Whether for love, country or just a thrill, women from both sides rose up as spies during World War One. Seductive and cunning, they were instrumental in shaping the outcome of the war, provided that they weren’t caught before they could share their information. Read more about it!

Confederate women spies, such as “Rebel Rose” Greenhow of Washington, D.C., and Belle Boyd of Virginia were particularly celebrated for their exploits in a Romantic age.

More than 400 women disguised themselves as men and fought in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. During the Civil War, however, American women turned their attention to the world outside the home. Thousands of women in the North and South joined volunteer brigades and signed up to work as nurses.

Tactical or battlefield intelligence became very vital to both sides in the field during the American Civil War. Units of spies and scouts reported directly to the commanders of armies in the field. They provided details on troop movements and strengths.

Headed by William Norris, the former Baltimore lawyer who also served as chief signal officer for the Confederacy, the bureau managed the so-called “Secret Line,” an ever-changing system of couriers used to get information from Washington across the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers to Confederate officials in Richmond.

She soon recruited groups of black men who slipped behind Confederate lines, posing as servants or slaves in order to gather military intelligence. She also organized dangerous missions in which Union troops destroyed plantations and spirited former slaves away on warships.

Van Lew had Richards baptized in a white church and later sent north to be educated. This was extremely rare for a black child in the South. In 1855, Van Lew arranged for the 14-year-old to travel as a ​missionary​ to the African nation of Liberia.

Ulysses S. Grant

54th Massachusetts Regiment