Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Confederate Spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a popular Washington socialite, a widow in her 40s and an impassioned secessionist when she began spying for the Confederacy in 1861. Using her powerful social connections, Greenhow obtained information about Union military activity and passed coded messages to the Confederates. One of her most important messages, hidden in her female courierâs hair, helped Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard gather enough forces to win the First Battle of Bull Run. Suspicious of Greenhowâs activities, Allan Pinkerton, head of the federal governmentâs newly formed Secret Service, gathered enough evidence to place her under house arrest. But Greenhow continued to get information to her contacts. In January 1862, she was transferred, along with her 8-year-old daughter, to Old Capitol Prison. Several months later she was deported to Baltimore, Maryland, where the Confederates welcomed her as a hero. Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent Greenhow on her next mission to Britain and France to help gain support for the Confederacy. While in Europe she published her memoir, My Imprisonment, and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington. In September1864, Greenhow returned to the South aboard the Condor, a British blockade-runner, carrying $2,000 in gold. A Union gunboat pursued the ship as it neared the North Carolina shore, and it ran aground on a sandbar. Against the captainâs advice, Greenhow tried to escape in a rowboat with two other passengers. The boat capsized and she drowned, presumably weighed down by the gold she carried around her neck. Her body washed ashore the next day and was buried by the Confederates with full military honors.
Mary Elizabeth Bowser (a.k.a. Mary Jane Richards), Union Spy Mary Elizabeth Bowser, likely born Mary Jane Richards, was a slave of the Van Lew family in Richmond, Virginia. When John Van Lew died in September 1843, his will stipulated that his wife, Eliza, could not sell or free any of the familyâs slaves. Eliza and her daughter Elizabeth Van Lew were against slavery and seem to have secretly granted their slaves, including Bowser, freedom. When the Civil War broke out, the Van Lews brought food, medicine and books to Union soldiers at nearby Libby Prison. Elizabeth conveyed messages between the prisoners and Union officials and helped prisoners escape. To do this, she relied on an informal network of women and men, white and black, all drawn from Richmondâs clandestine Unionist community to help her. The most noteworthy of these individuals was Bowser, who had married a free black man named Wilson Bowser in 1861 and taken his name. In the fall of 1865, Bowser gave an address in Brooklyn alluding to her infiltration of the Confederate White House during the war. Though the story has been difficult to document, Bowserâs willingness to risk her life as part of the Richmond underground is certain. Details of Bowserâs life after the war are unknown.
This ambrotype photograph of a woman holding an infant was found on the body of a Union soldier killed during the Battle of Gettysburg.
This recruitment poster for Col. Joshua T. Owenââ¬â¢ 69th Pennsylvania Infantry regiment, raised in predominantly Irish and Welsh neighborhoods in Philadelphia, was printed in 1861. The regiment, accompanying Col. Edward Bakerââ¬â¢s famous Philadelphia brigade, helped repel Pickettââ¬â¢s Charge, the final surge of fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg.
...Grant attacked Leeâs stout defenses at Spotsylvania repeatedly. The heaviest assault came on May 12 when Union troops stormed the works at dawn and poured into the Mule Shoe. Lee sent reinforcements, and the two sides fought furiously. It was the warâs longest uninterrupted battle at close quarters, raging continuously through a day of driving rain and on into the night. The Union attack faltered after twenty hours of explosive mayhem, which reduced the oak tree to the stump above, surrounded by piles of bodies. An aide to Grant, Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, visited that site, known thereafter as the Bloody Angle, and described the carnage: âBelow the mass of fast-decaying corpses, the convulsive twitching of limbs and the writhing of bodies showed that there were wounded men still alive and struggling to extricate themselves from the horrid entombment. Every relief possible was afforded, but in too many cases it came too late.â
The guy laying next to the dog is supposedly George Custer. other color pics at http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-american-civil-war-photos-turned-into-glorious-color-2013-10