Tactical or
battlefield intelligence became very vital to both armies in the field during
the American Civil War. Units of spies and scouts reported directly to the
commanders of armies in the field. They provided details on troop movements and
strengths. The distinction between spies and scouts was one that had life or
death consequences. If a suspect was seized while in disguise and not in his
army's uniform, the sentence was often to be hanged. A spy named Will Talbot, a
member of the 35th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, was left behind in Gettysburg
after his battalion had passed through the borough on June 26–27, 1863. He was
captured, taken to Emmitsburg, Maryland, and executed on orders of Brig. Gen. John
Buford.
Confederate Spying
Intelligence gathering for the
Confederates was focused on Alexandria, Virginia, and the surrounding area.
Thomas Jordan created a network of
agents that included Rose O'Neal Greenhow. Greenhow delivered reports to Jordan
via the “Secret Line,” the name for the system used to get letters,
intelligence reports, and other documents across the Potomac and Rappahannock
rivers to Confederate officials.
The Confederacy's Signal Corps was
devoted primarily to communications and intercepts, but it also included a
covert agency called the Confederate Secret Service Bureau, which ran espionage
and counter-espionage operations in the North including two networks in
Washington.
Confederate Spies
·
William Bryant
Union Spying
The Union's intelligence gathering
initiatives were decentralized. Allan Pinkerton worked for Maj. Gen. George B.
McClellan and created the United States Secret Service. Lafayette C. Baker conducted intelligence and
security work for Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, commander-in-chief of the
U.S. Army. President Abraham Lincoln hired William Alvin Lloyd to spy in the
South and report to Lincoln directly.
As a brigadier general in Missouri, Ulysses
S. Grant was ordered by Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont to start an intelligence
organization. Grant came to understand the power of intelligence and later put
Brig. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge as the head of his intelligence operations that
covered an area from Mississippi to Georgia with as many as one hundred secret
agents.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, who became
commander of the Army of the Potomac in January 1863, ordered his deputy
provost marshal, Col. George H. Sharpe, to create a unit to gather
intelligence. Sharpe set up what he called the Bureau of Military Information
and was aided by John C. Babcock, who had worked for Allan Pinkerton and had
made maps for George B. McClellan. Sharpe's bureau produced reports based on
information collected from agents, prisoners of war, refugees, Southern
newspapers, documents retrieved from battlefield corpses, and other sources.
When Grant began his siege of Petersburg in June 1864, Sharpe had become
Grant's intelligence chief.
The most useful military intelligence of the American Civil War was
probably provided to Union officers by slaves and smugglers. Intelligence
provided by slaves and blacks were called black dispatches.
Union Spies
- Lafayette C. Baker
- Mary Bowser
- Charles C. Carpenter
- George Curtis
- Pauline Cushman
- Grenville Dodge
- Sarah Emma Edmonds
- Philip Henson
- Hattie Lawton
- Pryce Lewis
- Allan Pinkerton
- Albert D. Richardson
- John Scobell
- Harriet Tubman
- Elizabeth Van Lew
- Kate Warne
- Timothy Webster
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