Unit 79
Rebel Wild Rose
Rose O'Neal Greenhow was born in Montgomery County, Maryland. "Rebel Wild Rose", as she was sometimes called, was a distinguished hostess in Washington society, a passionate secessionist, and one of the most renowned spies in the Civil War.
"I am a Southern woman," she wrote, "born with revolutionary blood in my veins." It was this fervor -- along with her many intimate connections in the capital -- that made Greenhow, a prime rebel recruit when the Civil War finally broke out in April 1861. She proved her worth as a spy in a very short time. From her home on 16th Street NW, Greenhow was running a spy ring meant to undermine the Union war effort. Her effort on behalf of the South were relentless. "She did a better job than most in infiltrating the political and military elite of Washington," says Tyler Anbinder, associate professor of history at George Washington University. "She flattered men into revealing sensitive information." With her charm, intellect and ambition, as well as through her husband, Robert, a State Department official whom she married in 1835, Rose Greenhow came to know virtually everyone of importance in Washington. Among her accomplishments was the ten-word secret message she sent to General Pierre G.T. Beauregard which ultimately caused him to win the battle of Bull Run. She spied so successfully for the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis credited her with winning the battle of Manassas.
Her courier, a young woman named Betty Duvall, rode out of Washington dressed as a country girl. Meeting Gen. Milledge L. Bonham at the Fairfax County Courthouse, Duvall advised him that she had an urgent message for Gen. Beauregard. "Upon my announcing that I would have it faithfully forwarded at once," Bonham later recalled, "she took out her tucking comb and left fall the longest and most beautiful roll of hari I have ever seen. She took from the back of her head, where it had been safely tied, a small package, not larger than a silver dollar, sewed up in silk."
Washington has seen plenty of covert operatives, as well as highly connected grand dames, but Greenhow managed to unite the two professions in herself. Indeed Greenhow's covert activities did attract unfavorable attention in Washington. She was imprisoned for her efforts first in her own home and then in the Old Capital Prison. Despite her confinement, Greenhow continued getting messages to the Confederacy by means of cryptic notes which traveled in unlikely places such as the inside of a woman's bun of hair. After her second prison term, she was exiled to the Confederate states where she was received warmly by President Jefferson Davis.
Her next mission was to tour Britain and France as a propagandist for the Confederate cause. Two months after her arrival in London, her memoirs were published and enjoyed a wide sale throughout the British Isles. In Europe, Greenhow found a strong sympathy for the South, especially among the ruling classes. In 1864, after a year abroad, she boarded the Condor, a British blockade-runner which was to take her home. Just before reaching her destination, the vessel ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina. In order to avoid the Union gunboat that pursued her ship, Rose fled in a rowboat, but never made it to shore. Her little boat capsized and she was dragged down by the weight of the gold she received in royalties for her book.
In October 1864, Rose was buried with full military honors in the Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington. Her coffin was wrapped in the Confederate flag and carried by Confederate troops. The marker for her grave, a marble cross, bears the epitaph, "Mrs. Rose O'N. Greenhow, a bearer of dispatches to the Confederate Government." |