Female Spies The Confederacy’s Unwritten Heroines
Uploaded by gockets on Mar 20, 2004
Bella Boyd
Though seldom written about in depth in standard high school history textbooks, the spy played a pivotal role in the United States Civil War. However, the most noteworthy spies during this time of national crisis were generally not your stereotypical black-trench-coat-wearing, sly, cunning, male spies. Much more common were female spies, generally using their Southern feminine wiles to extract vital and secretive information from high-ranking Northern military personnel. They would extract such information by first weaving their way into a soldier’s heart by simply exchanging tender glances, utilizing their ostentatious flirting ability, or in a few cases, going as far as becoming engaged to a “mark” for the sole purpose of extracting information beneficial to their cause. This fact made Confederate women spies extremely useful and efficient during the Nation’s internal unrest, even more so than any of the time’s male spies.
Female Civil War spies were extremely talented at what they did, and were generally raised in families which already had a strong background in espionage. One such example is Belle Boyd, a female spy for the Confederacy, who eventually became knows as the “Cleopatra of the Secession” for all of her espionage work benefiting the South. Belle Boyd’s family was rich with spies and saboteurs. Lieutenant Colonel William R. Denny, a suspected relative of Belle’s, was a secret agent with whom Belle frequently interacted. Colonel John E. Boyd, a known relative to Belle’s, was sentenced to death for spying, but managed to escape with a bit of coercion shortly before he was scheduled to be hung.
Belle Boyd was educated in an all-girls school in Baltimore from ages 12 to 16 , at which point she concluded her education and became an unofficial Confederate spy. When Belle’s home town was occupied by Union soldiers, she frequently lounged about her father’s hotel under the roués of being a customer, to pick up small, tactically important fragments of the soldier’s conversations which she would then pass on to Confederate forces. One of the highlights of Belle’s espionage career was the conversation that she overheard and passed on to General Stonewall Jackson in which two Union soldiers discussed their commanding officer’s orders to withdraw from the town, blowing up all of the bridges behind them. The Confederacy’s awareness of this stifled the...