Essay On Spies In The Civil War

Espionage in the Civil War

When the Civil War first started espionage was almost completely unheard of in these times. In the beginning, spies had many successful missions because people did not expect anyone was watching them. If the espionage was discovered, the person caught faced many risks such as hanging, or being taken as a prisoner of war. However most people didn't seem to be afraid of getting caught. The spies of the Civil War make up some of the most courageous, and important people in American History ( Wilson V ).
Before the war, tensions were rising and States were starting to secede from the Union. The states that were leaving the nation were causing problems for an important figure named Allen Pinkerton. When the Civil War

started, Pinkerton was the owner of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which specialized in solving railroad theft. His clients were the railroad companies of Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. It was a concern that Virginia and Maryland would secede leaving Washington isolated from the rest of the North. After hearing this, Allen knew he would have to take action. He sent some of his best agents down to spy on southern secessionist groups. What they found was unsettling. They had inadvertently discovered a secret plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore at a street train depot ( Wilson 3 ).
The Assassin’s plan was to assemble many southerners to crowd all the streets and alleys before the train got there. Then the Chief of Baltimore Police, who was in on the plot, would send some officers to the area. The southerners would start a commotion drawing the police away from the train leaving Lincoln surrounded by his enemies and eight assassins ( Wilson 4 ).
Getting away was simple. After killing Lincoln, they would get on a steamboat waiting for them in nearby Chesapeake Bay. That steamboat would then take them to a port in a southern state. They believed they would return to the South as heroes ( Wilson 4 ).
President Lincoln was stubborn. Even after being informed about the plan, he still insisted on going to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Because Lincoln was being so obstinate, Pinkerton sent messages over telegraph to get a secret train for Lincoln. At every bridge they would flash signals to show everything was going well. Despite the assassination attempt, Lincoln still kept his sense of humor, cracking jokes and smiling through the whole process. He arrived safely and was called a coward by many southern conspirators. This event marked the beginning of espionage efforts in the Civil War. It led Allen Pinkerton to become the Head of Intelligence for the Union ( Wilson 5 ).
Many of the spies during the Civil War were women because few people in that time expected a woman to be spying on them.

They were also used often, because if they were caught their punishment would sometimes be less severe than if it were a man. African-American men and women also were used frequently for spying. They were eager to help because of the prospect of slavery ending ( Women Spies of the Civil War ).
Harriet Tubman, a huge leader of the Underground Railroad, was used as a spy during the Civil War. She was extremely useful because she knew the land well from her time with the Underground Railroad. She recruited a group of former slaves from South Carolina to help spy on rebel camps and report on the movement of Confederate soldiers. Her efforts helped the Union gunboats get the jump on Confederate troops. At the end of the war, she tried to collect money for her efforts, but was denied. Money was finally given to her family many years after her death ( Engle

).
Pauline Cushman, an actress, played an important role in the Civil War. It all started when two Rebel officers by the names of Colonel Spear and Captain Blincoe took a liking to her when she was looking for a job after her husband’s death. Spear and Blincoe wanted her to toast Jefferson Davis during one of her performances of Seven Sisters. The purpose was to make people believe she was a southern sympathizer in Union controlled Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky was near the border and she was a popular actress in both the North and South, meaning the audience would be made up of residents of both sides. Right before her performance of Seven Sisters, she poked through the curtain with a glass of wine and toasted Jefferson Davis. Everyone in the room went quiet and none of her former friends would talk to her for weeks ( Abe Lincoln’s Loveliest Spy ).
Cushman next decided it was time to go to Nashville, the head city of espionage for the North. She met with William Truesdail, the chief of Army scouts and Espionage of Nashville, who took her oath and she was truly a Union spy for good ( Abe Lincoln’s Loveliest Spy )!
Truesdail told Cushman of his plan for her act like she was looking for her fake brother, Asa Cushman, a Confederate soldier. While looking for General Braxton Bragg for help with finding her “lost” brother, she became friendly with a head Confederate military engineer. After many nights of talking with him, he asked her to come to his place and have some drinks. Unexpectedly, when she arrived, she observed sitting on his table Confederate defense fortification sketches. As time went by, the engineer got drunker, so she decided to take a chance and steal the papers. It meant she would be disobeying Truesdail’s orders to not take any papers, because of the risk of being caught. However, she felt that finding them must be fate, so she took them ( National Park Service ).
Meanwhile, the Union had recently hanged two Confederate spies leaving the Confederacy no choice but to do the same to any Union spies.

Cushman knew she needed to get back to Nashville before she was discovered. The only way to get into Nashville posing as a Confederate was to hire a Confederate smuggler named Milam. She went to his house asking for his help, but he turned her down ( National Park Service ).
In her hurry to leave, she forgot the stolen papers and a few other belongings at Milam’s house. This was enough evidence for Braxton Bragg to arrest her. After a four day trial, Cushman was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The Union army rescued her and she returned to Nashville. Her brush with death was a story in all over the newspapers in the North and many women looked up to her ( Abe Lincoln’s Loveliest Spy ). For her efforts, she was promoted to the rank of Brevet-Major and was known as Miss Major Cushman ( National Park Service ).
The methods used to spy during the Civil War are amateurish compared to today’s standards. It was easier back then too. Many people did not know how to keep their mouth shut when handling important information, and they were too trusting of people ( Engle

).
The boundaries between the Northern and Southern states were basically just lines on a map. It made it extremely easy for spies to cross the border without any suspicion. The state’s borders had almost no guards making it easy to spy on enemy encampments ( Spies in the Civil War ).
The North and South both had many successes and failures in espionage, but nobody knows what might have happened without it. The bravery shown and sacrifices these men and women made most likely helped shift the course of the war and America what it is today ( Civil War Spies, Civil War Home ).