebel Rose hint at a romance with Washington’s most popular hostess. Wilson, who was undoubtedly one of her unwitting sources of information, went on to become vice president of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant.2 Greenhow’s support for the Southern cause and her connections in Washington made her an ideal candidate for recruitment by the Confederacy. Another Confederate “stay-behind,” Captain Thomas Jordan, spotted her early in the war and easily persuaded her to join the cause. Jordan was serving as an assistant quartermaster in the Department of War in Washington and remained in the job when the war broke out in order to organize a rebel spy network inside the enemy capital. Like many Confederate officers, he was a graduate of West Point, where his roommate was William Tecumseh Sherman, who would later become the Union general who would devastate the city of Atlanta during the war’s final throes. Once Jordan had organized his Washington spy ring, he was commissioned a colonel in the Confederate Army and became intelligence chief for General Pierre Beauregard, whose army was deployed across the Potomac River from the Union capital. Greenhow became his principal agent, and he provided her with an alias to use in communications with him and a simple cipher to encrypt information. Although some historians believe that Greenhow caused extensive damage to the Union, Edwin Fishel, a preeminent scholar of Civil War espionage , claims that her exploits have been exaggerated and that the impact of her spying has been grossly overrated.3 Even Fishel, however, credits her contribution to the Confederate victory in the first major battle of the war at Bull Run. In July 1861 Greenhow sent messages to the Confederates warning of Union general Irvin McDowell’s plan to advance against the rebel army through Fairfax, Virginia. She provided details about McDowell ’s troop strength, the date of his intended march, and his plan to cut the Winchester–Manassas railroad line to prevent reinforcements from reaching Beauregard’s ranks. This alert gave Beauregard time to reinforce his army and hand the Union an unexpected defeat. Beauregard credited his victory to Green- 83 The Spy in the Union Capital • Rose Greenhow how’s information, and Colonel Jordan also sent her a secret message acknowledging her role: “Our President and our General direct me to thank you. We rely upon you for further information. The Confederacy owes you a debt.”4 Greenhow sent one of the messages about Bull Run through Betty Duvall, a fetching social butterfly who was also sympathetic to the Confederacy. Duvall concealed the message in her hairdo and stunned Beauregard’s aide when she unpinned her chignon and let the information fall from her shiny black curls— yet another example of the advantages women had in Civil War espionage.5 Emboldened by her reporting...