Spies in the Civil War

August 16, 2010

As Promised: Spies in the Civil War:

George Scott was an escaped slave who supplied information about troop movements and Confederate fortifications to General Benjamin F. Butler while he was in command of Fort Monroe. Fort Monroe is located at the mouth of the James River on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. While escaping from a plantation near Yorktown, George Scott had seen Confederate preparations for an attack on the fort. Despite the threat of recapture, Scott agreed to accompany a Union officer on reconnaissance missions behind Confederate lines to confirm the Confederate Army’s plans to attack the fort.

Mary Touvestre was a freed slave working in Norfolk as a housekeeper for an engineer who was working on the Confederate ironclad, the USS Merrimack. Realizing the danger this ship would pose to Union ships currently blockading Norfolk, she stole a copy of the plans and fled North to Washington, DC where she was able to convince officers at the Department of the Navy to speed up their construction of the USS Monitor.

Robert Smalls: Intelligence about Confederate formation gathered by Robert Smalls was considered so significant that the Secretary of the Department of the Navy described it in detail to President Lincoln in the Secretary's annual report. Smalls went on to become a US Congressman, but he may be best known for his successful escape from Charlestown, South Carolina. Smalls gathered his family, and other black American crewmen, then sailed the armed Confederate coastal patrol ship, the Planter, out of Charleston harbor after the captain and two mates had gone home. Smalls posed as the Captain on May 12, 1862 and was able to provide the correct countersigns to all of the harbor defenses.

Did you know? Union Soldiers who were prisoners of war in Richmond Virginia sent coded messages by placing pin pricks beneath words in the novels they were allowed to read.

Next Post: How Treasury Warrants helped settle the West.