Abbott’s innovation is to link the four stories in a continuous narrative, toggling among the women to move chronologically through the war. Both Edmonds and Boyd published melodramatic accounts of their exploits in their own day, and their stories have been told and retold since. The stories of these four women have been told before. Sarah Emma Edmonds cross-dressed as “Frank Thompson” to fight for the Union she was one of several hundred women who are estimated to have fought undercover in Civil War armies.
Belle Boyd was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy who tried to flirt her way into war secrets she defied the Union authorities around her, became a spy and also landed in prison.
Later in the war, she served as an emissary in Europe for no less than Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Put under surveillance and eventually caught by the famous detective Allan Pinkerton, she landed in prison for her efforts and then was exiled to the South. Rose O’Neale Greenhow was an ambitious Washington hostess and Southern sympathizer who used a secret code to supply military secrets to Confederate generals before the disastrous Union defeat at Bull Run, Va. In “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy”, Karen Abbott captures the spy-novel quality of Van Lew’s life, along with the undercover lives of three other famous Civil War-era women. Not only did she hide Northern soldiers in a secret room on the top floor of her mansion but she also passed messages to Union prisoners by using a hidden compartment in a chafing dish, employed a special cipher to send messages to agents in Washington, D.C., about Confederate troop movements and wore disguises to accomplish her espionage work. A wealthy society woman living in Richmond, Va., during the Civil War, Van Lew engaged in extensive undercover work for the Union - right under the noses of the Confederacy. The story of Civil War spy Elizabeth Van Lew almost defies belief.
0 kommentar(er)
