ALDALE-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: Rose O'Neal Greenhow
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 04:24:06 EDT

Rose O'Neal Greenhow

Rose Greenhow was the most famous spy in the Civil War, but probably
accomplished very little more than warning the Confederates that the Union
was advancing on Manassas, sending messages on 9 July and on 16 July 1861.
Pinkerton arrested her on 23 August. She was initially kept under arrest at
her house, but after a letter she wrote was published in Richmond and
republished in the North, she was moved to the Old Capital Prison, with her
eight-year-old daughter Rose (on 18 January 1862). There a private in the
91st PA observed an incident involving her daughter and a child named Harry
(letter). She was deported to the Confederacy on 31 May 1862. The Confederate
government sent her on a diplomatic mission to England and France. She was
drowned on the return voyage, on 30 September 1861, when the British blockade
runner (the Condor) she was on ran aground and she attempted to land in a
small boat, which capsized.

Beymer quotes a 'recent' letter by her daughter: "I do not remember very much
about our imprisonment except that I used to cry myself to sleep from hunger.
. . . There was a tiny closet in our room in which mother contrived to loosen
a plank that she would lift up, and the prisoners of war underneath would
catch hold of my legs and lower me into their room; they were allowed to
receive fruit, etc., from the outside, and generously shared with me, also
they would give mother news of the outside world' (On hazardous service
pp.202-203).

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