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    Spies! Women in the Civil War
    Spies! Women in the Civil War
    Spies! Women in the Civil War
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Spies! Women in the Civil War

    By Penny Colman

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    About this ebook

    Spies! Women in the Civil War tells the thrilling stories of women who served as spies for the North and for the South--Harriet Tubman led Union troops on raids up the Combahee River in South Carolina; Belle Boyd provided information to Confederate generals; Elizabeth Van Lew organized a spy ring in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, which included an insider on President Jefferson Davis’ staff; Rose O’Neal Greenhow operated a network of spies in Washington, D.C. They were a diverse group of women. Belle Boyd was a teenager. Harriet Tubman, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, and Elizabeth Van Lew were in their forties. Tubman was an unschooled former slave. Greenhow, Van Lew, and Boyd were well-educated and wealthy. Boyd and Greenhow supported slavery. Tubman and Van Lew despised it. Smart, brave, committed, and clever, the women spies were undaunted by the risks of getting shot, arrested, imprisoned, even hanged. Their stories are awesome and inspiring. And in some cases, their stories are almost unbelievable. Chronology, Historic Places To Visit, Further Reading

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenny Colman
    Release dateDec 13, 2012
    ISBN9780984960750
    Spies! Women in the Civil War
    Author

    Penny Colman

    Penny Colman is the author of many nonfiction books, including Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts, Elizabeth Cady and Susan B. Anthony, and Rosie the Riveter. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey.

    Read more from Penny Colman

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      Book preview

      Spies! Women in the Civil War - Penny Colman

      Spies! Women in the Civil War

      Penny Colman

      Copyright © 1992, 2013 by Penny Colman

      Second Edition: January 2013

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

      Cover images, left to right: Belle Boyd, Courtesy of the Library of Congress; Harriet Tubman, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; Elizabeth Van Lew, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

      www.pennycolman.com

      For Linda

      Contents

      Chapter One: War!

      What awful times we have fallen upon!

      Abby Howland Woolsey

      Chapter Two: Rebel Rose

      I employed every capacity with which God has endowed me

      Rose O’Neal Greenhow

      Chapter Three: Crazy Bet

      My life was in continued jeopardy

      Elizabeth Van Lew

      Chapter Four: The Siren of the Shenandoah

      I would rather lie down in this prison and die

      Belle Boyd

      Chapter Five: General Tubman

      I never saw such a sight

      Harriet Tubman

      Chapter Six: Many More Spies

      I was ready to start on my first secret expedition

      Sarah Emma Edmonds

      Chapter Seven: After the War

      She risked everything that is dear

      Epitaph for Elizabeth Van Lew

      Chronology

      Historic Places to Visit

      Acknowledgments

      Further Reading

      About Author Penny Colman

      Other Books by Penny Colman

      Chapter One

      War!

      What awful times we have fallen upon!

      –Abby Howland Woolsey

      The bloodiest, most devastating war fought on American soil--the Civil War--began on April 12, 1861. On a dark, cloudy morning, at 4:30 a.m. to be exact, Confederate troops in Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire on the Union troops stationed in Fort Sumter. Thirty-four hours and about 3,500 shells later, Major Robert Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter, surrendered. News of the surrender reached President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on April 14th. Determined to put down the insurrection, he responded by issuing a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteers. On the same day, in New York City, Abby Howland Woolsey, who answered Lincoln's call by enlisting as a nurse, wrote a letter to her married sister Elizabeth, What awful times we have fallen upon! The awful times in the United States had been coming for a long time; they revolved around the issue of slavery.

      By 1860, four million black women, men and children were enslaved in America. Mainly they worked in the tobacco and cotton fields located in the southern states of the United States: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia. Slavery never took hold to such an extent in the Northern states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maine, and many Northerners did not want it to spread. So, every time the United States gained new territory or a new state wanted to join the Union, Southerners and Northerners argued about the spread of slavery. People called abolitionists wanted to do more than stop the spread of slavery--they wanted to get rid of it. Everywhere. Forever.

      In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford that slaves could never be citizens and that Congress had no right to limit the spread of slavery. Like a bolt of lightning, the Dred Scott Decision jolted antislavery people into furious action. More and more Northerners declared themselves abolitionists. In Illinois, an antislavery lawyer named Abraham Lincoln decided to run for the Senate. A member of the Whig party, Lincoln switched to the newly formed Republican party because it was totally dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery. Although he was defeated, his powerful speeches caught people's attention. In 1860, the Republicans selected him as their candidate for President of the United States. Winning every Northern state, Abraham Lincoln was elected President on November 6, 1860. In response, South Carolina seceded, or withdrew from the Union. Then Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Before long they were joined by Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina. Eleven Confederate states pitted themselves against twenty-three Union states.

      The Union had more people, factories, railroads, money, and a strong navy. The Confederacy had more military leaders. Before the war was over, millions of men would fight. More than a half a million soldiers would die: 2,000 in one battle, 17,000 in another, and more than 50,000 at the Battle of Gettysburg. Millions of women joined the fight as nurses, aides, and doctors on the battlefield, on hospital transport ships, and in field hospitals; as fundraisers and suppliers of money, clothing, bandages, and food; as workers in factories, businesses, and on large and small farms; as soldiers disguised as men; and as spies. Some women such as Sarah Emma Edmonds, who disguised herself as a man, played several roles--Union nurse, soldier, and spy. Other women such as Belle Boyd played one role--Confederate spy. Women such as Dr. Mary Edwards Walker,

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