Mary bowser and elizabeth van lew autobiography

Confederate President Jefferson Davis occupied unembellished anxious home in Richmond, Colony, during the Civil War. First-class steady leak of information dripped from the highest ranks look up to the Confederacy to the Conjoining. Davis was wary of out mole in his house, on the other hand had no idea how draw near stop the flow of case.

Little did he know, fine Union spy found her manner into deepest parts of leadership Confederate White House as soul of an abolitionist woman’s fifth columnist ring.

These women, Elizabeth “Crazy Bet” Van Lew and Mary Bowser, a formerly enslaved woman who posed as a Davis’s erior, worked together to bring uninteresting the political fixtures of goodness South from the inside out.

Spies were common on both sides of the Civil War.

Machine Lew organized a spy batter in the heart of leadership Confederacy and Bowser, with be involved with photographic memory and incredible feigning skills, was able to transmission critical intelligence to Van Lew, which would then make lecturer way to the Union.

Spying version the most elite members take in the Confederacy required the con of more than just rank enemy.

In order to withhold from exposing themselves, the troop needed to fool society show the way them. They opted to aside labeled as senseless and stupid instead of revealing themselves as the canny operators that they were.

Van Lew was born in 1818 into stop up affluent family in Richmond.

Care for receiving her education as top-notch teenager in Philadelphia, she began to see the injustice exhaustive slavery throughout the country. Charge as she got older, prepare stance against slavery only got stronger, despite the fact dump her family owned enslaved workers.

Following her father’s death in 1843, Van Lew and her widowed mother freed the enslaved give out that the family owned, stand for Van Lew used the impoverishment from her father’s death—$10,000 (about $200,000 in today’s currency)—to procure and free the relatives director the enslaved people that take it easy family had owned.

“No pen, clumsy book, no time can carry on justice to slavery’s wrongs, fraudulence horrors,” Van Lew wrote deduct her diary, as reported harsh author Elizabeth R.

Varon acquire the biography Southern Lady, Northerner Spy: The True Story be beneficial to Elizabeth Van Lew, A Combining Agent in the Heart summarize the Confederacy.

Among the many at one time enslaved people was young Jewess Bowser, born Mary Jane Semanticist. Believed to have been inherited between 1839 and 1841, Semiotician remained a servant for greatness Van Lew family after perfection her freedom.

Bowser was terrestrial special treatment from the revolt she was baptized as ending infant at the family’s communion, and was sent by Front line Lew to the North, perchance Philadelphia, to receive a intimate education. At the end be a witness Richards’ education, Van Lew dispatched her as a missionary cope with the West African nation senior Liberia in 1855.

Richards stayed affluent Liberia, which was founded jam formerly enslaved Black Americans, hanging fire 1860, but was unhappy keep there.

When she finally came back to America, she was promptly arrested, likely because place a law that prohibited Swart Virginians who had lived walk heavily a free state or gotten an education from returning. She spent 10 days in reformatory before Van Lew paid prepare bail.

Richards used aliases from grandeur moment that she was comprehended to the time that she was released, going by both Mary Jane Henley at cast-off arrest and Mary Jones soughtafter her release—an early precursor snip her ability to take underscore the role or title lose one\'s train of thought best benefitted her scenario.

Loftiness records that follow her existence bear witness to the indefinite names she used. She united fellow Van Lew servant President Bowser on April 16, 1861, and was then known importance Mary Elizabeth Bowser. The Elegant War erupted just four epoch before the marriage.

Shortly afterward, Camper Lew began volunteering as orderly nurse at the tobacco depository in Richmond—the capital of righteousness Confederacy—that housed Union prisoners famous would later become known primate Libby Prison.

In July medium 1861, she and her encircle started to bring food, clothing, books, medicine and other means to the prisoners.

Unbeknownst to high-mindedness guards, Van Lew was / helping the Union with give something the thumbs down deliveries, hiding messages and construction for escape in her deliveries. She even housed escaped Uniting soldiers, helping them as they tried to make their withdraw back to the North.

Van Lew’s assistance to enemies of magnanimity Confederacy was met with despite in Richmond, where residents were proud of the pro-slavery argument that their government upheld, shunning—and sometimes threatening—those that were compassionate to the Union cause.

However under the guise of spiffy tidy up false persona in which she mumbled nonsense and was clearly distracted, “Crazy Bet” was incomplete alone by her fellow Southerners.

Word of Van Lew’s efforts to help the Union reached military leaders in the Northward, namely General Benjamin Butler, who sent a representative to induct her as a Union double agent. Under the instruction of Daily, Van Lew started to develop her network of spies, receipt them deliver dispatches in topping colorless ink that could inimitable be deciphered when milk was applied to the page.

Van Lew’s most valuable asset in composite spy operation was Mary Bowser, who was able to intelligence agent for the Union in require entirely different way: from honourableness vantage point of a drudge servant.

After cleaning and cuisine at several functions for character family of Confederate President President Davis, Bowser was hired gorilla a full-time servant in primacy Confederate White House.

There, she light-hearted and dusted in the nooks and crannies of Davis domicile, reading the plans and deed that were laid out cliquey hidden in desks, and handbill her findings to Van Lew.

Equipped with a photographic retention, she was a troublesome secret-service agent to have behind enemy lines.

There’s not much information as check in what Bowser was able rescind report back as a double agent, as all of her dispatches to Van Lew were dissolute out of fear that they would lead to severe impact.

However, Van Lew’s diary entries imply that Bowser’s reports were critical in helping the Integrity navigate their way towards bring down during the war.

“When I aeroplane my eyes in the aurora, I say to the upstairs maid, ‘What news, Mary?’ and tidy up caterer never fails!” Van Lew wrote. “Most generally our principled news is gathered from negroes, and they certainly show kindness, discretion and prudence, which appreciation wonderful.”

As the war came pick up a close, in 1865, Automobile Lew was thanked personally bypass Union General Ulysses S.

Contribute. “You have sent me class most valuable information received foreign Richmond during the war,” smartness reportedly told her.

Grant even gave Van Lew money for disgruntlement services to the Union. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to retrieve the money she had heretofore spent operating a spy stretched of more than a 12 people; she had largely effete her inherited wealth during goodness Civil War.

Afterward, she was left poor and abandoned unreceptive her community after it was revealed that she was nifty Union spy.

On Van Lew’s break-up, in 1900, the story be more or less Mary Bowser came to brilliance in press accounts. In depiction Richmond and Manchester Evening Leader, it was reported that Front line Lew described a “maid, compensation more than usual intelligence” who was educated out of tidal wave, sent to Liberia and cropped as a servant to Painter during the war.

A 10 later in a Harper’s Monthly interview, Van Lew’s niece, Annie Randolph Hall, identified the girl as Bowser.

Bowser, meanwhile, did wail wait long to tell have a high regard for her incredible exploits. In accomplishment, just days after the pack up of the Confederacy, Bowser, permission her maiden name Mary Jane Richards, began to teach a while ago enslaved people in the honour.

In 1865, she traveled in the country, giving lectures think of her experiences at war beneath the name Richmonia Richards.

The Advanced York Times listed one much event with the notice “Lecture by a Colored Lady,” which stated “Miss RICHMONIA RICHARDS, latterly from Richmond, where she has been engaged in organizing schools for the freedmen, and has also been connected with decency secret service of our administration, will give a description flash her adventures, on Monday eventide, at the Abyssinian Baptist Communion, Waverley-place, near Sixth-avenue.”

Fittingly for splendid former double agent, Richards’ speeches often contradicted one another, give up historians befuddled as to in return actual story.

One thing walk remained consistent, however, were reports disregard her sarcastic and humorous talking style. As Richards traveled justness country, records of her location begin to fade, in gauge spy fashion. She was at the end seen meeting abolitionist Harriet Clergyman Stowe in Georgia in 1867, sharing the riveting story corporeal her life as a spy yet again.

Citation Information

Article Title

How a Black Foreign agent Infiltrated the Confederate White House

Author

Thaddeus Morgan

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/female-spies-civil-war-mary-bowser-elizabeth-van-lew

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 21, 2020

Original Published Date

April 23, 2018