Seems to me it would be trivially easy to use assassins and spies in the Civil War (they are all Americans) but I have never heard of them being used.
Why not? Lee, Lincoln, others…(of course Lincoln got it just after the war but why not sooner?).
Was it just “gentlemanly” conduct that they didn’t use them?
Their were spies.
As for assassins the closest would be the men shooting sniper rifles and maybe hoping to take out a general.
It must have been a concern since from what I can see from old pictures is most generals had alot of assistants and aids which would serve as bodyguards.
But I think your right on assassinations being looked down upon. Remember in the Civil War many of the generals and officers actually knew each other from West point or otherwise serving with each other.
Wikipedia page on spies.
You’d probably heard of Pinkerton, or at least indirectly. On the Confederate side, Bulloch is well known as Theodore Roosevelt’s uncle and relative of Eleanor Roosevelt. Also Harrison.
Sharpshooters and sharpshooter regiments were used, although I would hesitate to call them assassings.
There were at least two earlier assassination attempts against Lincoln prior to the Booth conspiracy.
There was also the Dahlgren raid, which was allegedly a plot by the American government to assassinate Davis.
That’s how the Pinkerton Agency got its start. sort of. The agency was founded in 1850, but after Allan Pinkerton foiled an assassination plot against Lincoln, he was tasked with overseeing Lincoln’s personal security detail. He used to run spies behind Confederate lines.
I also recall there were at least one or two high-society hostesses in Washington who were actually Confederate spies.
I think you’re thinking of Rose Greenhow, who famously spied for the Confederacy and sent her maid through enemy lines with invasion secrets hidden in her hair.
The excellent Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy covers her and three other women who spied during the war.
John Wilkes Booth was both.
Nah. He was just acting.
Elizabeth Van Lew operated an extensive spy ring on behalf of the Union in the Civil War. She also helped Union soldiers captured by the Confederates.
“She aided prisoners in escape attempts, passing them information about safe houses and getting a Union sympathizer appointed to the prison staff. Recently captured prisoners gave Van Lew information on Confederate troop levels and movements, which she was able to pass on to Union commanders. She even helped hide escaped Union prisoners and Confederate deserters in her own mansion.”
While other stately and historic homes in the South were protected after the war, Van Lew’s mansion was acquired and torn down by the city of Richmond in 1911, presumably as a form of revenge for her activities.
Classy.
And entirely in line with the attitudes of 1890-1920 or so, in which the southern half of the US celebrated its victory and cemented the notion of the noble, tragic South into the national consciousness, on the backs of those uppity former slaves who Got Theirs.
The second phase of the Civil War (also called, charmingly, “Reconstruction”) and its decades-long aftermath are one of the great moral and civic failings of the US. And overlooked, brushed aside and retconned for many more decades, as such things usually are.
True, because the Democratic party blocked all attempts. Ironically because all Negroes were counted people instead of the 3/5 that slaves were ante bellum, the South had more members in the House.
In the Civil War, generals (who were in the front lines far more than today) often wore uniforms without their rank to prevent becoming the target of enemy sharpshooters.
Harriet Tubman also served as a spy for the Union, though her role was more based on knowing how to sneak through areas unseen, and knowing some of the specific terrain, than on blending in.
I heard the city of Vicksburg didnt celebrate the 4th of July until the 1950’s.
Not that the town didn’t have some resentment, but: “Large Fourth of July celebrations were being held by 1907, and informal celebrations took place before that.” Cites included.
I seem to recall from Ken Burns’ Civil War an incident where one side’s battle plans were found wrapped in cigar paper (or something like that), and this turned out to be a crucial intelligence coup that allowed the other side to win a battle.
This strongly suggests that the plans were “leaked” by a spy, but I don’t recall the documentary explictly saying so.
David O. Dodd.
The cite does not mention that Dodd did not die outright, and that a Sergeant pulled on his legs until he suffocated.
The plans were Lee’s Special Order 191 and their loss played a significant role in the battle of Antietam. The orders were wrapped around three cigars and were stuffed into an envelope. While I suppose it’s possible that a spy was involved, most of the histories that I have read indicate that they were accidentally misplaced. An equally likely story is that the papers were misplaced, some soldier found what he thought were scrap pieces of paper and used those to wrap his cigars up, and then the envelope got misplaced as they broke camp.
Here’s the wikipedia page for the orders:
Battle of Antietem:
How easy was it to cross the border? As far as I know, the North-South border was never continuously patrolled-so it must have been pretty easy to cross. And, since orders went by messenger (only rarely did they have field telegraphs), there must have been quite a bit of time between headquarters issuing orders and the field commanders carrying them out. A clever spy could intercept messages, if able to identify the couriers.
IIRC, US Mail was delivered routinely across the borders throughout the war. Getting information across would have been no problem at all, but for the issue of timeliness.