Throught the civil war, spies played a major role. Harrison warned the Army of Northern Virginia about the Army of the Potomac's movements in the nick of time. Pinkerton greatly helped McClellan lose several battles by inflating the numbers of the confederates by 2 or 3 times. However, I have found many weird occurrences in spying that many people aren't aware of. These are the ones I will talk about here. Ever hear of Lafayette Baker? He went through many confederate camps posing as a traveling photographer. While he did this, he gathered a multitude of information for the North. However, suspicion soon developed when no pictures did. He was soon arrested. The confederates found the reason he never produced any photographs, his camera had been broken the whole time. Another one that might interest you is the story of Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow. The army rejected him because he was only 100 pounds. He soon became a spy. He was one of their best spies, but they wouldn't let him in their army. Elizabeth Van Lew lived in Richmond during the war, but was a Northern sympatizer. She was also a spy. The Confederates suspected this, so she allowed a Confederate general and his wife to live with her in her home. However, suspicion continued. This time, she decided to let her hair fall down and to wear less than good clothes. She was soon called "Crazy Lew", and went about her spying even easier than she could before. However, the Confederates were seriously short of horses, but she needed hers to send messages to the Union. She decided on a plan. She put straw on the floor of her library, and put her horse in the library. The horse never made a sound. She later put it, "It was a very patriotic horse.". As you can see, there were many wonderful and weird happenings in the spying world during the Civil War. If you want top learn about others, there are several books you can get on the subject. My favorite is "Encyclopedia Brown's Books of Wacky Spies" by Donald J. Sobol, published by Bantam Skylark. Back to Table of Contents -- ACW Newsletter # 6 Back to ACW Newsletter List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Marc Shefelton. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com