At
dawn on the first of October 1864 the body of Rose O'Neal Greenhow
washed ashore in the surf near Fort Fisher in North Carolina.
Perhaps the most famous spy of the Confederate States of America
had died as dramatically as she lived.
Rose was born in 1813 or 1814 into a planter family in Maryland.
Her father, John O'Neal, was murdered by one of his slaves in
1817. His widow, Eliza O'Neal, was left with four daughters
and a cash-poor farm to manage. In part to help family finances,
Rose was sent, in her mid-teens, to Washington, D. C. along
with her sister Ellen to live with their aunt, Maria Ann Hill.
Mrs. Hill and her husband managed a highly regarded boarding
house across from the U. S. Capitol. The house was often referred
to as the "Old Brick Capitol" since it originally
had been built as the temporary meeting place of Congress after
the Capitol had been burned in the War of 1812. Pretty, lively,
and intelligent, Rose was popular with the members of Congress
who boarded with her aunt, and she had several suitors. In 1835
she married Robert Greenhow, a wealthy bachelor who had trained
as a physician but ultimately became an official in the United
States Department of State. In addition to bearing a large family,
Rose became an important figure in Washington society. She was
charming, witty, politically astute, and a fervent champion
of the southern states in the increasingly bitter sectional
struggles of the 1840s and 1850s. The death of Robert Greenhow
in 1854 left Rose financially stretched, but she continued her
association with important national political figures, particularly
President James Buchanan. Rose considered the election of Abraham
Lincoln in 1860 to be a national disaster and whole-heartedly
supported secession and the newly formed Confederacy.
Sometime in 1861 Rose Greenhow was recruited as a spy for the
Confederacy. She quickly formed a network of agents from among
her Washington circle of Confederate sympathizers and began
enthusiastically and efficiently gathering information about
the Union Army camped around the capital, which she transmitted
to General P. G. T. Beauregard who commanded Confederate forces
in nearby Virginia. Rose charmed information from important
beaureaucrats, army officers, and politicians including, it
was rumored, a Republican senator who sent her passionate love
letters. She gave Beauregard the date on which the Union Army
would began its advance on his position in 1861 and was credited
by him with an important contribution to the subsequent victory
at the battle of Manassas. Rose refused, however, to become
the stereotypical spy who blends in with her background to escape
detection. She continued vigorously to defend the southern cause
and lambast Republicans. After Manassas she began to come under
suspicion. She was arrested in August of 1861 and held for the
next year and nine months without being charged or brought to
trial. Rose was hardly a model prisoner, reviling her guards,
complaining about her treatment and generally making herself
a thorn in the side of the Lincoln government. At the end of
May 1863 she was exiled to the Confederacy.
Rose Greenhow was given a heroine's welcome in Richmond and
thanked personally by President Jefferson Davis for her aid
to the Confederacy. Davis also took the unprecedented step of
asking Rose to promote Southern interests in England and France
as his personal, if unofficial, representative. In August 1863
Rose and her youngest daughter, also named Rose, sailed on a
blockade runner from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Bermuda
where she booked passage to England. Rose was warmly greeted
by many in the English aristocracy who sympathized with her
and her cause. Over the next year she spoke with a number of
leaders of British politics and society including Thomas Carlyle
and Lord Palmerston. She was granted an audience by Napoleon
III of France and visited with southerners who had taken up
residence abroad. A British publishing house brought out her
memoir, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolitionist
Rule at Washington, which was a success.
In August 1864 Rose returned to America, convinced that she
could do nothing to persuade the British or French governments
to recognize the Confederacy. On the last night of September
her ship, the blockade runner Condor approached the mouth of
the Cape Fear River on the run to Wilmington. It was spotted
by a U. S. naval vessel early on the morning of October 1st
and ran aground trying to escape. Rose was carrying dispatches
for President Davis and her book profits in gold coins in a
leather bag around her neck. She demanded that the captain set
her ashore immediately, although he tried to convince her that
the ship was safe under the guns of Fort Fisher until she floated
off the shoal. In the end Rose had her way and with several
other people was launched in a boat for the shore which was
only a few hunded yards away. Within minutes the small boat
capsized. Rose sank out of sight immediately while the others
clung to the overturned boat and ultimately survived. Her body
was buried in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Harry McKown
October 2005
Sources
Blackman, Ann. Wild Rose: Rose O'Neale Greenhow, Civil
War Spy. New York: Random House, 2005.
Ross, Ishbel. Rebel Rose; Life of Rose O'Neal Greenhow,
Confederate Spy. New York: Harper, 1954
Greenhow, Rose O'Neal. My Imprisonment and the first year
of Abolitionist Rule at Washington. London: R. Bentley,
1863.
Image Source
"Mrs. Greenhow
and the Two Other Passengers Demanded to be Set Ashore."
Half-tone plate engraved by C.E. Hart from a drawing by Stanley
M. Arthurs.
In Harper's Monthly Magazine, March 1912, p. 575.
