This year marks the Sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of the American Civil War and this month is Women’s History Month.
Therefore, to commemorate these two facets of American History, Top Secret Writers would like pass along the story of Wild Rose , the Civil War spy.
She was born in 1817 and her actual name was Rose O’Neal. However, by the time that her teenage years rolled around, the nickname Wild Rose was quite befitting.
She lived a life full of mystery and intrigue. This mystery began when Rose was just an infant. Shortly after she was born, Rose’s father was murdered while away on business.
In 1830, when Rose was a teenager, she moved to Washington, D.C. to live in her Aunt’s boarding house. It was during her years at the boarding house that Rose began to cultivate many friendships and meet many acquaintances that would later prove to be quite beneficial in her future line of work.
Rose married a doctor in 1835 and began to climb the social ladder. Her social circle included very prominent and powerful people, including Dolley Madison, John C. Calhoun, and President James Buchanan.
By 1850, she became one of the most popular socialites and hostesses in all of Washington, D.C. Even though her husband died in 1854, Rose continued to solidify her position with the social elite.
When the Civil War began, Rose would overhear or even be a part of many conversations that involved some of the Union forces high-ranking officials, such as Senator Henry Wilson, then chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. There were many times that these conversations held various secrets of the Union Army.
Due to her position as prominent socialite, Rose’s friends did not give it a second thought when they let a secret slip out on occasion.
Turns out, her friends should have been more careful. Rose had been a long time southern sympathizer and she had been collecting the various secrets. She was recruited by U.S. Army officer Thomas Jordan, who later defected to Southern forces.
The plan was deceptively simple. With a 26-symbol cipher for encoding messages that was provided to her by Jordan, she passed encoded messages to the Confederates.
Just as Rose quickly gained notoriety with the social elite, she quickly gained the same type of notoriety with her fellow spies. So much so, that it did not take long for her to begin running her own spy ring in Washington, DC.
Wild Rose was so good at the spy game that Confederate President Jefferson Davis considered her instrumental to the Confederacy’s victory at the First Battle of Bull Run. According to Historians, Davis felt this way because Rose was able to provide his Generals with intelligence about Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s advance. This intelligence arrived in time for Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and Brig. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard’s troops to unite and defeat the Union forces on July 21, 1861.
Unfortunately for Rose, this success was short lived. Barely a month after the victory at Bull Run, on August 23, 1861, the head of the Union Intelligence Service, Allan Pinkerton, captured her. Because she was a woman, the Union was lenient and placed Rose under house arrest at her home. However, this arrest did not deter her from continuing her clandestine activities.
Even under house arrest, Rose continued to run her spy ring; this time, involving one of her own daughters. Once again she was discovered and a search of her house revealed letters from friends, family, and even lovers.
Along with these letters, encoded messages and notes on military movements were found as well. The search also turned up singed scraps of writing in stove that Rose tried to destroy.
This time, the Union transferred her and her daughter, “Little” Rose, to the Old Capitol Prison; which, consequently, was the boarding house Rose lived in as a teenager.
Nevertheless, even imprisonment did not keep Rose out of espionage. She continued to spy and send out encrypted messages throughout her imprisonment.
Finally, the Union decided to deport Rose to the South in 1862. Yet, that deportation was not the end of Wild Rose O’Neal. She continued to support the Confederates in any way she could – even going to Europe to drum up Confederate support.
However, only two years after her deportation, Rose did meet her end. While trying to run a blockade in stormy weather, Rose drowned. It was later discovered that she was forced under the water by the weight of the gold she carried, which she planned to give to the Confederate treasury. Right up to the end, Wild Rose O’Neal was passionate about her cause.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment