Spy of Richmond

by Jocelyn Green

  “Yes,” she whispered through her tears, and he wiped them away with his thumbs. As Sophie gave her lips to the only man she ever wanted, North and South fell away.

  Chicago, Illinois

  Friday, September 20, 1889

  Four tickets, please.”

  “That’ll be two dollars.”

  Bella Jamison watched in wonder as Harrison paid money to get back inside Libby Prison. The building had been dismantled in Richmond brick by brick and timber by timber, carefully catalogued, and reconstructed here on Chicago’s Wabash Street as the Libby Prison War Museum. Even as the brass band outside hailed its grand opening, a shudder passed through Bella as a quarter of a century peeled away. One glance at Sophie Caldwell, beside her, suggested she felt the same way.

  Abraham stood tall next to Bella, still striking in his Union blue uniform though grey frosted his hair. Bella could only guess at the riot of emotion and memory unleashing inside him. He’d been a soldier, a prisoner, and a slave during the course of the war. Now, not only was he both veteran and victor, but he was a full citizen of the United States. The service of U. S. Colored Troops must have helped convince Congress to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment granting blacks citizenship.

  Returning from the ticket booth, Harrison handed tickets to each of them, and to Sophie and Bella, colorful booklets with Libby Prison War Museum Catalogue splashed across their covers. “One for each couple. There. Do we look like proper tourists now?” Faint lines fanned from the corners of his eyes, and Bella marveled that this man, both hardened and softened by war, was the ambitious scalawag of a reporter she’d first met in Gettysburg. A lifetime ago. She was sixty years old now, and Abraham sixty-five. She ached with arthritis, and Abraham suffered rheumatism, but they still had each other, and more.

  Silas’s mother had moved into Liberty Inn as a southern refugee after Atlanta fell. After she died a few years ago, Abraham and Bella sold their Washington Street home and moved into Liberty Inn, surrounded by Liberty and Silas and their four beautiful girls.

  “After you.” With one arm spread toward the doorway, Harrison rested his other hand on the small of Sophie’s back just above her navy satin bustle and nodded to Abraham. Enveloping Bella’s hand in his, Abraham led them into the Prisoners Reception Room, the Caldwells filing in behind them.

  As the group shuffled with the crowd throughout the first floor, Bella bent over relic after relic from the war. Journals kept and trinkets carved from bones by various Libby inmates. Photos of emaciated Libby and Belle Isle prisoners upon their release. An 1863 recruiting poster for colored troops captioned, “Come and Join Us, Brothers.” The table upon which General Grant wrote out the terms of surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in 1865. A portion of the bloodstained pillow that held Abraham Lincoln’s head as he died, just days later. An orange and red Ku Klux Klan flag dated 1866, depicting a dragon breathing out the Latin motto Quod Semper, Quod Ubique, Quod Ab Omnibus.

  Tears stung Bella’s eyes as she tightened her grip on Abraham’s hand. So much suffering. So much hatred still poisoning the nation. Shaking her head, she fixed her attention on Abraham instead, and on Sophie and Harrison, who had risked so much for others’ freedom.

  “Generations of slavery turned those folks against us.” Abraham’s voice rumbled low in his chest. “It’ll take generations more for our country to heal up. But we’re on our way now, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, Love.” Bella squeezed his calloused blacksmith hand. “Thank you.”

  “Pardon me, sir.” A black woman touched Abraham’s sleeve. “You fought for me. Thank you. Thank you for what you done. You won for me.”

  Modestly, Abraham accepted her thanks, his shoulders straightening.

  “Proud to be on your arm, you know,” Bella told him.

  A lump shifted in his throat. “I’ve always been proud you’ve been by my side. Through everything. If I never told you before.”

  Bella nodded, heart full, and thanked God once more for the family He’d set her in—and that her twin had not died in vain.

  Upstairs, in a room labeled the Chickamauga Room, Harrison’s gait slowed noticeably. He no longer peered into glass cases, but gazed at the rafters overhead. The windows. The spittle-stained planks below his polished shoes.

  Until, “There.” He pointed at a patch of floor. “That was mine.” A profound stillness settled over his face as he held his hat over his heart, his gaze fixed to the spot. Respectfully, Abraham did the same, though the black prisoners’ experience in the cellar had been left out completely from the catalogue. Bella and Sophie lowered their heads in reverence.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at? Somebody die there on that spot or somethin’?” A tow-headed boy elbowed into their circle.

  Sophie’s heart constricted as a smile cracked Harrison’s somber composure. “In a manner of speaking, my boy. Yes.” He caught Sophie’s eyes, and understanding arced between them. Libby Prison had been the place where Christine Caldwell’s prayers for her son were answered. No doubt she would have been thrilled that her grandchildren Elizabeth and Robert, now in college, were steadfast in their faith, too.

  “I beg your pardon, sir.” One of the uniformed guides approached Harrison. “Does this spot mean something to you?”

  “I slept here, if you could call it that, for two months before the breakout. Spoon style, of course. And we all flopped at once, on command.” A chuckle rumbled in his chest.

  “Do you mean—you were a prisoner here? And you escaped in the mass breakout in February 1864?”

  “I did.” He didn’t mention he helped dig the tunnels himself.

  “Splendid! An honor to have you here today, sir.” The guide pumped Harrison’s right hand. “We’re making brass plates to mark the prisoners’ spots. Would you mind terribly, if I had your name, rank, regiment, and time you were here?”

  “Harrison Caldwell, reporter, not a soldier. November 30, 1863, to February 9, 1864.”

  Both dates sent ripples down Sophie’s spine.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Sophie turned toward the voice. A cry of recognition escaped her as she grasped the hands of Dr. Caleb Lansing, and his stunning wife, Charlotte, dressed in the latest Paris fashions of Charles Worth. “I should have known you’d both come, too!”

  “Of course!” Charlotte embraced Sophie almost as tightly as she had the first time they met, at the Lansings’ wedding. Thank you, Charlotte had whispered into Sophie’s ear then. Thank you for my husband. Thank you.

  “Harrison, good fellow, how’s business in Philadelphia?” Dr. Lansing’s grey eyes glinted.

  “Chugging along, thanks to some unforgettable stories not of my own making.”

  “Such as your wife’s.” Dr. Lansing smiled at Sophie, and a blush crept up her cheeks.

  “Wait a minute.” The guide interrupted. “Harrison Caldwell, the Philadelphia publisher? And you, ma’am, can you be Sophia Caldwell? The famous author?”

  Heads turned.

  Sophie smiled. “I don’t know about ‘famous.’”

  “Yes.” Harrison draped his arm around her shoulders. “The answer is yes, she is the famous author I was only too fortunate to publish. Have you read her work?” Harrison asked the guide.

  “My wife has every one of her books, from her wartime reminiscences to her novels!” He shook Harrison’s and Sophie’s hands enthusiastically. “Say, you can settle an argument for us, Mrs. Caldwell, if you’d be so kind.”

  “What’s that?” She smiled.

  “Whatever happened to your sister, Susan, and your father, after the war ended? It wasn’t clear by the end of your reminiscences.”

  Sophie nodded. “It wasn’t clear to any of us then, either. But Susan was true to her word, and helped locate Analiese and Noah Becker some time after the war. By then, he had remarried and had settled in Iowa. Susan and my father and I went out to meet them together, and not long after that my father’s heart finally failed him. It was almost like he w
as waiting to meet Ana first.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” The guide shifted awkwardly. “And Susan? What’s her story?”

  Sophie glanced at Harrison and chuckled. “Long and somewhat complicated. But she did end up marrying Asher Blair, and they lived in the house she and I grew up in, very near his mother. I believe she’s staying out of trouble these days.”

  The guide rocked back on his heels. “Any children?”

  “No.”

  “Another great mystery solved. Splendid. My wife will be amazed I now have the missing pieces to that puzzle. You know, she has quite a collection of war stories about women—nurses, spies, soldiers. I believe you published most of them yourself, isn’t that right, Mr. Caldwell? That was quite a gamble.”

  “To publish women authors? Their stories needed to be told, and they were the only ones who could tell them right. It made perfect sense at the time. Still does.”

  “You mean you’re rich!”

  Harrison laughed. “Not by half, but we get along fine.” Portions of the publishing profits were sent to the beneficiary of the authors’ choice, from Soldiers Orphans Homes to female nursing schools to the American Missionary Association, which trained Negroes as teachers. Rachel and Emiline, former Kent household slaves, had graduated from the Hampton Normal School in Virginia, which was chartered by the AMA, and now taught their own high school classes of Negro students.

  “Sophie Caldwell?” A woman appeared at her elbow, offering her Libby Prison catalogue. “Would you sign this for me? I’d love to have your autograph!” Sophie agreed, carefully concentrated on her script, and handed the catalogue back.

  “Thank you so much! But this verse you wrote below your name. Psalm 31:24. What does it say?”

  In the span of just a few grateful heartbeats, Sophie drank in the sight of Harrison, Bella, Abraham, Dr. Lansing, and Charlotte, here in Libby Prison. Caitlin, Noah, and Analiese Becker surged in her mind’s eye as well. Sophie and Harrison would visit them in Iowa again after their brief stay here in Chicago. Her throat tightened as she considered the sum of their sacrifices, which were outweighed only by the staggering sum of their faith and courage.

  “Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.”

  Spy of Richmond grew out of my interest in the historical figure of Elizabeth Van Lew, the wealthy, Richmond-born, Philadelphia-educated woman whose love for the Union and hatred of slavery set her on a path toward espionage. US General Grant later called Miss Van Lew his most valuable spy in Richmond. Truly, she was a spy mistress, with several other lesser known men and women doing the dangerous work of gathering intelligence before feeding it to her. Sophie Kent is a fictional character, but her background, attitudes, and activities reflect those of young women in Miss Van Lew’s spy ring.

  Harrison Caldwell, and Bella and Abraham Jamison are completely fictional characters, but represent the experiences of real people in their situations. Some reporters were thrown into military prisons. Unionists were imprisoned in Castle Thunder and then put on the frontlines. A few Northern wives came to Richmond to be near their imprisoned husbands. At least one black woman, Mary Bowser (aka Mary Jane Richards), gave up her freedom to return to Richmond and spy for Elizabeth Van Lew, her former owner. Bowser served as a slave in the White House of the Confederacy. Black US soldiers fought without pay until Congress passed a law in June 1864 to give them equal pay to whites. About twenty black US troops were held in Libby’s cellar, and black slaves were put to work at Tredegar, as well as in labor battalions. The citizenship they all longed for came in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in July 1868.

  The fever-induced dyslexia Sophie suffered would not be understood until the following century. Laudanum was often taken by women to treat various ailments without knowledge of the negative effects of addiction and overdose.

  Sophie’s assistance helping Dr. Caleb Lansing escape was inspired by the historical event of fifteen-year-old Josephine Holmes doing the same for Libby prisoner John R. McCullough, assistant surgeon for the 1st Wisconsin infantry. McCullough then put General Benjamin Butler in touch with Elizabeth Van Lew, which prompted her to organize her spy network. Other characters in this novel who were actually spies in her network include: Thomas McNiven, William Rowley, Erasmus Ross, Lucy Rice, and Abby Green. Samuel Ruth had his own network of spies, which overlapped Van Lew’s, and he really did supply critical intelligence about Fort Stedman in March 1865.

  Spy of Richmond is peppered with historical events and figures. Joseph Wheelan and his book Libby Prison Breakout were an enormous help as I portrayed life for both white and black prisoners, as well as the four tunnels that were dug and the breakout itself. The Libby Chronicle was a real creation of the prisoners, and so were the classes the officers taught each other during captivity. Historical figures from Libby include the Confederate Dr. Wilkes, Warden Dick Turner, Turner’s hostler Robert Ford, clerk Erasmus Ross, “Old Ben,” “The General,” and the two chief engineers of the breakout: Colonel Thomas Rose and Major A. G. Hamilton. Two months after Colonel Rose was recaptured in February 1864, he was paroled, and served in Sherman’s army in Georgia until Atlanta fell and later sent to Tennessee. He made the military his career even after the war, and died after his retirement. His grave lies in Arlington National Cemetery. Junius Browne and Albert Richardson were real reporters from the New York Tribune who had been held at Libby for months before being transferred elsewhere.

  In chapter 16, Robert Ould’s note about Harrison Caldwell is text from a note Ould wrote to a Confederate colonel about Browne and Richardson. The scene in which Erasmus Ross inexplicably allows Abraham Jamison to escape was inspired by records of Ross doing exactly that, though for white prisoners.

  Other historical figures portrayed or mentioned in the novel are General John H. Winder, Spencer Kellogg Brown, Commissary General Northrop, Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon, Chief of the Ordnance Bureau Josiah Gorgas, Confederate President Jefferson and Varina Davis, Rebel spies Rose O’Neal Greenhow and Belle Boyd, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Confederate Prisoner Exchange Officer Robert Ould, US General Benjamin Butler, Tredegar Iron Works owner Joseph R. Anderson, and slave dealer Robert Lumpkin.

  The evacuation fires of April 2, 1865, destroyed twenty blocks of lower Richmond. An estimated twenty civilians died due to either the fires or the lawless rioting. Tredegar Iron Works, however, survived, and now houses the American Civil War Center. Visitors to Richmond may also visit Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Hollywood Cemetery, Chimborazo Medical Museum, the White House of the Confederacy, and the Museum of the Confederacy. Only a plaque marks the site of Elizabeth Van Lew’s mansion. After the war, she was shunned by most of Richmond for her pivotal role as a spy, and after serving as Postmaster of Richmond for eight years, withdrew into her home until she died in poverty in 1900. Her grave can be found in Shockoe Cemetery, along with a boulder whose bronze plate reads: Elizabeth L. Van Lew 1818—1900. She risked everything that is dear to man—friends—fortune—comfort—health—life itself—all for the one absorbing desire of her heart—that slavery might be abolished and the Union preserved. This boulder from the Capitol Hill in Boston is a tribute from Massachusetts friends.

  In the 1880s, Chicago businessmen purchased the former Libby Prison, dismantled it, shipped it by rail to Chicago, and rebuilt it with thousands of Civil War artifacts inside, including those mentioned in the epilogue. The Libby Prison War Museum opened September 20, 1889, and attracted more than 250,000 visitors during the first year, including veterans who’d once been imprisoned at Libby. The museum was razed ten years later.

  Descendants of Civil War veterans from the North and the South dedicated a plaque in 1980 at the prison site in Richmond, the only evidence that Libby Prison once stood there.

  In post–Civil War America, women of both North and South published more than ever before as their memoirs captured the public’s attention. After four long years
of hardship, women told their tales of nursing, soldiering, spying, organizing aid societies and commissions, and simply surviving the unthinkable. They were heroines behind the lines.

  Primary source material, photos, and other resources may be found at www.heroinesbehindthelines.com.

  Ash, Stephen V. The Black Experience in the Civil War South. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2013.

  Bearss, Edwin and Bryce Suderow. The Petersburg Campaign: The Western Front Battles. El Dorado Hills, California: Savas Beatie, 2014.

  Brown, Spencer Kellogg. Spencer Kellogg Brown, His Life in Kansas and His Death as a Spy, 1842–1863. New York, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.

  Carlson, Peter. Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy. New York, New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.

  Coski, Ruth Ann. The White House of the Confederacy: A Pictorial Tour. Richmond, Virginia: The Museum of the Confederacy, 2012.

  Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. Richmond, Virginia: Library of Virginia, 1999. First edition, Yale University Press, 1966.

  Furgurson, Ernest B. Ashes of Glory: Richmond at War. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

  Glazier, Willard W. The Capture, the Prison Pen, and the Escape. Hartford, Connecticut: H. E. Goodwin, 1867.

  Jones, John Beauchamp. A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1866.

  Lankford, Nelson. Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital. New York, New York: Viking, 2002.

  Lee, Richard M. General Lee’s City. McLean, Virginia: EPM Publications, Inc., 1987.

  Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutions on the Southern Home Front. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1952.