LINCOLN'S LADY SPYMASTER

An unlikely spy.

Reporter and podcast host Willis recounts the life of the intrepid Elizabeth Van Lew (1818-1900), who mounted a successful spy ring from her home in the Confederate stronghold of Richmond, Virginia. Born into wealth and privilege in a family with Northern roots, she was a Union sympathizer, and though her family owned slaves, she opposed slavery. Raised to be a Southern belle, she was transformed by war “from a serious but directionless young woman into an iron-willed spymaster.” In the early days of the conflict, she and her mother risked threats to their lives to help imprisoned wounded Union soldiers. Those prisoners of war passed on to her information, overheard from their guards, about Rebel troop movements. Books she lent the men came back with secret notes and encoded messages that she relayed to Union commanders. Her efforts were augmented by a ring of like-minded civilians, including her own Black servants, German anti-slavery business owners, and other Union sympathizers whom she learned about when the Confederate government penned them together in prison. These secret activists worked to gather and pass on intelligence and to smuggle Union soldiers across enemy lines. While the soldiers waited to escape, she hid them on the third floor of her Richmond mansion. Van Lew proved a wily spy, even using a cipher to convert letters into numerical code—a cipher she kept for the rest of her life. When Ulysses S. Grant became president, he rewarded her invaluable aid by naming her to the remunerative position of Richmond’s postmaster. Willis draws on Van Lew’s published diary, a biography of Van Lew, and biographies of Civil War figures to create a brisk, well-populated chronicle of her subject’s perilous work.

A fresh look at Civil War history.