Greenhow was now in her midforties, but she still possessed the power to turn men’s heads. She had a voluptuous body, commented one man, with “black eyes, an olive complexion, firm teeth, and small hands and feet. Her carriage was graceful and dignified, her enunciation too distinct to be natural, and her manners bordering on the theatrical.” Despite her pretentious mannerisms, Greenhow found few men strong enough to resist her charms, although one who did—barely—was Colonel Erasmus Darwin Keyes, military secretary to Major General Winfield Scott, chief of the Union army. At a dinner party shortly after the outbreak of war, Keyes found himself sitting next to the shimmering Greenhow. Later he recalled how “after expiating on the injustice of the North, [she] tried to persuade me not to take part in the war.” A flushed Keyes managed to extricate himself but confessed Greenhow was “the most persuasive woman that was ever known in Washington.”
Greenhow never bothered to conceal her contempt for the North, nor her disdain for Abraham Lincoln, a man she disparaged as a “beanpole.” At a dinner party in the autumn of 1860 she had told her guests, among them Senator William Seward and Congressman Charles Adams, that John Brown “was a traitor and met a traitor’s doom.” But she refused to follow many of her secessionist-supporting friends south when war broke out, preferring instead to remain in Washington and let the Confederacy come to her. It did, in the handsome guise of Captain Thomas Jordan, erstwhile quartermaster of the U.S. Army, who was on the brink of deserting to the rebel cause. Before he fled Washington, however, Jordan visited Rose and, in between alleged amorous encounters in Greenhow’s boudoir, asked if she would be prepared to run a network of Confederate spies.
Greenhow readily agreed and began to learn the craftwork of a spy. Jordan taught her a cipher code and how to conceal messages; between them they recruited other rebels to the network, and on May 21 Jordan reckoned her to be ready. He left Washington and headed to the Confederate camp at Manassas Junction, thirty miles south of the capital.
Six weeks later, on July 9, Greenhow sent a coded message to the Confederates. It was concealed in the chignon hair of sixteen-year-old Bettie Duval, one of Greenhow’s couriers, and when decoded it read: “McDowell has certainly been ordered to advance on the sixteenth. ROG.” It was confirmation that Brigadier General Irvin McDowell planned to lead his Union troops south in one week’s time to attack the rebels at Manassas, a decision that the general had made a fortnight earlier.
That at least was how Greenhow remembered it in her memoirs, published a couple of years later, but self-aggrandizement came as naturally to Greenhow as flirting. Without doubt Greenhow did send a message to General Pierre Beauregard at the headquarters of the Confederate Army of the Potomac warning him that the Union army was about to march south, but no evidence exists to validate her claim that she predicted the exact date. Indeed, Beauregard later said of Manassas that while he had been informed of the Federal army’s main purpose, he knew nothing of their plans, confirmation that the Confederates knew an attack was imminent but they didn’t know when.
Greenhow sent another message on July 16, this one giving the route McDowell’s army would take, as well as its strength. Fifty-five thousand men were marching south, according to Greenhow, a wildly inaccurate overestimation. McDowell had thirty thousand men. When Beauregard received the message late on July 16, he didn’t telegraph Richmond pleading for immediate reinforcements; instead he waited for the reports from his scouts who earlier in the day had tracked the progress of the Union vanguard. Only on the next day, July 17, did Beauregard cable Richmond to ask for more men, and that wasn’t because of Greenhow’s message; it was because General Milledge Bonham had begun to pull back from Fairfax as the Union army got ever closer.
Nonetheless a few days after the Battle of Manassas, Greenhow received a coded message from Captain Jordan: “Our President and our General direct me to thank you. We rely upon you for further information. The Confederacy owes you a debt. Jordan, Adjutant-General.”
The praise was excessive, though Greenhow did deserve some of it for her message of July 9, warning of an impending attack, had galvanized Beauregard into action after weeks of frustrating inactivity. For that she merited gratitude.
Greenhow was euphoric at the presidential endorsement. She felt she was where she liked to be—the center of attention, a celebrity who had earned the thanks of the president. She became addicted to her new role, sending nearly a dozen messages in the next month and recruiting more informers to her spy ring. But Greenhow was becoming indiscreet—or perhaps she believed herself, with all her connections, untouchable. Hubris replaced caution, and by the second half of August the attention came not from her admirers but from her enemies.
Allan Pinkerton heard the name Rose Greenhow from Thomas A. Scott, assistant secretary of war, who had summoned the detective to his office. Pinkerton was told that her “movements had excited suspicion and … it was believed [she] was engaged in corresponding with the rebel authorities and furnishing them with much valuable information.” Once Pinkerton had his orders he returned to his headquarters on E Street, near the post office, and informed three of his most discreet men that he had a mission for them. The men were William Scott, Pryce Lewis and Sam Bridgeman.
Lewis and Bridgeman had only been in Washington a few days, but in that short space of time Lewis had seen how Pinkerton’s “natural shrewdness, experience and patriotic zeal made him wholly fitted” for his role of spy catcher. Lewis himself was more committed now to military espionage. There had been a time in Jackson when he’d considered quitting the agency and enlisting in the Northern army, a reaction provoked by the feeling he was loafing while others were fighting. But his mission to Charleston had “induced me to remain in a service which I now regarded not inferior to the military service in importance to the country.”
Greenhow claimed later that she knew she had been under surveillance for several weeks, and “this was a subject of amusement to me.” In fact she had no idea. Pinkerton moved swiftly to bring an end to a woman he viewed as a Southern succubus. A few hours after his meeting with Scott, Pinkerton and his three men were standing in the shadows opposite the Greenhow residence, their collars turned up against the driving rain as they observed a “two-storey and basement brick building, the parlors of which were elevated several feet above the ground, and [the] entrance was obtained by ascending a flight of stairs in the center.”*
Pinkerton crept up to the house for a closer look while Lewis and his accomplices “remained a little distance across the street and watched his movements as best we could in the feeble light of the street lamps.” For a few moments Pinkerton sheltered behind a large tree in front of the house, then he tiptoed forward and jumped noiselessly from the sidewalk to the outside of the basement. He skirted the house, ducking under the stoop upon which were the dozen or so steps that led to the front door, but found the windows were closed and there was no sign of life inside the house.
Pinkerton returned to his men and told them it appeared Mrs. Greenhow wasn’t at home. Nevertheless they decided to hang around a while longer. They were now “drenched to the skin,” but the storm had at least emptied the streets of passersby. Suddenly they saw one of the ground-floor windows at the side of the house edged in light. Pinkerton and Scott stole forward, while Lewis and Bridgeman were told to “stand under a tree and to watch and notify [Pinkerton] if any one left the house.”
In a few minutes they heard the brisk click of footsteps approaching the house. Lewis and Bridgeman shrank behind the thick trunk of the tree and watched a man in military uniform bound up the steps and disappear inside the house. Lewis padded silently through the rain and told Pinkerton, who climbed onto the shoulders of Scott and peered through the shuttered window. He got a glimpse of the uniform, just a fleeting glimpse, but enough to identify its wearer as a Union captain.
Sheltering under the stoop of the house, Pinkerton whispered what they would do when the captain reemerged: he and Scott would tail hi
m, while Lewis and Bridgeman resumed their position by the tree. They heard the front door open an hour later, followed by farewell words and “something that sounded very much like a kiss.” The man descended the steps and walked off along the sidewalk. Pinkerton and Scott climbed up from their hiding place and set off in pursuit.
Lewis and Bridgeman remained behind the tree for the rest of the night, cursing the thick drops of rain that fell from the leaves onto their heads. When Lewis finally got to bed he slept until after lunch, arriving at Pinkerton’s office in the early afternoon. The “Old Man,” as they called the boss, beckoned him into his office and regaled Lewis with an account of what had unfolded after they’d set off after the officer.
Pinkerton and Scott had tracked him as far as Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street. They’d seen him glance back once or twice, but thought nothing of it, until the moment the man disappeared into a doorway. They followed him but were suddenly confronted by four armed soldiers. It transpired that Greenhow’s visitor was Captain John Elwood, the officer in charge of a provost marshal station. Pinkerton could see the funny side now, though he hadn’t a few hours earlier when he and Scott sat shivering in a cell. Fortunately, said Pinkerton, he contrived to have a note sent to Assistant Secretary of War Scott, who authorized their release.
Pinkerton would like to have arrested Elwood, but first he needed ironclad proof of treachery. At the moment the officer had committed no crime, other than to visit the house of a known Southern sympathizer. But if enjoying the charms of Rose Greenhow was an arrestable offense, the prisons of Washington would be full to bursting with officers and dignitaries. What Pinkerton did have, however, was suspicion enough to order a search of the Greenhow residence.
Two days later, on Friday, August 23, Greenhow was relaxing in her parlor after a promenade with a “distinguished member of the diplomatic corps” when the doorbell rang. A servant opened the door, and Pinkerton and William Scott barged in. Pryce Lewis followed a few seconds later and caught sight of “a beautiful woman … a brunette richly dressed.” Greenhow demanded to see a warrant. Pinkerton shook his head and sneered that he had “verbal authority from the War and State Departments” and that was all he needed.
Other detectives now arrived, and Pinkerton ordered them to search every room of the house. Then he turned to Lewis and told him “to take charge of this lady, detain her in the parlor.” Lewis motioned for Greenhow to resume her place in the parlor. She did as she was told “for I knew that the fate of some of the best and bravest belonging to our cause hung upon my own coolness and courage.”
While Pinkerton and his detectives rummaged indelicately through Greenhow’s possessions, Lewis and the lady of the house sat in the parlor and “conversed on impersonal subjects.” He could see that she “was evidently taken by surprise though … she strove to hide any signs of excitement.” In Greenhow’s version of events, however, she bristled with defiance, even though there were “stern eyes fixed upon my face.” At first Greenhow was “careless and sarcastic and, I know, tantalizing in the extreme” in her conversation with Lewis. Then she changed tack and “resolved to test the truth of the old saying that the devil is no match for a clever woman.” Lewis had all but given up on trying to be civil to Greenhow when “she asked in such a winning way if she could go upstairs for a few minutes.” Yes, replied Lewis, though he added, “it was my imperative duty to go with her.” With a swish of her skirt, Greenhow flounced out of the parlor and climbed the stairs, with Lewis close behind. Once inside a “large, well-lighted room, she went directly to the mantelpiece [and] snatched a revolver from it.” Greenhow wheeled around, the gun pointing at Lewis and her eyes flaming with contempt: “If I had known who you were when you came in,” she snickered, “I would have shot you dead!”
Lewis stood before the barrel of the gun, silent and expressionless, his eyes fixed on Greenhow. Then he smiled and politely remarked that “the revolver had to be cocked before it would go off.” One of Pinkerton’s men, Paul Dennis, appeared in the room and disarmed Greenhow without a fuss. It was clear to Lewis that “she was not so desperate as she talked.”
By the time the search was over, Pinkerton had unearthed a treasure trove of incriminating information, as well as letters of a more salacious hue. Among the evidence that damned Greenhow as a spy were reams of notes about the Union fortifications in and around Washington, copies of orders issued by the War Department and messages in cipher, some of which were in a stove waiting to be burned. There were names, too, lots of names, of men and women in thrall to Greenhow, either because they believed in the righteous cause of the Confederacy or because they believed her to be a paramour par excellence.
Among those implicated in the network of spies were Colonel Thompson, a lawyer; a society dentist named Dr. Van Camp; William T. Smithson, a banker; and a former clerk of the Department of the Interior named George Donellan.
Pinkerton left to report to the War Department, having instructed his men to remain inside the house and prevent anyone from leaving. In addition, they were to arrest all visitors to the residence. Lewis sat and listened as Greenhow “compared herself to Marie Antoinette.” At other times she cast herself as Mary, Queen of Scots. For hours they were subjected to Greenhow’s hauteur; she accused them of lacking personal hygiene; she upbraided them for sitting in shirtsleeves at her kitchen table; she accused them of being slaves of Lincoln, “the Abolition despot.”
Lewis answered back, to the surprise of Greenhow, who wasn’t used to male impertinence. Later she claimed that her guards had been all brutes—and drunken ones at that—but “two of the most insolent of these men [were] an Englishman named Lewis, and an Irishman named [John] Scully.” Doubtless, Lewis and Greenhow did exchange strong words, but Greenhow had a habit of exaggeration, or sometimes plain mendacity. She described Allan Pinkerton, the dourest of dour Scots, as “a German Jew, and possessed [of] all the national instincts of his race.”
In the days that followed, Pinkerton’s men pulled in the people implicated in the spy network. The day after Greenhow’s arrest, it was the turn of Eugenia Phillips, “a beautiful and clever Jewess,” and her husband, Philip Phillips, a former Alabaman congressman, who lived on I Street between Seventeenth and Eighteenth. Six days later Mr. Phillips was released without charge, but his wife, his sister-in-law, Martha Levy, and his two grown-up daughters, Fannie and Caroline, were removed to the house on the corner of K Street and Sixteenth Street West.
The women were confined in various rooms throughout the house. Initially they amused themselves by singing rebel songs about the imminent arrival in Washington of General Beauregard and his men or by scrawling defiant messages on the wall. But soon their bravado waned in the monotony of captivity, and their spirits “sunk down into a quiet gloom.” Eugenia Phillips tried to rally her daughters, urging them to be strong so they could “live to plague mankind a little more … in the hope of seeing a few of these detectives hung.”
Downstairs Pryce Lewis was enduring his own gloom as a guard of Fort Greenhow. This was not the sort of war he had envisioned, particularly after the adventure of Charleston. He was daily in “a war of words” with the prisoners, and one evening “had been severely scolded for lighting and using the gas in the parlor to read by.” There had been screams and stamps, but Lewis had “insisted upon our privileges” and continued his book.
On the evening of Saturday, September 7, Lewis was on guard when there was a knock at the front door. Two distinguished-looking gentlemen were outside, one of whom “presented a pass signed by Secretary of War [Simon] Cameron,” while the other explained they had come to see Rose Greenhow and Eugenia Phillips. Without bothering to examine the pass, Lewis stepped aside and allowed the men upstairs.
The men were Colonel Thomas Key, an aide-de-camp to General McClellan, and Edwin Stanton, the attorney general during the Buchanan administration and now a legal adviser working for Simon Cameron. (Stanton replaced Simon Cameron as secretary of war on Januar
y 15, 1862.) Stanton knew Greenhow and Phillips, and had been asked to check on their condition by the latter’s husband.
Stanton greeted Greenhow with a quip, wondering what she had done to “bring down the wrath of the abolitionists on your head?” Greenhow didn’t find it funny. She urged him to help free them from this intolerable predicament, but Stanton gave only a vague promise to see what he could do. While the colonel continued to talk to the women, Stanton went downstairs and accused Lewis of mistreating his prisoners
Lewis lowered his book and eyed the “stout, long-whiskered man with an air of authority.” Stanton pressed his point, saying he found it “very strange that the government employ such men to guard a lady’s house.”
Lewis’s temper snapped at the “cool insolence” of the man before him, and he demanded to see again Stanton’s pass. Stanton fished it from his pocket and handed it to Lewis, who examined the pass and exclaimed that it gave neither him nor his colleague authorization to see Greenhow. Lewis ordered Stanton and Colonel Key to leave the house, and as the former departed he promised vengeance. A few days later Lewis was told by Pinkerton that Stanton had “lodged a complaint against me in the war department.” But don’t worry, Pinkerton added, the charge had been dismissed.*
*A sketch of the house published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on September 14, 1861, depicted Greenhow’s house with a basement and three stories.
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