Civil War Spies: Belle Boyd

Belle Boyd got her start as a spy in Martinsburg, Virginia, at the age of 17. In 1862, the "Cleopatra of the Secession" obtained - and risked her life to deliver -- information that may have been pivotal to the outcome of the Battle of Front Royal.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chalk reboarding, and we are moving
right along with our look at Civil War espionage. And
the last time we talked about Alan Pinkerton, who was

(00:23):
a famous private detective who organized the first Union espionage.
And so this time around we're switching sides and genders
to talk about a Confederate spy who belonged to what
you could consider maybe a spy subgroup that existed around
this time, and that's female spies. And this may come
as a surprise to those who picture Civil War era

(00:44):
women in the US is wearing these gone with the
wind style big dresses and grasping their smelling salts, just
waiting tearfully for loved ones to come home. But during
the years leading up to the war, gender roles were
actually starting to evolve a little bit thanks to industrialization
in the North and the rising feminist and abolitionist movements,
and the war in some cases just really instigated that

(01:07):
change even more quickly, causing many women to stray from
their normal lives in order to work in hospitals, enlist
in the army sometimes or even spy, as we're gonna
talk about today. Yeah, so our podcast subject today, Belle Boyd,
was no exception to this sort of changing role for
women and eventually turning to spying. She wanted to help

(01:28):
out the Confederacy for several reasons, as we'll see, and
spying was just one way that felt natural for her.
She was known for using her feminine wilds to get information,
and Boyd consequently picked up some nicknames including LaBelle Rebel
and Cleopatra of the Succession, and she became famous for
her work as a spy both during and after the war.

(01:50):
But we've got to also look at how her efforts
helped the Confederate cause, because you can spy, but it
all comes down to the quality of the information you get.
But before we talk about that, let's take a look
at how she got her start in espionage in the
first place. Well, she was born in May ninety four
in Martinsburg, Virginia, which is now part of West Virginia.

(02:11):
And from there, much like with Pinkerton's story, some of
the details that we found our up for debate, and
that's because a lot of what's been passed down over
the years about Bell's story came from her, and she
supposedly had a little tendency to exaggerate sometimes, which we'll
talk a little bit more about later. I think a
spy just has to have a murky background. It's not
right if if he or she doesn't. We do know, though,

(02:34):
that Bell came from a good southern family with Scottish roots,
and her parents were Mary Glenn Boyd and Benjamin Reid Boyd,
and she was the oldest of eight kids and apparently
grew up quite a tomboy. She'd climb trees, she'd ride horses,
she was headstrong, she was determined, and apparently her parents
didn't really do that much to check her behavior. She

(02:55):
was kind of indulged. No. For an example, there's the
story in Peggy Caravan to his book Petticoat Spies, Six
Women Spies of the Civil War about how she once
crashed a parent's dinner party when she was only eleven
years old. Apparently they told her that she was not
old enough to go to this dinner party, so she's
not happy about that, and at the end of the

(03:16):
dinner party, people are just starting to get up and
she rushes into the room on her horse in the
dining room. Her parents are really angry, of course, but
they don't punish her because the rest of the guests
are so amused by this. Yeah, it would make a good,
good story to go home and tell your family. But
she was still even though she was this sort of tomboy,

(03:36):
she was still raised to be a refined Southern Bell,
and at age twelve, her parents sent her off to
Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore to complete her formal education,
and four years after that, she made her debut in
Washington Society in eighteen sixty. But that's kind of an
interesting year to make your debut because just one year later,

(03:58):
the Civil War started, and said eighteen year old Bell
had to go back home to Martinsburg to help raise
money for the Confederacy and eventually serve as a nurse too. Yeah,
and her father left to volunteer for service in the
Southern Army as well, so he wasn't at home on
July three, eighteen sixty one, when Federal troops occupied Martinsburg,
and the very next stay July four, if the Yankee

(04:19):
troops started loading houses and generally just vandalizing in the town,
destroying things and the soldiers had heard that Bell in particular,
had decorated her room with rebel flags, so a squad
of them went over to the Boyd House and their
intention obviously was to take down those flags and raise
a Union flag instead over the house. So they get

(04:39):
over there, they start ransacking the place looking for the flags.
But in the meantime, the family servant is getting rid
of all the flags. She's taken them down and burns
them just before they get to Bell's room on the
second floor. But a soldier is angry anyway about the situation,
kind of embarrassed, Yeah, and he's deciding any exactly, and
he decides he wants to ho hoist a flag anyway.

(05:01):
So Belle's mom at this point says, and then every
member of this household will die before that flag is
raised over us. So pretty strong words here, definitely fighting words.
So at that point the soldier apparently cursed at her
and used some pretty filthy language, and Belle was just outraged.
She wrote later quote, I could stand it no longer.

(05:22):
My indignation was aroused beyond control. My blood was literally
boiling in my veins. So she pulled out a gun
and shot the guy and the soldier died soon after that. Yeah,
she got arrested, as you might imagine, soon after this.
An investigation followed, but a Union commander actually ruled that

(05:43):
it was a justifiable homicide and that she had quote
done perfectly right and placed a detail around their house.
It's kind of unclear to me. Different sources say different things.
Some say that he placed the detail around their house
to protect them, Others say that it was to prevent trouble.
But many say that it's year while she was becoming
acquainted with the soldiers and the detail placed around her

(06:03):
house that Bell actually got her start as a spy,
just basically flirting with them, chatting them up. That's where
she was able to overhear Union plans and get them
to divulge important pieces of information that she been quote
regularly and carefully committed to paper and at any opportunity
sent by secret dispatch and trustee messenger to Confederate officers. Yeah. So,

(06:27):
by eighteen sixty one, Bell's position got a little more official.
She joined the Confederate Intelligence and General's PGT. Beauregard and
Thomas J. Jackson Stonewall. Jackson used her as a courier
and she was really good at this because she knew
the Shenandoah Valley really well and she had excellent horsemanship skills.

(06:47):
So in those early days, though she wasn't quite careful
that that part of the spies tool set hadn't really
developed yet. She didn't use code, she didn't try to
disguise her handwriting, and so in late eighteen sixty one,
the Union started to notice her. They started to catch
on when they found a message in her handwriting signed Bell.

(07:10):
Pretty obvious. Yeah, So they picked her up and they
read her the Articles of war at Union headquarters and
told her that the penalty for spine was death, which
she probably knew. But then they released her after that,
and according to Kravants, they didn't think that a seventeen
year old girl could do any harm, so, as we'll
see later, they probably should have thought better at that.
But after that incident, Belle's mom was a little worried.

(07:32):
She sent her to stay with relatives in front Royal, Virginia,
which was forty miles to the south of Martinsburg, so
she basically thought Bell would be safer there. You might
think that her mother would have gotten a little worried
after Bell killed a man, but I guess the last
straw you're very You're very sharp there. But regardless, she
thought she'd be better off in front Royal. That wasn't
necessarily the case, though. After a relatively quiet winter there,

(07:56):
Bell was up to her old tricks again, gleaning info
from soldiers and aunt Royal, who were smitten with her.
I mean, she was at this time considered to be
a great beauty, and so they would write poems for her,
bring her flowers. According to American History, she said of
one captain quote, I am indebted for some very remarkable effusions,
some withered flowers, and last but not least, for a

(08:19):
great deal of very important information which was carefully transmitted
to my countryman. So she's a flirtatious spy. But it
was supposedly one of those gullible guys who she flirted
with who tipped her off on a Union Council of
War that was going to be held in the drawing
room of her aunt's old house in the spring of
eighteen sixty two, and Bell, the former tomboy that she was,

(08:42):
knew that there was a hole in the floor of
the bedroom closet right above the drawing room where these
men would be meeting, and so she's snuck in there
to eavesdrop, and while she was in there, she learned
that General James Shields planned to take most of his
troops out of the Front Royal to aid an assault
on Richmond. And she eventually passed this information onto her

(09:04):
side in a coded report. She's sort of getting a
little smarter about that type of thing by now. Yeah,
so by now she's passed on some info on maybe
the number of troops and some of their plans. And
this is significant because at the time, Jackson was on
what became known as his Snandoah Valley campaign, basically fighting
for control of the Shenandoah Valley and hoping to distract
Union troops from attacking the Confederate capital of Richmond. But

(09:28):
it's tough to say how much Bell's work really influenced
Jackson's decisions here. However, the next move she made is
generally considered her biggest success in intelligence work. Specifically, on
May eighteen sixty two, as Jackson's forces were approaching, Bell
happened to speak to a Union officer and she learned
that Shields and his men were planning to burn the

(09:49):
Front Royal Bridges as they withdrew from town to slow
the Confederates pursuit of their army. Yeah, so Bell realized
that Jackson would have to speed up his attack if
he was going to make it across those bridges and time,
and she tried to get somebody to ride out to
hit Jackson's camp and tell and pass on this vital information,
but no one was willing to risk riding out between

(10:10):
the two armies, so Belle decided to just do it herself.
She grabbed her white sunbonnet and ran across the gap
with bullets just whizzing past her while she was going,
and by the time she finally reached the Confederate side,
she was gasping for air, but managed to get out
her message to Stonewall and Jackson and his troops attacked

(10:31):
quickly after after they got this news and managed to
save the front Royal bridges so they save their means
of access, and also captured some enemy weapons and supplies
while they were at it, and this consequently forced the
Union troops to retreat and position the Confederates to move
on Winchester behind the Union army. So it was a
pretty valuable piece of information. That produced a big result. Yeah,

(10:55):
and Jackson wrote Bell a note later that said quote,
Miss Bell Boyd, I thank you for myself and for
the Army, for the immense service you've rendered your country
today hastily. I am your friend T. J. Jackson. So
she got a personal thank you note from Stonewall. Yeah,
that's a big deal. So with that big success behind her,
an approval from this great officer of the Confederate Army,

(11:19):
Bill continued to work as a career slash spy after that.
But in July eighteen sixty two, at the age of eighteen,
she was still really young, then she was arrested for
espionage on the orders of the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
And she'd been arrested several times by this point of record. Yeah,
she got arrested a lot of times, but she was
usually able to kind of talk herself out of it.

(11:40):
But this time she ended up going to Old Capitol
Prison in Washington. She actually didn't have such a bad
time there though. She was kind of treated as a
v I P. Admirer sent her special food and things
like that, and she was released in a month as
part of an exchange of prisoners. So I mean, I
think her health deteriorated a little bit. So it wasn't
like paradise or anything. But she was as bad as

(12:00):
it could have been. It wasn't she was treated differently
from other prisoners because of her celebrity status. Yeah. But
by July eighteen sixty three, she was again sent back
to Old Capital Prison, this time for six months, and
it was worse this time. She did get sick with
typhoid fever, and when she was released to Richmond, she
got a warning not to be caught within federal lines again.

(12:20):
So it seems like the Union is finally taking this
girl pretty seriously. Yeah, But it also means because they
are taking her seriously, she's not as effective as a
spy in Northern Territory anymore. So she decided to serve
the South by carrying messages to Southern sympathizers in England instead,
so pretending that she was going to go on a
trip to improve her health, she set sail on a

(12:41):
blockade running ship called the Greyhound in May eighteen sixty four,
but a Union gunboats stopped and boarded them before they
had even crossed the international border. Fortunately for Belle, though
the commanding officer is a young Union man named Samuel Harding,
and his commission is to take the ship back to
US Port. But before they reached the port, Bell had

(13:03):
worked her magic again and Harding had fallen in love
with her and switched his allegiance and even allowed the
Greyhounds Confederate captain to escape. And consequently, harding superiors were
not pleased by this change of allegiance. He was court martialed,
and rather than go to prison, Belle asked and was
granted permission to go to Canada, with the understanding that

(13:25):
if she ever was caught on US soil again, she'd
be shot. But she's not in Canada for very long. No,
After just a few months, she sails to England and
her service to the South has pretty much been as
she meets with a Confederate agent and she gets there
and says that she destroyed the message she was supposed
to be carrying when her ship got boarded, and so

(13:45):
it's done at that point. Yeah, I guess she took
it out last threat pretty seriously. But the rest of
Bell's life was pretty fascinating too. It could really be
a separate podcast. Harding followed her to London, after the
Navy dismissed him and the two of them got married.
Wasn't a relationship that was going to last very long though, No.
Soon after the wedding, Harding returns to the US, planning

(14:06):
to run the Union blockade and actually work for the Confederacy.
But he's caught and imprisoned and falls very ill. So
he's allowed to return to England, but dies after a
few months, leaving bell a pregnant widow at the young
age of twenty. Yeah, so she's got a daughter now
to support Grace, and so she writes a two volume

(14:26):
book called Belle Boyd in Camp in Prison to sort
of support herself and her her young family. And it
suggested that a lot of this volume was in Bella.
She was trying to sell copies after all. And then
after that she embarked on a theatrical career and told
her experience, told about her experience as a spy on
the stage, again laying it on pretty thick, creating this

(14:49):
character of Belle Boyd that was something a little bigger
than she had even been in life. Yeah, I mean,
some sources suggest that a lot of the details that
she put out there, her bravery and the dangerous element
to her missions. A lot of that was exaggerated, and
I mean a lot of people think that when she
was supposed to be carrying the message to England, there
really was no message. She just she was just going

(15:11):
to She was just going to England. Um. So you know,
we may never know some of those details. But in
eighteen sixty six, after she embarked on this uh theatrical career,
she and her daughter were allowed to return to the US,
where she continued her stage career under the name Nina Benjamin.
And she remarried twice, once in eighteen sixty nine to
a wealthy businessman and former union officer. A second husband

(15:33):
who was a former union officer, which I think is interesting.
She seemed too um and she had three kids with him.
They divorced fifteen years later, though they didn't really have
a very happy marriage. But just six weeks after that,
she married again to a poor twenty four year old
actor named Nathaniel Ruhai Jr. And she was forty one
at the time, so there was a huge age difference there,

(15:54):
and she had to start working again since he didn't
have a lot of money, So she started giving dramatic
speeches about her experiences during the war, and it was
while she was on one of those speaking tours that
she died of a heart attack on June top nineteen
in Wisconsin. She was buried there. She's still there and
a long way from home. Yeah, definitely Confederate spy. She

(16:14):
was buried in Wisconsin. Yeah, in the Wisconsin Dells, I think.
And her grave was actually unmarked for a while. Yeah,
it was unmarked because I think they thought that her
people in Virginia were going to send for her because
she was so well known there, and they never really did.
So other people paid for her to have a headstone.
And I bet this is a factor. Are Wisconsin listeners

(16:36):
are gonna like we learned recently in the King of
Beaver Island up though, that people from Wisconsin are pretty
into hearing their state talked about on the podcast. Yeah, So,
if anyone has been to Bell Boyd's grave or knows
anymore about this area or any of the activities that
go on here around the Moorial Day, because I hear
they kind of honor her around Memorial Day every year,
let us know, send us a picture. Yeah, But before

(16:58):
we totally sign off on the spell Boyed episode. I
think it's interesting to point out that in her later years,
when she was giving these talks, these speeches, she'd start
to emphasize the union of the North and the South
more and more. She would end her speeches with the
quote one God, one Flag, one people forever. So in
the end she actually ended up winning the approval of

(17:20):
both sides. Yeah, so she was the LaBelle rebel when
she's a young person, but she ends up being kind
of a patriotic American in her in her older years. Yeah,
she even became really popular with UM Union veterans. So
while we're talking about the Civil War and the Confederate
sy in particular, we might as well read a listener mail.

(17:44):
So this email is from Zach and he wrote in
after our little shipwreck mini series we did a while back.
He said, good afternoon, ladies. I just listened to part
two of your Shipwrecked mini series and heard you talk
about the Huntley. Well that is amazing because just recently
I interviewed one of the archaeologists who has been working
on the Hunley since it was pulled out of the
waters here in Charleston. He agreed to be interviewed for

(18:07):
my podcast called Our List. The archaeologist agreed to be
on the show and share his top five turning points
in history, but the interview about his work on the
Hunley in archaeology in general was so interesting we dedicated
two episodes to him. Some interesting tidbits. The officer in
charge had been shot in the leg a few months
prior at Antietam, I think, and his legs would have

(18:27):
been more damaged and amputated, but a coin in his
pocket saved him. That coin was found in the Hunley,
dented and with the date he was wounded etched in it.
A little memento there. And his next point was before
the Hony was discovered, there was much discussion about what
it actually looked like and even how many people were inside.
Once they saw it, they discovered it looked very much

(18:49):
like a famous painting made at the Honley before its
last mission. For years no one knew if that painting
was accurate or not, but found that it was very
detailed and had even helped them figure out what a
few of the exterior parts would have looked like new.
So thanks for these sort of Hunley insider tidbits from
an archaeologist involved in its excavation. Good to know. Yeah,

(19:13):
so many cool stories surrounding the Hunley and and the
people who died inside it and discoveries that have been
made since. So definitely thank you for sending that in.
So if you have any more Civil War spies you
want to hear about, We've had a lot of fun
talking about Pinkerton and Belle Boyd and I'm sure there
are so many more out there, or just other Civil
War stories you want to hear. As you know, we're

(19:35):
sort of continuing a leisurely civil War series since we
just hit that big anniversary this year. Uh, let us
know by email or at history podcast at how stuff
works dot com. Can also find us on Facebook or
on Twitter at myston History. And if you want to
work on your own spy skills a little bit, we
have a great article on our website called how Spies Work.

(19:56):
You can look it up by visiting our homepage and
typing in spies at www dot how stuff works dot com.
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(20:17):
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