Civil War Women Spies for the North

Women Spies for the Union

American society was still quite Victorian in many ways during the 1860s. Therefore, women spies were not as likely to be roughly interrogated or hanged when their true identity was discovered. These heroines exhibited great courage and were willing to suffer imprisonment or death in the service of their country.

Image: Illustration of Sarah Emma Edmonds on horseback dodging a bullet fired by a southern woman.

Elizabeth Van Lew
From a wealthy family well-known in Richmond society, Elizabeth Van Lew was educated in Philadelphia and returned home an ardent abolitionist. Elizabeth was in her forties when the War began, and steadfastly loyal to the Union. She started writing to Federal officials to tell them about the "seccession mania" occurring in Richmond, but she was soon sending information about Confederate troop locations, numbers and movements. Once regular mail was no longer safe, she recruited her servants as her messengers.

Read More

Civil War Women Spies for the South

Female Confederate Spies

Washington, DC was an ideal place for Confederate operatives to gather information against the North. Not only was it adjacent to slave-holding states, it was full of Southern sympathizers, many of whom were members of Congress or held other government positions, which gave them easy access to valuable intelligence. Confederate recruiters only had to find the men and women who were brave enough to act as agents.

Image: Rose O'Neal Greenhow with her daughter
Old Capitol Prison, Washington, DC, 1862

The earliest known spy recruiter was Virginia Governor John Letcher, who immediately set up a spy network in the federal capital. He had been a Congressman in the 1850s and knew the inner workings and social life of the city intimately. Letcher used his knowledge of the city to set up a spy network in the capital in late April 1861, after his state seceded but before it officially joined the Confederacy.

Rose O'Neal Greenhow
Two of Letcher's most prominent early recruits were Thomas Jordan, a Virginia-born West Point graduate stationed in Washington before the war, and Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a beautiful openly pro-South 44 year-old widow and Washington socialite who was friendly with a number of northern politicians, including several senators and Secretary of State William Seward.

Read More

Kate Warne

First Female Private Investigator

The person in this photo is believed to be Kate Warne.  of AIt was cropped from a larger photo of Allan Pinkerton and his operatives during the Civil War. This is the only person in that photo without facial hair, and the figure also appears feminine.

Kate Warne was born in 1833 in New York City, and was left a childless widow shortly after she married. There is little information about her personal life or background. Described by Allan Pinkerton as a slender, brown haired woman, there is not much else known about Kate Warne prior to the day she walked into the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1856.

Read More