by Karen Abbott
He would complete these business documents as if they were genuine, encoding information from Mary Jane and from personal observations on his own regular visits to Petersburg and Fredericksburg. Certain quantities of items corresponded with certain military terminology: 370 iron hinges meant 3,700 cavalry; 30 anvils meant 30 batteries of artillery; 40 vises meant 4,000 battle-hardened shock troops. He told friends and associates that he was going either to visit his sister in Philadelphia or on a business trip—not to make new sales, as the Confederate government would target him for trading with the enemy, but to collect on certain accounts from before the war.
He took the next train on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad. Disembarking in Fredericksburg, he spent two days at his office there, doing legitimate business and arranging for his pass to cross the lines, over the Rappahannock River. From there he took a horse to Aquia Creek and then a steamboat north to Washington. Once in the capital, he gathered his false business paperwork and pinpricked books, transcribed the information hidden therein, and headed for the War Department at Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
His departure shifted something inside Elizabeth; she was all in, on every front, unable to stop what she had set in motion even if she wanted to. She had never meant for her little brother to become so enmeshed in her operation as to risk his own life, but after his wife left he’d insisted on helping the Richmond Underground. Doubtless Mary was still furious that he had taken their children. There was no telling how far her anger could reach, what she might do, what she might say and to whom. Elizabeth’s sporadic kindnesses to rebel soldiers did not negate years of speaking openly about abolition. Neighbors had already threatened to shoot her dead. One of General Winder’s detectives had begged to sleep on her parlor floor. Another tried to entrap her on the street.
Her mind had to adapt, acquire new patterns. She kept her notes and plans within arm’s reach, prepared to destroy them quickly if Confederate detectives raided her home. She wore a simple cotton bonnet and calico dresses so that she would not be immediately recognized on the streets; sometimes she even stuffed cotton into her cheeks to distort the shape of her face. If she turned to talk to a friend, she found a detective at her elbow. She saw strange faces peeping around the columns and pillars of the back portico of her home. Every night, before turning down the lights, she lowered herself to hands and knees and checked beneath the bed, certain that someone was waiting to get her.
Belle spent as much time as she could with Rose Greenhow, accompanying her and Little Rose to Richmond’s hospitals, where she cared for the wounded rebel soldiers and entertained them with stories. The work made her miss her own father, temporarily home on sick leave in Martinsburg, which was once again under Confederate control. She decided to return home for a brief visit, and knew exactly what she would do as soon as she arrived.
After she put her younger siblings to bed and kissed her mother good night, she lay down herself and let her mind craft the next day’s drama, imagining the scene, the setting, the lines she would say and hear. The sun seemed to rise just for her, slanting in her direction, flattering her angles and curves. She put on her prettiest riding costume, rebel gray and cut close, with a soldier’s sash encircling her waist and her palmetto pin blooming on her chest. She found the gold saber knot intended for Stonewall Jackson and slid it down her bodice. It was time.
She saddled up Fleeter and rode out to the Confederate encampment at Bunker Hill, about eight miles from Martinsburg. Stonewall had his headquarters in a stately Greek Revival–style brick building with a gabled roof and a small log slave cabin in the back. It was called the Boyd House, after a family unrelated to Belle, but she took the coincidence as a good omen.
Instead of staying inside the house, Stonewall had chosen to camp on the lawn. She approached General Jackson’s tent, hoping that she wasn’t interrupting his daily prayer, and that he would remember her name and her heroic dash across the battlefield at Front Royal. An aide appeared and asked for her name and her business. She answered and waited, pressing her hand against the gold saber knot to make sure it was still there.
The aide emerged from the tent and said that the general refused to see her. Belle demanded to know why. She felt her eyes blurring, her throat caving in. She fought to maintain her expression, a cool leveling of her features, an unspoken insistence that there was surely a misunderstanding. She repeated her name, italicizing each word: Belle. Boyd. Daughter of Benjamin, cousin and friend to countless rebel soldiers. The aide shrugged and said that the general was “not altogether assured” of her loyalty. Her loyalty? She had risked her life for the cause and just spent a month in a Yankee prison. The aide threw up his hands. Her mind groped for reasons: Did he fear that her quick release from prison, by people who had actual proof of her activities, was some sort of trap? Did he believe that she had secured her freedom by vowing to betray him? Had he heard the gossip that some of her associations with Union officers weren’t solely for the benefit of the Confederacy? Was he equally unsettled by the newspaper mentions of her bare arms and low-cut dress, the way she told reporters of her desire to “share his dangers”?
The aide either couldn’t or wouldn’t say. Quietly she mounted Fleeter and peered over her shoulder, her face loaded with a murderous glare. “If I ever catch you in Martinsburg,” she threatened the aide, “I will cut your ears off.”
She rode the ten miles home, brushed past her siblings and the servants, and tumbled backward onto her bed. The sun had shifted position in her window, sharpening the shadows along her wall. She retrieved the saber knot from her corset and made a fist around it. She would try again, and the scene would unfold differently, the dialogue edited, the ending correct.
When she dismounted at Stonewall’s tent he would greet her right away, gently laying his hands upon her head, his long fingers forming a crown. How pleased he was to see her once more well and free. He would advise her, sweetly, that if his troops were forced to retreat she must leave her home again, for the enemies would quickly move in, and it would be foolish for her to expose herself to the caprice or resentment of the Yankees and face more time in prison. He would promise to give her timely notice of his movements so she could plan ahead. He would bestow upon her the title of honorary aide-de-camp, and invite her to attend a review of his troops. She’d thank him, lift the saber knot from her dress, and lower it into his palm. As she turned to leave, he would whisper, “God bless you, my child.” They would never meet again.
PLAYING DEAD
ON THE MARCH, VIRGINIA
Despite General Lee’s fear that his army was “melting away,” Allan Pinkerton’s final report estimated the Confederate strength to be 130,000, nearly twice the number Lee had present for duty. But McClellan, for once, gave Lincoln what he wanted and began chasing Lee, moving eastward from the Shenandoah Valley. The Army of the Potomac aimed to reach Warrenton, just south of Manassas, and from there swing east to Richmond.
It was warm for October, the leaves just beginning to curl around the edges. The men marched from sunrise to sundown, the worn soles of their boots gaping and shutting like mouths. Emma’s comrades were in fine condition, but her injuries from her mule accident hadn’t healed. There were days when she could not set her left foot on the ground and she could feel herself bleeding inside, a condition she called “hemorrhaging from the lungs.” But she continued her duties as mail carrier and courier, and on the third day of the march she was given a message for headquarters. She turned her horse, Frank, around and started at a brisk canter, riding mile after mile, passing train after train, and finally made her delivery.
The weather had turned since the army first set out, a stark, thick cold weighting the air, and after sundown it began to sleet. For hours she wandered along icy paths, searching for her regiment, but had no way of knowing it had shifted its route after a skirmish with the enemy. Instead she came upon a small village. She intended to knock on any strange door in the hope of f
inding food and shelter for the night, but spotted a band of Confederate guerrillas roving between the homes.
She had heard guerrillas were on the rise in Virginia, “irregular fighters” who indiscriminately plundered, kidnapped, and murdered Northern-sympathizing citizens, breaking into homes looking to shoot any Yankees they found. In response groups of Federal cavalry hunted them down, assisted in some towns by companies of farmers, equipped and paid by the government. One elderly local patriot who stalked rebel guerrillas wore a shirt made from a Union flag, but on account of his advanced age the Confederates left him alone.
Quietly Emma rode on, but by two in the morning her horse showed signs of giving out; neither she nor Frank had eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. She approached a farmhouse and with numb hands rapped on the door. No answer. After hitching her horse under the cover of a woodshed she lowered herself to the ground, now covered in three inches of snow. Her soaking clothes chilled her skin. She feared she might die from exposure but Frank lay down beside her, keeping her warm “by the heat of his beautiful head.”
At daybreak she resumed her search for her regiment, stopping in a cornfield to feed Frank. She heard a rustling behind her and turned to find a party of Union cavalry. They were looking for a group of Confederate guerrillas, and asked if she’d seen any. Indeed she had, she said, and offered to lead them back to the village. They set off.
She was thinking she was grateful for the temporary company, for the extra sets of hooves cutting through the dusty snow, when from the corner of her eye she saw a twitch of movement, a darting streak of blue. She heard the claps of repeating rifles and the thud of two bodies hitting the ground, and realized they were under attack by rebel guerrillas in Union attire. Frank reared, her head whipped back, and she was launched into the cracked china sky.
When she crashed down her mind seemed to close. She pushed against the feeling, struggling to keep awake, to feel the sting of snow against her cheek. She waited for a current of pain, a taste of blood, something to indicate whether she’d been shot. Through slitted eyes she saw two of her Union comrades, limbs limp and splayed. Her horse lay prone, inches away, close enough for her to touch the bristled fringe of his lashes. Frank was fighting, too, gusts of dry breath smoking the air, his front hoof slapping at the earth, trying to gain purchase and lift himself up. She watched him fail. He groaned once, fell back, and threw his neck across her body, pinning it beneath him. She felt the warm slow spread of his blood along her skin, and she lay still, letting him soak her. She was soaking inside, too, her old wounds made new again, relieving themselves. A minute or an hour passed; she couldn’t tell. Then came a distant sound of galloping and a glimpse of battered boots. She realized that one of the Confederate guerrillas had returned, and at once she felt wholly, terrifyingly alive.
He sank the tip of his saber into the corpse of a Union man; even playing dead might not save her. A grunt as he rolled the body on its side. She heard the rustling of material, the clink of weapons being collected. She was next.
Two hands encircled her ankles and pulled. Her bad hip jostled in its socket. The hands yanked again, sliding her body out from under her horse, stripping off a layer of its blood. He found her hips, his fingers squirming in her pockets, turning them out. She struggled to make her mind work, to remember what she was carrying: no official papers, at least, and only five dollars. At last his hands lifted and she sensed him receding. She lay still, with closed eyes, until the surviving Union men returned. One of them lent her his horse, walking alongside her until she found her regiment. She thought about her own horse, Frank, and how she would have borne yet another broken limb if she could only have him back. Inside her tent she said a prayer, thanking God for sparing her “unprofitable life.”
The Army of the Potomac continued its march, reaching Warrenton by the first week in November, but it was not soon enough for Lincoln. By then the Confederates, under General James Longstreet, had slipped down the Shenandoah Valley and wedged themselves between the advancing Union troops and Richmond, while Stonewall Jackson remained in the Valley on McClellan’s flank. Lincoln was furious and, like many of his Republican advisers, not entirely convinced of McClellan’s loyalty. To his private secretary the president explained that when McClellan kept “delaying on little pretexts of wanting this and that I began to fear that he was playing false—that he did not want to hurt the enemy.” He replaced McClellan with Ambrose Burnside, a well-respected thirty-eight-year-old general whose luxuriant muttonchop whiskers gave rise to the word sideburns. Allan Pinkerton quit the Secret Service in a considerable huff, declaring that he “had no confidence in the ability of General Burnside” and blaming the removal of his esteemed chief on the “political cabal at Washington.”
McClellan gave an informal reception in his tent for his staff officers, pouring champagne into tin cups and raising his own in a toast: “To the Army of the Potomac, and bless the day when I shall return to it.” He rode from camp to camp, reveling in the salutes, the shouts, the caps tossed into the air, and then delivered an emotional farewell to his troops:
“In parting from you I cannot express the love and gratitude I bear you. As an army you have grown up under my care. In you I have never found doubt or coldness. The battles you have fought under my command will proudly live in our nation’s history. The glory you have achieved, our mutual perils and fatigues, the graves of our comrades fallen in battle and by disease, the broken forms of those whom wounds and sickness have disabled—the strongest associations which can exist among men—unite us still by an indissoluble tie. We shall ever be comrades in supporting the constitution of our country and the nationality of its people.”
By the end of McClellan’s address, his men, Emma included, were weeping openly, and she thought about all that had changed—and even more that had not. It was a year before, exactly, when she and Jerome Robbins had stood side by side watching a fireworks display in the general’s honor, and when she allowed Frank Thompson to reveal who and what he was.
Jerome, still languishing at Camp Parole, learned of McClellan’s departure three days later from the newspapers, and felt “depressed indeed.” He hoped the rumors of his imminent release would prove true and wanted, above all, to see Emma; lately he’d corresponded more often with “Frank” than with his girlfriend back in Michigan. “Have been somewhat busy with preparations for going away which report seems well-authenticated,” he wrote in his journal. “I feel glad in the thought that I may again meet dear comrades. . . . My dear friend Frank is last on the list but not least. How very often do I think of you my dear friend, and more than ever since I learned of your illness. Oh, how I have longed to be there to care for you but God willed it otherwise and let us be content.” A part of him relished being the sole keeper of Emma’s secret, and wanted no more—but no less—than this strange, furtive thing they had.
While General Burnside sent troops to Falmouth, just across the Rappahannock from the town of Fredericksburg, Emma received orders to ride to Washington to collect and deliver mail, a two-day trip. Her leg still pained her but she was able to splint it. Along the way she passed through the battlefield at Manassas, where her army had twice lost to the rebels. It had been months since the last contest but the ground was still thick with the evidence of carnage, skeletons scattered like a box of spilled matchsticks, bones bleaching in the winter sun.
Emma stopped at the body of one, a cavalryman who lay together with his horse; nothing but the bones and clothing remained. One arm—or, rather, the bones and the coat sleeve—was raised straight up, its hand severed cleanly at the wrist and lying nearby on the ground. She marveled at the hand’s perfect condition, the fingers and joints still fused together and arched delicately, as if poised over a piano. She dismounted and considered taking the hand with her, but found no clues as to the soldier’s regiment or name, no way to track down his family. There were depraved hucksters in town selling “Yankee skulls” at ten dollars apiece, and rebel women we
aring brooches made of soldiers’ bones, and she did not want to make a souvenir out of a sacrifice.
At headquarters in Washington she met a twenty-six-year-old Union lieutenant named James Reid, whose regiment recently had been brigaded with hers as part of the Ninth Corps. He was the opposite of Jerome Robbins: a six-foot-three Scotsman with blond hair and the neck of a bear, someone disinclined to confide to a diary about his faith or anything else. When the war broke out, he’d enlisted as a private with the 79th New York Highlanders, a Scottish infantry regiment that arrived for training in Washington wearing kilts, an ensemble derided by the New York Military Gazette as “short petticoats and bare knees, in poor taste and barbarous.” Back home, in Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood, his wife, Mary, waited with their sons, three-year-old George and one-year-old William. He told Emma stories of being captured at First Bull Run and his six-month imprisonment near Richmond, impressing her with his valor and devotion to the cause, and she wondered when she’d see him again.
A “Yankee skull” goblet, a necklace of Yankee teeth, and other items—some real, some invented—of “Secesh” industry.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
She returned to Falmouth, bringing along a pocketful of apples, doughnuts, and an orange for the 2nd Michigan’s commander, Colonel Poe. She found the army encamped for miles along the Rappahannock. A heavy snowfall had turned the ground into slushy mud. “It looks rather dismal,” wrote one soldier. “The men are ragged & short of shoes & only have shelter tents which are in fact more like a dog kennel than a habitation for men.” Conflicting rumors swirled around camp: they were either going into winter quarters or advancing into Fredericksburg any day. Burnside’s initial plan was to take the city while it was too weakly held to resist, but the pontoon bridges he needed to cross the river arrived late, allowing Confederate forces to occupy the city and stretch out a six-mile defensive array in the hills and ridges above it. Although Burnside would have preferred to wait until spring, he knew that Lincoln, and the Northern public in general, wanted a confrontation and wanted it now.
