Black Spies in Confederate Richmond

A recent review of Spy of Richmond suggested that the title of the novel should really be Spies of Richmond, and I'm actually delighted with her observation. I really wanted to show in my novel that Underground Richmond was made up of many, many people working together. White Richmonders like Elizabeth Van Lew, farmers, immigrants, and my fictional heroine Sophie Kent were part of it, and we'll talk about them on the blog later. But while it's still Black History Month, I'd like to shine a little light on the black community in Richmond. Though they had everything to lose by doing so, including their lives, they contributed to Union espionage more than we will probably realize. Here are a few of them that we know of:

• Samuel Ruth was a colored railroad superintendent whose circle of spies overlapped Van Lew's. Because of his railroad travelling into other parts of Virginia, he contributed valuable information about Southern troop movements, the availability of food for both the army and civilians, etc. He instructed the railroad cars to move slowly when transporting war materiel, and he helped Union loyalists and escaped prisoners flee Richmond. He was arrested as a spy but released.
• Robert Ford was a teamster for Union troops before he was captured and forced to become the hostler for the warden of Richmond's Libby Prison. Libby was the notorious prison for Union officers. Ford was an invaluable conduit of information between the prisoners and "friends" --Union loyalists in Richmond who would aid them in their escape. After the mass breakout from Libby Prison in February 1864, Ford was whipped with five hundred lashes. After he recovered from the near-lethal experience, he too escaped Richmond.
• Mary Bowser was formerly a slave in the household of Elizabeth Van Lew, but had gained her freedom. After the war began, she posed as a slave once more and was planted as a domestic in the White House of the Confederacy.

We also know that black women, most likely both slave and free, brought food to the Union prisoners at Libby, and that the warden beat at least a few of them for doing so. Black men also managed to feed information to either Samuel Ruth or Elizabeth Van Lew, from their positions working on the city's fortifications, and from working at Tredegar Iron Works and its various furnaces around the state. In Spy of Richmond, you'll meet Samuel Ruth, Robert Ford, and of course my own fictional African-American characters Bella and Abraham Jamison who all feed intelligence to Elizabeth Van Lew. Van Lew is certainly the most famous spy of Richmond, and General Grant called her his most valuable in the city for good reason. But she was supported by the information gathered by those in her circle, both white and black.

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Susie King Taylor

 

Susie King Taylor, a black woman nurse for her husband's South Carolina regiment, said this:

There are many people who do not know what some of the colored women did during the war. There were hundreds of them who assisted the Union soldiers by hiding them and helping them to escape. Many were punished for taking food to the prison stockades for the prisoners. . . The soldiers were starving and these women did all they could towards relieving those men, although they knew the penalty, should they be caught giving them aid. Others assisted in various ways the Union army. These things should be kept in history before the people.

I fully agree.

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Spy of Richmond (Heroines Behind the Lines Civil War Book 4)

Compelled to atone for the sins of her slaveholding father, Union loyalist Sophie Kent risks everything to help end the war from within the Confederate capital and abolish slavery forever. But she can’t do it alone. Former slave Bella Jamison sacrifices her freedom to come to Richmond, where her Union soldier husband is imprisoned, and her twin sister still lives in bondage in Sophie’s home. Though it may cost them their lives, they work with Sophie to betray Rebel authorities. Harrison Caldwell, a Northern journalist who escorts Bella to Richmond, infiltrates the War Department as a clerk–but is conscripted to defend the city’s fortifications. As Sophie’s spy network grows, she walks a tightrope of deception, using her father’s position as newspaper editor and a suitor’s position in the ordnance bureau for the advantage of the Union. One misstep could land her in prison, or worse. Suspicion hounds her until she barely even trusts herself. When her espionage endangers the people she loves, she makes a life-and-death gamble. Will she follow her convictions even though it costs her everything–and everyone–she holds dear? 

For more information and purchase links for Spy of Richmond, click here. For more about the four-book Civil War series, click here.