Elizabeth Van Lew was a Richmond Unionist and abolitionist who spied for the United States government during the Civil War. Leading a network of a dozen or so white and African American women and men – possibly including Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a former Van Lew family slave who worked as a servant in the Confederate White House – she relayed information on Confederate operations to Union generals. She also assisted in the care and sometimes escape of Union prisoners of war being held in the capital, including 109 from Libby Prison in 1864. Van Lew, who was codenamed “Babcock” and worked with invisible ink and ciphered messages, has been called “the most skilled, innovative, and successful” of all Civil War-era spies. Some historians have claimed she was open about her politics, deflecting suspicion by behaving as if she were mentally ill, wandering town in shabby clothes, muttering to herself, and singing nonsense songs. Others have argued that these “Crazy Bet” stories are a myth. After the war, she served as postmaster of Richmond during the administration of U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant, one of the generals to whom she had once fed information.
Further Reading:
Elizabeth R. Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy (2003)
This Vignette Provided By
Brendan Wolfe, associate editor of Encyclopedia Virginia
