The Secret War Within America's Civil War

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Intelligence: The Secret War Within America's Civil War
By Eric Ethier

It was early April 1862, and a partially filled yellowish balloon was drifting just above the treetops outside Yorktown on the Virginia Peninsula. Leaning out of the basket dangling below was Union Major General Fitz John Porter—who was, for the moment, ignoring the fact that the balloon was completely out of control. Balancing his looking glass on the basket's edge, Porter peered down at Confederate positions over which the wobbly bladder conveniently passed. Eventually the balloon veered back over Union lines, and Porter brought the contraption crashing down safely onto a tent (which was fortunately empty), to the cheers of Army aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe and a host of giddy Federals.

Balloon reconnaissance was just one of an assortment of intelligence-gathering methods employed by Civil War armies. Porter's was one of a half-dozen of the octopuslike creations used by Maj. Gen. George McClellan, who was better known for his employment of Allan Pinkerton's spies—and for his misuse of the information they provided during his Peninsula campaign. The Confederate Army also launched a couple of rudimentary airships before ditching the idea. By late 1863, the ever-present threats of foul weather and enemy artillery fire had combined to end the brief career of Civil War balloons.

In the absence of organized intelligence-gathering bodies, information-hungry commanders counted on tried and true sources such as prisoners, deserters, newspapers—especially Northern papers whose editors and reporters often valued their exclusive "scoop" above the national good—and the civilian network. Pondering a move to Richmond from Gordonsville, Va., in June 1862, for instance, "Stonewall" Jackson sought to clarify a rumor of Yankee troops approaching from the Rapidan River.

"The chief mode adopted was characteristic," Lt. Gen. D.H. Hill later wrote, "it was to send out by night an intelligent private citizen, thoroughly acquainted with the Rapidan people and country, as his scout. This gentleman came back, after thorough inquiry, with the news that the rumor was unfounded."

Federal troops, too, picked up enemy secrets in Unionist or occupied territory, often from slaves and free blacks. A Virginia slave, for instance, told at least one Union officer ahead of time that Confederate forces would evacuate Yorktown, which they did on May 3, 1862. Fighting for most of the war in territory populated by citizens loyal to their cause, however, naturally gave Southern armies the edge in mining local news.

Southern intelligence further benefited from more effective use of scouts, cavalry and guerrilla units such as Colonel John Mosby's Partisan Rangers, who excelled at unearthing Federal secrets through direct observation, the capture of baggage trains (which sometimes yielded officers' personal papers) or by waylaying Federal couriers. The undercover work of scouts and spies, of course, was not fail-safe—a fact that Robert E. Lee discovered in Union-friendly western Maryland.

With no end to the war in sight, the military information game diversified. Signal towers were used increasingly as intelligence posts—which aided Union forces armed with the key to Confederate signals. And while spies worked for each side, the more celebrated moles, such as Elizabeth Van Lew and Rose Greenhow, were less valuable in the long run than the anonymous agents and "false deserters" groomed by the North and South and dispatched to relay false information.

Finally in 1863 an official Federal intelligence unit emerged amid Joseph Hooker's reorganization of the Army of the Potomac. Largely obscured by Hooker's more visible changes (such as the creation of the Union Cavalry Corps) and his abrupt departure, the Army's Bureau of Military Information was the first organized Federal unit dedicated to the gathering and analysis of intelligence. With the aid of a handful of full-time agents and civilian informants, paid out of the War Department's "Secret Service" fund, Hooker successfully discovered and exploited a gap in Lee's Fredericksburg lines that allowed him to suddenly threaten the Army of Northern Virginia from the rear in May 1863.

Of course, intelligence meant nothing if it was not used in a timely manner, a fact that was illustrated at Fredericksburg on the morning of December 13, 1862. Hours before that Federal disaster, a captured Rebel offered Hooker (then in corps command) and Maj. Gen. Edwin Sumner "full information of the position and defenses of the enemy." Ambrose Burnside, the army's commander, chose not to change his battle plan—and the rest is history.
http://www.historynet.com/intelligence-the-secret-war-within-americas-civil-war.htm
 
Intelligence: The Secret War Within America's Civil War
By Eric Ethier

It was early April 1862, and a partially filled yellowish balloon was drifting just above the treetops outside Yorktown on the Virginia Peninsula. Leaning out of the basket dangling below was Union Major General Fitz John Porter—who was, for the moment, ignoring the fact that the balloon was completely out of control. Balancing his looking glass on the basket's edge, Porter peered down at Confederate positions over which the wobbly bladder conveniently passed. Eventually the balloon veered back over Union lines, and Porter brought the contraption crashing down safely onto a tent (which was fortunately empty), to the cheers of Army aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe and a host of giddy Federals.

Balloon reconnaissance was just one of an assortment of intelligence-gathering methods employed by Civil War armies. Porter's was one of a half-dozen of the octopuslike creations used by Maj. Gen. George McClellan, who was better known for his employment of Allan Pinkerton's spies—and for his misuse of the information they provided during his Peninsula campaign. The Confederate Army also launched a couple of rudimentary airships before ditching the idea. By late 1863, the ever-present threats of foul weather and enemy artillery fire had combined to end the brief career of Civil War balloons.

In the absence of organized intelligence-gathering bodies, information-hungry commanders counted on tried and true sources such as prisoners, deserters, newspapers—especially Northern papers whose editors and reporters often valued their exclusive "scoop" above the national good—and the civilian network. Pondering a move to Richmond from Gordonsville, Va., in June 1862, for instance, "Stonewall" Jackson sought to clarify a rumor of Yankee troops approaching from the Rapidan River.

"The chief mode adopted was characteristic," Lt. Gen. D.H. Hill later wrote, "it was to send out by night an intelligent private citizen, thoroughly acquainted with the Rapidan people and country, as his scout. This gentleman came back, after thorough inquiry, with the news that the rumor was unfounded."

Federal troops, too, picked up enemy secrets in Unionist or occupied territory, often from slaves and free blacks. A Virginia slave, for instance, told at least one Union officer ahead of time that Confederate forces would evacuate Yorktown, which they did on May 3, 1862. Fighting for most of the war in territory populated by citizens loyal to their cause, however, naturally gave Southern armies the edge in mining local news.

Southern intelligence further benefited from more effective use of scouts, cavalry and guerrilla units such as Colonel John Mosby's Partisan Rangers, who excelled at unearthing Federal secrets through direct observation, the capture of baggage trains (which sometimes yielded officers' personal papers) or by waylaying Federal couriers. The undercover work of scouts and spies, of course, was not fail-safe—a fact that Robert E. Lee discovered in Union-friendly western Maryland.

With no end to the war in sight, the military information game diversified. Signal towers were used increasingly as intelligence posts—which aided Union forces armed with the key to Confederate signals. And while spies worked for each side, the more celebrated moles, such as Elizabeth Van Lew and Rose Greenhow, were less valuable in the long run than the anonymous agents and "false deserters" groomed by the North and South and dispatched to relay false information.

Finally in 1863 an official Federal intelligence unit emerged amid Joseph Hooker's reorganization of the Army of the Potomac. Largely obscured by Hooker's more visible changes (such as the creation of the Union Cavalry Corps) and his abrupt departure, the Army's Bureau of Military Information was the first organized Federal unit dedicated to the gathering and analysis of intelligence. With the aid of a handful of full-time agents and civilian informants, paid out of the War Department's "Secret Service" fund, Hooker successfully discovered and exploited a gap in Lee's Fredericksburg lines that allowed him to suddenly threaten the Army of Northern Virginia from the rear in May 1863.

Of course, intelligence meant nothing if it was not used in a timely manner, a fact that was illustrated at Fredericksburg on the morning of December 13, 1862. Hours before that Federal disaster, a captured Rebel offered Hooker (then in corps command) and Maj. Gen. Edwin Sumner "full information of the position and defenses of the enemy." Ambrose Burnside, the army's commander, chose not to change his battle plan—and the rest is history.
http://www.historynet.com/intelligence-the-secret-war-within-americas-civil-war.htm[/quote]

Great post & read Ted !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Thanks for the great reading this morning. Espionage would be yet another CW 'thing' I find fascinating, which gets ridiculous-too much! The thing is, I really, really did want to be a spy 'when I grew up', true story, for years and years until ascertaining they were shot/killed/met hideous ends on a regular basis.

I've swiped probably every balloon photo I've come across ( so it's maybe 3... ) were they used very much? And wow, it seems an extremely risky enterprise, given being a large, visible target in the sky. Talk about meeting a hideous end, you'd think the other side would positively have a ball, skeet-shooting one of these out of commision, no?

Is this taking it off thread, from espionage to merely balloons? Please excuse.
 
Interesting post. In the over hyped Gettysburg special a couple of years ago, one good thing they did was a section on the Bureau of Military Intelligence.
 
The duel between Thomas Haines Dudley and James Dunwoody Bulloch is well worth the study! (It would make one heck of a good movie, too!)

A good book on Dudley's activities in England is Lincoln's Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network by David Hepburn Milton. It's not comprehensive but it's sure a good appetizer!
 
Thanks for the great reading this morning. Espionage would be yet another CW 'thing' I find fascinating, which gets ridiculous-too much! The thing is, I really, really did want to be a spy 'when I grew up', true story, for years and years until ascertaining they were shot/killed/met hideous ends on a regular basis.

I've swiped probably every balloon photo I've come across ( so it's maybe 3... ) were they used very much? And wow, it seems an extremely risky enterprise, given being a large, visible target in the sky. Talk about meeting a hideous end, you'd think the other side would positively have a ball, skeet-shooting one of these out of commision, no?

Is this taking it off thread, from espionage to merely balloons? Please excuse.

Hey I love the Civil War balloon thing myself. This is a part of the thread theme! They were true pioneers. No parachutes then either. In WWI obsevation ballons were used extensively and shot down all the time....but the balloon guys in WWI were issued parachutes (pilots were not, till the Germans began to do that very late in the war). An American fighter ace, Frank Luke, got famous as the "balloon buster" in WWI. Toasted a bunch of German balloons. He was shot down finally but survived the landing, pulled out his .45 and went down fighting. He could have put his hands up and just been taken prisoner...fascinating piece of military ballooning history. He was a rebellous and kinda troubled man. Sorta a James Dean of WWI fighter pilots. Frank Luke is buried in France. (now that is how ya get off topic....I good at that.) This is a ballooning field in history.:dance:
 
There is a lot of talk about the suspension of habeas corpus, and other liberties, by Lincoln; and perhaps relatively less attention has been paid to similar rights and liberties restriction on the Confederate side.

But this underscores the difficult security environment of the era. Loyalties were divided, and some people, in the exercise of their rights, were acting counter to the national (federal or Confederate) war effort.

Ronald Reagan often used the term, which I think has Russian origins, trust but verify. But during the CW era, the verify part might have been very hard, and rather than take chances, some innocent people might have been deprived of their rights, or worse. But a lot of spies or other "insurgents" might have retained as well.

Those were truly perilous times.

- Alan
 
http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/spy/confedsecret/confedsecret.html

The Confederate States had no such secret-service organization as was developed and used by the Federal Government during the Civil War, and yet it is probably true that, in the matter of obtaining needed military information, the Confederacy was, on the whole, better served than was the North. Of course, many uses of the Federal secret service were not necessary in the South. The Government at Washington had to face at once the tremendous problem of separating in the non-seceding States loyalty from disloyalty to the idea that the Union formed under the Constitution was a unit and could not be divided. Thousands of citizens in the North not only denied the right of the Federal Government to invade and coerce the South, but also in this belief many stood ready to aid the Confederate cause.
From such conditions as these the Southern States were practically free. They contained nothing that the North needed for the coming conflict, while the latter had much to give. The prevention of assistance to the North was not one of the problems of existence. So, while a certain class of spies and detectives for the Union and the Confederacy operated on both sides of the dividing line, the Confederacy needed none of these in its own territory. Capable devotees of the South readily volunteered for secret service within the Federal military lines or territory, while the United States Government was compelled to organize and employ several classes of spies and detectives all over the North, for the purpose of suppressing bounty-jumpers, fraudulent discharges, trade in contraband goods, and contract frauds, thus maintaining a large force which was prevented from doing any kind of secret service within the Southern lines or territory.

http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/spy/fedsecret/fedsecret.html

There was one fact that became evident with startling emphasis to the American people the moment secession was established, and this was that it was not political ties alone that had held the Union together. Financial, commercial, and domestic bonds had, in seventy years, so stretched from North to South that to divide and disrupt the social organism was a much more difficult feat to accomplish than mere political separation upon a point of Constitutional interpretation. An unparalleled state of public confusion developed in the early months of 1861, which was all the worse because there was little or no uncertainty in the individual mind. Probably every citizen of the country capable of reason had reached conviction upon the points at issue.
Not only the Government at Washington but the whole world was astounded that the new Confederacy could bring at once into the field a military force superior in numbers to the standing army of the United States. Every department at the capital was disorganized by the defection of employees whose opinions and ties bound them to the cause of the South. Legislators in both houses, cabinet officers, and judges volunteered their services in the making of the new nation. Ministers and consuls hastened from foreign countries to enter its councils or fight for its existence. Army and Navy officers left their posts and resigned their commissions for commands under another standard. The Episcopal bishop of Louisiana exchanged the surplice for the uniform and rode at the head of an army corps.
 
IIRC Grant's successful Vicksburg campaign was aided by some sort of espionage that revealed Johnston's communications to Pemberton. The result was the decisive battle of Champion Hill.

I just got, but have not yet gotten into, Warren Grabau's Ninety-Eight Days: A Geographer's View of the Vicksburg Campaign. I was flipping through it familiarizing myself with it before reading, and I stumbled across a bit at the end where he discusses some mysteries and uncertainties of the campaign; one of them was remarking on how regularly a "helpful contraband" supplied vital intelligence about local roads or Confederate dispositions. The supposition seems to be that the information provided by the supposed "contrabands" may really have been provided by a spy network of some relatively advanced state of organization, with the source of "intelligent contraband" standing in for what was in reality some good HUMINT work.
 
Found a spy picture.

03861r.jpg


Brandy Station, Va. Col. George H. Sharpe, John G. Babcock, unidentified, and Lt. Col. John McEntee, Secret Service officers at Army of the Potomac headquarters].
CREATED/PUBLISHED
1864 February.
SUMMARY
Photograph from the main eastern theater of the war, winter quarters at Brandy Station, December 1863-April 1864.
NOTES
Reference: Civil War photographs, 1861-1865/ compiled by Hirst D. Milhollen and Donald H. Mugridge, Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0245
Title from Milhollen and Mugridge.
Corresponding print is in LOT 4171.
Forms part of Selected Civil War photographs, 1861-1865 (Library of Congress)
 
I guess Secret Service members didn't mind having their picture taken back then.

00138r.jpg


[Cumberland Landing, Va. Secret Service men at Foller's House]
Gibson, James F., b. 1828, photographer.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
1862 May.
SUMMARY
Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, the Peninsular Campaign, May-August 1862.
NOTES
Reference: Civil War photographs, 1861-1865/ compiled by Hirst D. Milhollen and Donald H. Mugridge, Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0054
Title from Milhollen and Mugridge.
Corresponding print is in LOT 4172-C.
Forms part of Civil War glass negative collection (Library of Congress).
 
The Secret War for the Union is a good book on this topic, sorry do not recall author.

Secret War For the Union by Edwin Fishel is an informative and unique book. Fishel is much more of a researcher than a writer, but he provides a detailed viewpoint that is missing from many campaign studies, IMHO. Written strictly from the Union side, it covers the Eastern Theater, and is particularly good for the McClellan and Hooker era's. (wags might note a decided lack of intelligence with Burnside in command.) The Meade era is uneven, and the book peters out (I think the Authors health was failing) before the Overland Campaign.

Really interesting analysis of McClellan's "Math", Lee's Lost Order, and Chancellorsville.
 
I just got, but have not yet gotten into, Warren Grabau's Ninety-Eight Days: A Geographer's View of the Vicksburg Campaign. I was flipping through it familiarizing myself with it before reading, and I stumbled across a bit at the end where he discusses some mysteries and uncertainties of the campaign; one of them was remarking on how regularly a "helpful contraband" supplied vital intelligence about local roads or Confederate dispositions. The supposition seems to be that the information provided by the supposed "contrabands" may really have been provided by a spy network of some relatively advanced state of organization, with the source of "intelligent contraband" standing in for what was in reality some good HUMINT work.


Grabau is excellent for troop movements, detailed maps, and impact of intelligence the Union spy ring operating in Mississippi was able to provide to Grant. A good companion is Grant's Secret Service by William Feis, which covers the whole of the war, but is particularly good in detailing how crucial Union espionage was in the success of the Vicksburg Campaign.
 
http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/spy/confedsecret/confedsecret.html

The Confederate States had no such secret-service organization as was developed and used by the Federal Government during the Civil War, and yet it is probably true that, in the matter of obtaining needed military information, the Confederacy was, on the whole, better served than was the North. Of course, many uses of the Federal secret service were not necessary in the South. The Government at Washington had to face at once the tremendous problem of separating in the non-seceding States loyalty from disloyalty to the idea that the Union formed under the Constitution was a unit and could not be divided. Thousands of citizens in the North not only denied the right of the Federal Government to invade and coerce the South, but also in this belief many stood ready to aid the Confederate cause.
From such conditions as these the Southern States were practically free. They contained nothing that the North needed for the coming conflict, while the latter had much to give. The prevention of assistance to the North was not one of the problems of existence. So, while a certain class of spies and detectives for the Union and the Confederacy operated on both sides of the dividing line, the Confederacy needed none of these in its own territory. Capable devotees of the South readily volunteered for secret service within the Federal military lines or territory, while the United States Government was compelled to organize and employ several classes of spies and detectives all over the North, for the purpose of suppressing bounty-jumpers, fraudulent discharges, trade in contraband goods, and contract frauds, thus maintaining a large force which was prevented from doing any kind of secret service within the Southern lines or territory.

This seems to be more like mythologizing than a sober detailed review of activities undertaken during the war.
 
Sam Hildebrand a famous Mo CSA insurgent bragged about asking slaves for information on CSA insurgents while dressed in a Union uniform and then shooting them see the Autobiography of Samuel S Hilderbrand ed by Kirby Ross Univ of Arkansas press.

Next question is even if Union intel was not has good has the CSA's did it really matter since the Union had more troops and better equipment and logistics?
 
Next question is even if Union intel was not has good has the CSA's did it really matter since the Union had more troops and better equipment and logistics?

It might be more accurate to say, on a case by case basis in terms of intel, that sometimes one side had the upper hand and sometimes the other side had the upper hand.

As a specific example, in May 1863 during the Vicksburg Campaign, the CSA had a greater number of troops in theater, but Grant was able to use his superior intel to defeat them, and decisively so.
 
Espionage in the Civil War

by Mark C. Hageman

By the outbreak of the war, neither the Union nor the Confederacy had established a full-scale espionage system or a military intelligence network. The South, however, was already operating an embryonic spy ring out of Washington, D.C., set up late in 1860 or early in 1861 by Thomas Jordan. A former U.S. Army officer, now a Confederate colonel, Jordan foresaw the benefits of placing intelligence agents in the North's military and political nerve center.

By summer 1861, Jordan had turned the ring over to his most trusted operative, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a local widow of Southern birth. Mrs. Greenhows high station in Washington society enabled her to secure intelligence of great value to the Confederacy. Much of it reportedly came from an infatuated Suitor, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Through a ring of couriers that included a woman named Bettie Duval, Greenhow smuggled information about the southward-marching army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell to Confederate troops in the vicinity of Virginias Manassas Junction. There it was received by Colonel Jordan, now chief of staff to the local commander, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. The intelligence helped turn First Bull Run into a Confederate victory.

Two other intelligence networks in the Federal capital, both of later vintage, were supervised by cavalrymen turned spies, Capt. Thomas N. Conrad and Pvt. J. Franklin Stringfellow. These amazingly resourceful operatives were connected with the Confederacy's first organized secret-service bureau, formed in 1862 as a part of the CSA Signal Corps. The head of the bureau, Maj. William Norris, eventually coordinated the activities of dozens of espionage and counterespionage agents who operated along the "Secret Line," an underground link between Richmond and the Washington-Baltimore region. In time, Norris and his assistant, 2nd Lieut. Charles Cawood, sought to extend this network of intelligence outlets well above the Mason-Dixon line--as far north as that great base of Confederate espionage operations, Canada. As one of the most effective military intelligence establishments of the war (the other being the Union Bureau of Military Information BMI under George H. Sharpe), Norris's bureau directed espionage activity along the Potomac River, supervised the passage of agents to and from enemy lines, and forwarded dispatches from the Confederate War and State departments to contacts abroad.

Asecond Confederate secret-service unit was organized early in 1864. A prototype commando outfit, it was attached to the Torpedo Bureau of Brig. Gen. Gabriel J. Rains, but was neither as large nor as well administered as Norris agency.
The Confederacy was also served by countless private operatives. Probably the most celebrated civilian spy was Belle Boyd, who risked her life to bring intelligence to Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson during his Shendoah Valley Campaign of 1862. Less heralded was James Harrison (*), actor who late in lone 1863 rode to Gen. Robert E. Lees Pennsylvania headquarters with word that the Army of the Potomac was about to enter the Keystone State in hot pursuit. The unexpected news permitted Lee to mass his scattered army prior to Gettysburg.


Confederate spies in uniform (known as "scouts" when wearing their own army's attire, and liable to summary execution if captured in enemy garb included the cavalry raiders of the "Gray Ghost", John S. Mosby. Others served the equally daring Turner Ashby and the Marylander Harry Gilmor. Among other soldier-spies were the young Kentuckian Jerome Clarke and Sam Davis, the Tennessee farm boy who died a hero's death after refusing to reveal to his Union captors the identity of his raiding leader.

Despite the triumphs of individual spies, most large-scale Confederate espionage efforts failed. Carefully planned but ultimately unsuccessful projects included the Oct. 1864 raid on St. Albans, Vt.; the attempt the following month to burn large sections of New York City; and the Northwest Conspiracy.

The Union waited till the shooting started to take steps toward creating an espionage establishment. Its first secret-service bureau was set up in mid-1861 by Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous Chicago detective agency. While serving Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan in the Department of the Ohio during the wars first summer, Pinkerton, acting alone, penetrated the Confederacy as far as Jackson, Miss., before returning north with information on Southern war preparations. Following McClellan to Washington, Pinkerton almost single handedly broke up Greenhow's spy ring. As military intelligence experts, however, Pinkerton and his band of agents were out of their depth. In 1862, as secret-service chief for McClellan's Army of the Potomac, Pinkerton sent his employer outlandish estimates of enemy strength and dispositions, hindering rather than facilitating McClellan's operations.

The wars first double agent, Timothy Webster, regularly penetrated Southern lines, gathering intelligence in such diverse locales as Baltimore, Louisville, and Memphis, and infiltrating the militant Baltimore society of Confederate sympathizers known as the Knights of Liberty. Webster's services ended in Apr. 1862, however, when a combination of events led to his arrest and execution in Richmond.

One Union spy who made notable contributions throughout the war was Elizabeth Van Lew, a longtime resident of the Confederate capital. "Crazy Bett," as the eccentric Unionist was known to her neighbors, ran the largest and most successful spy ring concentrated in any city. Her team of operatives included a freed slave whom she placed as a servant in the Confederate White House to eavesdrop on Pres. Jefferson Davis and his visitors.

An equally infamous Union espionage leader was Brig. Gen. Lafayette C. Baker, chief of War Department detectives. As the bullyboy of Sec. of War Edwin M. Stanton, he shadowed, apprehended, interrogated, and imprisoned a multitude of Washingtonians, many on the merest suspicion of disloyalty. Though personally brave, Baker was a ruthless, unsavory character whose high-handed methods and unassailable power made him feared even by associates.

Union espionage work was advanced by dozens of lesser-known Northerners, in and out of uniform. Civilian spies and counterspies included, as in the South, numerous women--~ whose sex usually spared them the harsher consequences of their actions, if apprehended. One of the most resourceful was Sarah Emma Edmonds, who gained entrance to Confederate camps near Yorktown, Va., disguised as a black slave. Much less enterprising and successful was the actress Pauline Cushman, whose double-agent activities won her undeserved fame as the "Spy of the Cumberland." Male civilians who spied for the North included William A. Lloyd and his business associate, Thomas Boyd, who, as Southern transportation agents of long standing, were able to roam, more or less freely, to Richmond, Savannah, Chattanooga, and New Orleans--Lloyd all the while carrying his espionage contract, signed by Abraham Lincoln.

Union spies in uniform were more numerous. Probably the most noted was Maj. Henry Young of Rhode Island, whose 58-man band of scouts served Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan during the wars final year. In the Appomattox Campaign, the scouts tapped enemy telegraph wires and misdirected supply trains critically needed by Lees army. Another effective operative in uniform was Col. George H. Sharpe, who in 1864--65 ran the highly efficient military information bureau attached to Ulysses S. Grant's headquarters. One of the most publicized espionage operations was conducted by civilian agent James J. Andrews in an ambitious but failed attempt to sabotage Confederate rail lines.
http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/spy/spy.html
 
Yes, but in that photo, how do we KNOW those men are who they say they are? :smile:

Funny, you read all these stories elsewhere of both armies receiving intelligence merely via some citizen, of whom you get the impression had rushed hatless into the street to rat on the other guys " They went thataway ". I've read accounts ( specifically the book about the man who was forced into service for 13 months with the Conferderates? ) where you could get arrested as a 'spy' in the South merely by having been born in the North, but it sounds like the paranoia was equalled in the North, to be sure, with instances like Gen. Baker's rampant paranoia? Then there was also the account of that apparently individual, working-all-by-himself spy of Longstreet's, Sorrel, seemingly not held in high esteem even though he was awfully effective? I see Pinkerton was not effective but received ( or courted? ) acclaim. My point being that this whole 'intelligence' thing seems to have not been singular nor incredibly organized across the board, the word 'spy' seems to have been liberally applied.

In one of the audio books ( please excuse lack of title, took it off the Kindle to make room for the Century mag. 51 hours ), on prison escapes and missions, it must have been the above mentioned Major Young's people who are described in one of their forays disrupting train functions in the South. Gosh it's good, if anyone is interested in a first-hand account given by one of the men engaged on these missions.

PLEASE excuse off topic to Mr. Doug Mckay- I'd post a photo but even I know it's inappropriate. Buildings in Serbia circa WWI with the corners blown up. My grgrandfather ( son of Morris Jolley, 126th OVI :smile: ) was a doc ( think MASH ) , sent there. A form of entertainment? Going to watch the pilots bomb the city, which he describes in his journal as said pilot putting bomb in his lap, taking off in teeny, snub-nosed bi-plane, and tossing it over board by hand when seeing the desired building. Observer/spy/look-out/buddy standing up ON front of plane I suppose directing mission, also holding gun. Photo of this also, I guess next step on from balloon!
 
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