The Spymistress

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  At the end of June, Governor Letcher summoned all men liable for duty in the militia and anyone else capable of volunteering in other capacities to organize for the defense of the capital. The next day, as excitement and alarm swept through the city, Mayor Mayo issued broadsides warning that the enemy was approaching and calling the people to arms. “Remember New Orleans!” he exhorted. “Richmond is now in your hands. Let it not fall under the rule of another Butler.”

  Alarm bells rang out on July 2, and as the militia scrambled to respond, Lizzie and her mother distracted themselves from worry by refreshing the room they had once prepared for General McClellan. He no longer led the Army of the Potomac, and they were not certain whether General Hooker was in charge or if, as rumors claimed, he had been replaced by General Meade, but whoever liberated them, he would find comfortable accommodations awaiting him.

  A few days later, a frenzy of fear swept over Richmond as Yankee cavalry destroyed the train depot at Ashland, not twenty miles to the north. Farther afield, no one, not even President Davis, knew exactly what had happened or might still be happening in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. Rumors reached the capital that General Lee had taken Harrisburg, but from the South trickled reports that Vicksburg had fallen, so no one knew whether to rejoice or to lament. On July 7, the Richmond Sentinel reported that General Lee had routed the Union army at Gettysburg and had taken forty thousand prisoners, while the Dispatch exulted with the news that Generals Johnston and Pemberton had outmaneuvered General Grant at Vicksburg. Later that same afternoon, Mary Jane discovered the truth in Secretary of War Seddon’s official report to President Davis: Union general Ulysses S. Grant had taken Vicksburg. Lizzie shared the joyful news with Mr. Ford, who shared it with the Union prisoners in Libby, who broke into cheers and a rousing chorus of “The Star-­Spangled Banner” and kept their furious guards awake past midnight singing “John Brown’s Body.”

  Reeling from the terrible loss of Vicksburg, all of Richmond waited, anxious but hopeful, for a reliable account of General Lee’s invasion of the North. On July 9 the news finally came: the Army of Northern Virginia had been repulsed from Gettysburg with heavy losses and was retreating to Virginia.

  Soon thereafter, Mary Jane surreptitiously read letters the general and the president exchanged in the aftermath of the demoralizing defeat. General Lee accepted full responsibility for the outcome of the battle, as he had told his men as they dragged themselves back from Union lines. He asked Davis to replace him with someone younger and stronger who still possessed the confidence of the people. Mr. Davis would have none of this, and immediately wrote back, “To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army, or of the reflecting men of the country, is to demand an impossibility.”

  And so General Lee retained his command—­which greatly disappointed Lizzie, who had hoped Mr. Davis would hasten a Union victory by appointing a far less capable man.

  The war raged on as the blood-­soaked summer crested and began its slow, gradual descent into autumn. Every prison in Richmond was packed full of more Union soldiers than it could possibly hold, and the situation worsened as exchanges ground to a halt over procedural disputes, especially the Confederacy’s refusal to treat colored Union soldiers as prisoners of war rather than recaptured slaves. As bad as conditions were in Libby Prison, they were far worse on Belle Isle, where on average fifty men perished every day, and the rest languished in their fragile tents or on the sandy plain, cadaverous, hollow-­eyed, and despairing. Lizzie trembled from outrage when she learned that boxes of food and clothing that the federal government, the United States Sanitary Commission, and Northern civilians had sent for their relief had been confiscated by their jailers. Prison officers, surgeons, and stewards sipped the rich coffee and dined upon the good beef Union commissaries sent to Richmond, while the prisoners for whom the provisions were intended gnawed on dry gristle and bone and drank ersatz coffee made from chicory and toasted okra seeds. The Confederates attributed the disturbing death toll on Belle Isle to dysentery, but it was a poorly kept secret that exposure and starvation were equally to blame.

  Staggered by demoralizing losses on the battlefield, Confederate officials became more obsessed with the idea that spies lurking in the capital had contributed to their failures, and they resolved to root them out. In mid-­July, Mrs. Mary Caroline Allan, a Cincinnati native who had married into one of the most prosperous and respectable families in Richmond, was arrested and charged with treasonable correspondence with the enemy for sending letters to acquaintances in New York in which she identified Confederate sympathizers in the North and offered observations of strategic military developments. In deference to her social status, General Winder arranged for her to be confined to the Saint Francis de Sales Hospital rather than Castle Thunder.

  The general showed far less mercy to another accused Union agent, Spencer Kellogg, an abolitionist Kansan who had conducted espionage for General Grant in Tennessee and had helped bring about the fall of New Orleans. He was sentenced to death for presenting himself as a federal deserter, entering Confederate service under false pretenses as a member of the Engineer Corps, and collecting information about Confederate defenses and fortifications to deliver to the enemy. He was hanged at Camp Lee on September 25, but Lizzie did not attend, out of fear that her anguish would betray her true sympathies. She read a lengthy account of his final hours in the Examiner the next day in the seclusion of the library, trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She herself had delivered to the Union more valuable information than Mrs. Allen and perhaps almost as much as Mr. Kellogg. If she wanted to preserve her life, she had to make sure she was never caught. That was all, and that was everything.

  The Confederate army, desperately short of soldiers and supplies, used the draft to acquire more men and impressment to obtain food and other necessities. By law the military was required to pay a fair price for whatever they confiscated, but their agents usually neglected to compensate civilians adequately. Often too the goods taken were impossible to replace, so even if the market rate had been offered, the loss would still be very keenly felt.

  Such was the case with horses. Warhorses and beasts of burden were just as vulnerable to shrapnel and bullets as their riders and drivers, and army grooms were often sent through the city to seize every horse in fine fettle they could put into a harness and reins. During raids or panics, Lizzie had seen the army handlers take horses off the street from bread carts and country wagons hauling produce to market, even though officials had vehemently declared that they would not resort to such measures. Often there was not a horse to be seen on the streets except for those in the government employ. Twice Lizzie and her mother had been obliged to pay an enormous sum, enough for the army to purchase a substitute, to exempt their horse from impressment, but healthy horses eventually became so scarce that the government refused to renew their protection papers.

  They could not sacrifice their horse to the Confederate cause, not when they were so fond of him and needed him for their service to the Union. A clerk in the quartermaster’s office whose friendship Lizzie had bought with precious Union silver dollars gave the Van Lews advance notice whenever a sweep was scheduled, so they first tried hiding their horse in the smokehouse, but his whinnies as he sniffed the air were so loud that it was only a matter of time before he would be overheard and discovered. Lizzie and her mother decided that their horse was more valuable than their floors, so they spread a thick blanket of straw upon the study floor and spirited the stallion inside.

  “It is not unlike preparing a room for General McClellan or Meade,” Lizzie reflected as she and her mother stood in the doorway inspecting their work.

  “No,” said her mother. “Not quite.”

  Lizzie went to the horse, stroked his flank, and patted him on the neck. “Well, old boy,” she said, “you may be unaware that Mr
. Edgar Allan Poe recited terrifying stories in this room. The ‘Swedish Nightingale,’ Miss Jenny Lind, sang in this room. I know it’s not your comfortable stable, but I hope you will appreciate its storied history and make the best of it.”

  Their horse seemed to accept his new surroundings at once, either because he was impressed to learn of its illustrious visitors, or, more likely, because he was relieved to be away from the scent of smoked meat. Each time they were obliged to return him to his hiding place, he behaved as though he thoroughly understood matters, never stamping loud enough to be heard, nickering softly but never neighing.

  He was in his sanctum, as Lizzie had dubbed it, on a day in late October when a knock sounded on the front door. They were not expecting company, so Lizzie made sure the sanctum door was shut tight before hurrying to the parlor to await the caller. But when William appeared, he was alone, and his expression was guardedly curious. “It’s a woman from the country,” he said. “She wouldn’t give her name, but she says she has a letter for you. I asked her to wait in the foyer.”

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon, hardly the hour for villains to be skulking, so curiosity compelled Lizzie to follow William back to the front door. There stood a short, round woman with chapped hands and sunburned cheeks despite her deep bonnet, and she squinted as she looked about with great interest.

  “Good afternoon,” Lizzie greeted her.

  The woman peered up at her quizzically. “Are you Miss Van Lew?”

  “I am indeed.” Lizzie waited for the woman to give her name, but when she merely grinned, revealing a missing front tooth, she prompted, “And who might you be?”

  “Oh, I’m nobody. Just a friend.”

  Lizzie managed a polite smile. “It’s impossible to be both. My friends are certainly not nobodies to me.”

  The woman chuckled. “He said you were clever.” She reached into her apron pocket and brought out a piece of paper, folded and sealed. “This is for you.”

  Evidently it was, for it had her name written upon it. “He?” she echoed as she broke the seal and unfolded the page. The woman merely smiled and shrugged, so Lizzie began to read—­and her heart began to thud in her chest as she discovered a scrawled request for information regarding the provender and stores in Richmond and where the sick of the hospitals were being taken. The signature identified the author as a Union general, but Lizzie did not recognize the name.

  Lizzie’s thoughts flew to Billy Dockery, the young soldier who had turned up at her home claiming to be a courier. “What is the meaning of this?” she cried, feigning horror and surprise as she pressed the incriminating paper into the woman’s hands. “Why on earth would any general of any army anywhere believe I could supply him with information of this nature? And even if I could, how dare he believe that I would?”

  The woman blinked at her. “I thought you said you was Miss Van Lew.”

  “I am, which is why I am appalled that anyone would question my allegiance to the Confederacy.”

  The woman looked at the paper in her hand, read the name, and then squinted quizzically up at Lizzie. “You mean you don’t want it?”

  Lizzie wanted to fling it in the fire and send the woman away with all speed. The letter could be legitimate, or it could be the tempting bait lying in a trap ready to be sprung. “I don’t know the person who wrote this letter, and its content is treasonous, so I want absolutely nothing to do with it or him.”

  “All right, Ma’am, you don’t have to shout.” Frowning, the woman folded the letter and began to put it away.

  “Wait.” Lizzie snatched it from her hand, vigorously tore it up, and tucked the pieces into her pocket. “Now there can be no danger to either of us. Do you know the man who gave that letter to you?”

  “No, but the silver he paid me spoke well of him.”

  Lizzie shook her head, amazed at the woman’s bravado. “Do you know what a great risk you took in bringing this to me?”

  The woman drew herself up, indignant. “I wouldn’t have been found out. I’d like to see any one try to put their hand in my pocket.”

  “Yes, you’re quite intimidating. Who would risk it?” Lizzie nodded to William, who promptly came forward to show the strange little woman out. “If anyone asks you how I received the letter, you be sure to tell them.”

  Alone again, feeling faint, she returned to the parlor and sank into a chair. Was it a trap as she feared, or a hapless but genuine overture from a Union general who, for some reason, had been unable to find a better messenger?

  Lizzie brooded over the strange encounter for several days, wondering if she had narrowly evaded entrapment or had rejected a request from the very men whom she had been risking her life to help for more than two years. She knew that she could not recklessly put her faith in every stranger who appeared at her door—­Billy Dockery had taught her that—­and yet, if the United States had finally decided to recruit agents from among Richmond’s Unionists instead of sending Northerners to infiltrate the South, she wanted to help. With all her heart, she wanted to help.

  She could not trust strangers who showed up uninvited at her door claiming to carry letters for Union generals, but she could send a trusted envoy to deliver her message to a Union general—­and she knew just the one.

  Union major general Benjamin Butler had already become notorious throughout the South long before he was appointed commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina. Indeed, from the way Southerners’ lips curled when they snarled his name, it was quite possible that he was the man most despised by the entire Confederacy.

  He had given the rebels ample reason to loathe him. In May 1861, as commander of Fort Monroe on the Virginia coast near Washington City, General Butler had declared three runaway slaves who had fled to Union lines to be “contraband of war,” and had refused to return them to their masters. His actions prompted the United States Congress to pass the Confiscation Act in August 1861, which authorized the Union Army to take slaves laboring for the Confederacy and put them to work for the Union military instead. Outraged Southerners considered this a repudiation of the rules of civilized warfare and vowed to retaliate.

  Then, in April of 1862, General Butler was appointed commander of the Union forces occupying New Orleans. He immediately acted to suppress insurgency, arresting the mayor and his associates, refusing to release paroled prisoners, and ordering the execution of a man who had torn down a United States flag. For the most part, the men of New Orleans sullenly acquiesced to the new order, but the ladies remained ardent Confederates to the end, rallying to the cause of making their occupiers’ sojourn in their fair city as miserable as possible. The ladies of New Orleans shrieked and spat at Union soldiers in the streets, avoided them for fear of contamination, and occasionally emptied chamber pots upon them from upstairs balconies as they passed on the sidewalks below. Exasperated by their persistent insolence, in May of 1862 General Butler had issued Order No. 28, his soon-­to-­be infamous “Woman Order” that proclaimed that any Confederate woman who by word, gesture, or movement insulted Union soldiers would be treated as a woman of the town plying her nefarious avocation. Not even the most defiant secessionist lady wanted to be arrested as a prostitute, and so the torment of Union soldiers had subsided even as the reprehensible insult against the honor of Southern womanhood provoked the wrath of the Southern people. Jefferson Davis had declared that General Butler’s actions rendered him an enemy of mankind deserving of capital punishment, and a ten-­thousand-­dollar reward was offered for his head. So reviled was General Butler that it was deemed a particular insult when he was placed in charge of the extensive portion of eastern Virginia occupied by the Union—­and was made responsible for directing the Army of the James in its campaign to capture Richmond.

  It was this man, the most loathed Yankee in the Union, to whom Lizzie intended to offer her services.

  Chapter Seventeen


  * * *

  DECEMBER 1863-JANUARY 1864

  A

  t the end of November, the Richmond Sentinel reported that there were 16,411 Union prisoners remaining in Richmond. Lizzie and her Unionist friends were determined to free as many as they possibly could before winter set in and travel became too hazardous—­although conditions in the prisons and on Belle Isle were so heinous that many men would rather risk frostbite and execution than endure another week as a guest of the Confederacy.

  Sometimes prisoners seized a sudden opportunity to flee—­a door left ajar, a guard dozing at his post—­and found their way to the Van Lew mansion or another friendly haven thanks to whispered instructions from Mr. Ford or Lieutenant Ross. When such opportunities did not present themselves as often as Lizzie desired, she enlisted the help of her friends to move things along.

  In early December, an assistant surgeon with the First Wisconsin Infantry named John R. McCullough was sent to the hospital of Libby Prison for a minor affliction. On one of her visits, Lizzie noted that except for his illness, from which he was recovering quickly, Dr. McCullough was otherwise hale and hearty, more able than any other patient on the ward to endure the rigors of hard travel. After discussing his case with her Unionist friends, Lizzie decided to arrange his escape, if he dared risk it.

  When Lizzie next returned to the prison hospital, she brought in her basket of delicacies the usual breads and soups and custards, as well as books and paper and pencils for letter writing. She distributed these to the men, but she reserved a small bag of tobacco for Dr. McCullough. “I hope this is to your liking, but there’s not enough to share,” she said, smiling as she handed him the bag and strolled away. Inside he would find a note: “Would you be free? Then be prepared to act. Meet me in the surgery at ten a.m.”