The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [77]
Sarah Emma Edmonds disguised herself as a man so that she could serve in the Union Army, where she became known for her bravery and chameleonlike ability to blend in, whether she was masquerading as a black slave or “disguised” as a woman. She successfully fought for the Union as Frank Thompson until she became sick with malaria. She checked herself into a private hospital to avoid having to reveal her true identity. But when she learned that “Frank Thompson” was listed as a deserter, she came clean, and worked as a nurse for the Union—under her real name—until the end of the war. She wrote about her experiences in a memoir titled Nurse and Spy in the Union Army.
Rose O’Neal Greenhow spied so well for the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis credited her with winning the battle of Manassas. She was imprisoned twice, once in her own home, and the second time with her eight-year-old daughter in Washington, D.C.’s Old Capital Prison. After she was released from prison, she was exiled to the Confederate states, where Jefferson Davis enlisted her as a courier to Europe.
Nancy Hart served as a Confederate spy, carrying messages between the southern armies. When she was twenty, she was captured by the Union; she was able to escape after shooting one of her guards with his own weapon.
Elizabeth Van Lew was a spy for the North. She realized when she visited Union prisoners held by the Confederates in Richmond that they were excellent sources of information, as they had been marched through Confederate lines. Over the next four years, she worked as a spy, bringing food and clothing to Union prisoners and smuggling out information. For her efforts, she was made Postmaster of Richmond by General Grant.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was an abolitionist, a prisoner of war, a feminist, and a surgeon who dressed as a man and worked as a physician and spy for the Union. She is the only woman ever to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Harriet Tubman is most famous for her work in freeing slaves, but she also served with the Union Army in South Carolina, organizing a spy network and leading expeditions in addition to fighting as a soldier, working as a cook and laundress, and aiding the wounded as a nurse. Through her experience with the Underground Railroad, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom, she came to know the landscape intimately and was able to recruit former slaves to be her eyes and ears, reporting on movements of the Confederate troops and scouting out the rebel camps. In 1863 she went on a gunboat raid, with Colonel James Montgomery and several black soldiers, that ultimately freed more than 700 slaves, thanks to the inside information from Harriet’s scouts.
Ginnie and Lottie Moon were sisters who spied for the Confederates during the Civil War. Lottie began her career as a spy delivering messages for an underground Confederate organization at the behest of her husband. Ginnie too delivered messages over Union lines, on the pretext that she was meeting a beau. Ginnie and the girls’ mother risked considerable danger when they accepted a mission to retrieve sensitive papers and supplies from the Knights of the Golden Circle in Ohio. They were apprehended by Union agents; Ginnie was able to swallow the most important written information they carried, but their cache of medical supplies was discovered and confiscated, and they were put under house arrest. Lottie came in disguise to plead with General Burnside—a former beau—for their release, but instead she was placed under arrest with her sister and mother. Ultimately the charges were dropped. Lottie eventually became a journalist, and in the 1920s Ginnie headed to Hollywood, where she had bit parts in several movies—none of them with plots as exciting as the sisters’ real life adventures.
WORLD WAR I SPIES
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Two famous and controversial