WOMEN IN WARTIME: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR SPIES by Yvonne Saxon

Rose O'Neal Greenhow

Two of the most notable female spies of the Civil War were Rose O'Neal Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew.

A girl from a small farm in Maryland, Rose Greenhow moved to Washington, D.C. when she was either 13 or 14 years old. After marrying Dr. Robert Greenhow, a federal librarian and translator in 1835, she was accepted into high society, even socializing with First Lady Dolley Madison. 

When Robert died in 1854, Rose bought a house four blocks north of the White House. She became a leading socialite, maintaining alliances with Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans. Her influence even reached to the White House, helping James Buchanan get elected president in 1856.

She always considered herself a "Southern Woman," and in the spring of 1861 she became a Confederate Spy. Rose heard that the Union Army was planning an advance on Manassas, Va  through the chairperson on the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Rose recruited Bettie Duvall a young woman with Confederate sympathies, to help her warn the Southern troops by hiding a cipher in Duvall's hair. Duvall snuck out of Washington dressed as a farm girl, and took the secret message to the Confederate Army. The First Battle of Manassas was a Confederate victory due to Greenhow's information.

Soon, 48 women and 2 men in several states were involved in Greenhow's  spy ring. They used a sophisticated cipher, coding and decoding messages. Unfortunately, Rose Greenhow was careless when it came to storing the confidential information, keeping maps and other documents in her home. Allen Pinkerton, the head of the Union Intelligence Service and the founder of America's first detective agency in Chicago, was sent to monitor Rose. Seeing a clandestine meeting between Rose and a Union Soldier, he reported it and the War Department stepped in. Her house was searched and a map of Union fortifications and other incriminating documents were found. She was placed under house arrest, and in the following weeks other suspected spies were imprisoned in Rose's home.

Even then, she continued communicating with members of her network, waving different colored handkerchiefs from the windows and smuggling notes in and out of her house. She was moved to the Old Capitol Prison but continued to be a nuisance. The Union government never brought her to trial fearing Rose would either expose governmental secrets or cause mockery of government officials, and she was released on May 31, 1862. Told not to leave Confederate borders, she defied the Federal orders, sailing to France and England to raise support and funds. While in England, she became engaged to the 2nd Earl of Granville, writing her memoir about her imprisonment.

On the return trip, Rose's ship ran aground near Wilmington, North Carolina. When Rose and two other Confedeerate agents tried to reach the shore in a rowboat, they capsized and Rose Greenhow drowned, weighed down by the two thousand dollars worth of gold she was carrying for the Confederacy.

Elizabeth Van Lew

Elizabeth Van Lew was born in Richmond, Virginia, but educated at a Quaker school in either Philadelphia, PA or Princeton, NJ, which may have accounted for her anti-slavery politics later.

Both Elizabeth and her mother were active in Richmond's high society, while practicing "multiple methods of giving their slaves independence and financial autonomy." One of their slaves, an African American girl named "Mary Jane" was baptized in their home church, sent to Princeton, NJ for an education, and spent 5 years in Liberia as a missionary, courtesy of the Van Lew's.

Elizabeth and her mother had to walk a fine line between maintaining their position in high-class society and their more radical politics of abolition, especially when war broke out. Both women convinced General John H. Winder to allow them to bring food and provisions to the captive Union soldiers in Libby Prison, on the outskirts of Richmond. Under the guise of "female benevolence," they passed messages back and forth from the prison, managed to find prisoners extra food and water, and helped prisoners escape, at great monetary and social expense to themselves. 

In order to divert suspicion from their activities, Elizabeth and her mother staged public outings where they could be seen helping Confederate soldiers and even had the Confederate prison warden living in their home.

 General Benjamin Butler heard about Elizabeth's activities and in December 1863, he recruited her as a spy for the Union Army. During the war, her spy network of 12 people, both black and white, helped her collect information from the Confederates. In March 1864, two Union officers attempted a raid on Libby Prison to free the prisoners. One of the officers was killed in the ill-fated campaign and his body was hung on display then secretly buried. Elizabeth used her spy ring to locate the secret burial, recover the officer's body, and rebury it in a safe location so it could be given to his family after the war.

Elizabeth's activities throughout the war got her acknowledgement from General U.S. Grant and a small stipend for her efforts. But it didn't cover the costs she accrued during the war, and she never recovered her social standing. She was labeled a "traitor," "crazy," and "mad" by the high society she used to associate with. 

After the war, she became Postmaster of Richmond during Grant's presidency. She hired many African Americans and women to posts.

When she died in 1900 at the age of 82, she left behind a legacy as an effective spy and a significant asset to the Union Army.

Resources used: nps.gov, battlefields.org

The post "Women in Wartime: American Civil War Spies" appeared first on sandinourshorts.blogspot.com

 

 

 

A POEM TO READ BY THE CAMPFIRE by Yvonne Saxon

 

The Listeners

BY WALTER DE LA MARE

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   

   Knocking on the moonlit door; 

MYSTERY AUTHORS’ PETS by Catty Doggens, Guest Blogger

 

James Patterson's cat

Many of our favorite mysteries include pets, and in homage to May being National Pet Month, here are some mystery authors' pets!

I can't say whether it helps James Patterson crank out yet another bestseller, but his cat Redboy sits on his head. Patterson says "He's a head cat, not a lap cat."

Janet Evanovich has a Havanese named Ollie and also has a "Readers' Pets" column on her website.

We know that long walks in nature can inspire writers, but David Baldacci quipped that "our dogs hid their leashes because we were walking them too much."

Val McDermid was adopted by a cat who followed her home one night and yowled at her door until she opened it. The cat strode right in and soon became a fat, curry-loving member of the family.

WOMEN IN WARTIME: THE CODEBREAKER by Yvonne Saxon

June 1916, Chicago, Illinois: After a week of searching, twenty-three year old Elizebeth Smith remains jobless, with no prospects. Elizebeth (spelled with an "e" because her mother didn't want her called "Liza") graduated from Hillsdale College in 1915 with a major in English Literature and had also studied Latin, Greek, and German. But she's quit her teaching job after a year because it was "uninspired." Now she has no choice but to return home to Indiana, defeated. It's her last day in the city, so she goes to the Newberry Library for a special treat-- a look at Shakespeare's First Folio, printed in 1623. A librarian sees her interest, talks to her, and makes a phone call. One hour later Elizebeth is being offered a job by George Fabyan, a wealthy industrialist!

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO CREATE! by Yvonne Saxon

"Out For Christmas Trees"
by Grandma Moses

If you've always wanted to "try your hand" at creative expression, such as art, dance, writing, cooking, music, you name it, but you feel as if you're too old, or it's too late, keep reading! Here are just a few examples of women who seemed to be "late bloomers," but became successful in their creative field.

Julia Child didn't start learning how to cook until she was 36. Until the end of World War II, the American cooking icon was working for the Office of Strategic Services (a spy agency) where she met her husband Paul. In preparation for their marriage, Julia enrolled in a "brides to be" cooking class, but her first meal she described as a disaster! It only made her more determined to learn how to cook well. When the couple moved to France in 1948 she fell in love with "that glorious food and those marvelous chefs." Although she was determined to become a chef it wasn't easy: her first exam at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school she failed. Her first cookbook she co-wrote with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck was initially rejected. Alfred A. Knopf eventually published the book in 1961 to immediate success. Then, at the age of 51 Child would become the host of PBS's very first cooking show, "The French Chef."

Toni Morrison, a Nobel laureate in literature, was almost 40 when her first novel was published. She began writing fiction at a Howard University informal poet's and writer's group. At one meeting she brought a short story about a Black girl who wanted blue eyes. Later, as a single working mother, she developed that story into her first novel, The Bluest Eye, getting up every morning at 4 a.m. to write while her two children slept. Another novel followed three years later and then her third novel, Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle award. In 1988, her novel Beloved  won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Before her death in 2019, Morrison penned 11 novels, many short stories, plays, and numerous other works of literature.

Laura Ingalls Wilder also started later--she was in her 40's when she began writing in farm and other small publications. Her first novel Pioneer Girl followed 20 years later and was immediately rejected. Her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, already a successful writer, urged her mother to turn her stories into a collection for children. At age 65, Little House In The Big Woods was published, the first of 8 books in the series inspired by Wilder's youth. 

Anna Mary Robertson Moses or "Grandma Moses" began painting in earnest at the age of 78. Born in 1860 on a farm, she would draw pictures on the white paper her father would bring home. She was also inspired to paint by taking art lessons at school. Starting at age 12 and for the next 15 years, she worked as a housekeeper for wealthier neighbors until she met and married her husband, Thomas Moses. With her own house, farm, and children to care for there wasn't time to paint, but she was creative at home. She created quilted objects, used house paint to draw a scene on a fireboard, and made embroidered pictures of yarn for her friends and family. By 76, she'd developed arthritis, and it was suggested that painting would be easier than embroidery. So in order to create a postman's Christmas gift, she turned to painting. If one of her hands started hurting she'd switch to the other one. At 78, her paintings were seen in the window of a drug store by an art collector.  He bought them all and commissioned more, launching her public career. Grandma Moses painted more than 1500 canvasses in three decades, her last painting done when she was 100. She lived to be 101.

Why not start your new year creating a work of beauty? Write that story! Paint that landscape! Cook that gourmet meal! Dance that tango! Weld that sculpture! It's not too late and you're not too old. What are you waiting for?

GET YOUR SLEUTH GAME ON! By Yvonne Saxon

Are you and your mystery-loving friends looking for a fun way to challenge your investigative skills? Want to solve a murder without leaving the comforts of home? Or maybe you secretly desire to be the villain every now and then—without committing a crime of course! Why not gather one or more likeminded friends around a tabletop board game and find out which one of you is the best detective? (Or villain, as the case may be!)

 ** For the Victorian sleuth in you **

1. Mysterium by Asmodee is a great group game where players work together to figure out who committed the murder at Warwick Manor, a haunted mansion full of ghosts. Can you and your friends beat the clock to solve the murder while ghosts send messages that may help or hinder you?

2. Also by Asmodee, in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you can step back in time to help Scotland Yard solve ten cases that get

TO CATCH A THIEF: ART FRAUD DETECTIVES FIGHTING CRIME by Yvonne Saxon

Art fraud has been around for centuries. It’s known that the Romans copied statues and passed them off as Greek. So many Old Masters (think Da Vinci, Raphael, Vermeer, and Rembrandt, for starters) have been copied, that there’s an Old Master forgery ring whose extent even the biggest auction houses and the top art specialists don’t know. It's not just paintings that are being counterfeited, either. Artifacts, statues, books, prints, etc., are all being stolen, copied, faked, and fabricated. For example, art dealer Tatiana Khan, owner of  Los Angeles' Chateau Allegre gallery, was paid $1,000 to copy Picasso's "La Femme Au Chapeau Bleu." She then sold the copy for $2 million to a buyer. “Fake art is the third largest criminal activity on Earth after drugs and weapons” according to a source.

WHAT WE'RE READING THIS SUMMER! by the Sand In Our Shorts Gang

It’s July, it’s hot, (in the northern hemisphere at least) and it’s time to grab a good book to read at the beach, the lake, the pool, or in the front porch swing! The Sand-in-our-Shorts writers are here sharing their summer reads with you. Their picks might be your next vacation read— check it out!

Michael Rigg:

I’m not much of a beach reader. Sun and sand and sweat don’t create an inviting atmosphere for reading. (And sunscreen makes the pages stick together.)  But sitting at a beach house in Sandbridge pouring over a novel, with the roar of the ocean as background? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Especially if there’s air conditioning involved. Next on my summer

WHAT'S IN OUR BEACH BAGS? by The Sand in our Shorts Gang

Who would have thought? It's been almost a year since we started the SAND IN OUR SHORTS blog! What fun! 

When we started out, the original group of contributing authors worked together on an article, "What's in Our Beach Bags?"  We never published it.  We'll, here we are a year into this adventure, and on the cusp of another summer. So we thought, "Why not publish it now?" And here we go! A special mid-week post! 

As we all get ready to head to the beach for a little R&R (that's Reading and Relaxation, which is what writers do), we asked each what they have in their beach bag. Here are their answers:

Michael Rigg:

My beach bag has lots of sunscreen (I like the spray-on kind)—with as many SPFs as you can get—a big-brimmed straw hat, sunglasses, binoculars, and a small cooler with cold soda and water. Maybe I’ll throw in a bag of munchies, if there’s enough room. I’ll also need to bring an umbrella because I’m not supposed to get too much sun. I don’t do well reading in the sun, but I’ll bring a copy of Virginia is for Mysteries III to impress everyone around me! The final thing in my bag is a beach towel. Oh, and my iPhone. Along with my umbrella (which probably won’t fit in my bag), I’ll have a nice folding chair. Maybe instead of a beach bag, I need one of those beach carts with the humongous wheels.

 

Jayne Ormerod:

I've got a lot of sand in the bottom of my beach bag. Lots and lots of sand. Could almost start my own private beach in my backyard. That's testament to frequent trips to the beach to watch the sailboat races, enjoyment of which is augmented while sipping a glass of wine at sunset. This requires that I also keep wine glass stakes in my beach bag. They are posts that are shoved into the sand close to my chair. They have a little knob at the top in which to slip the stem of my wine glass, holding it upright throughout the evening and thus preventing spillage. Wine spillage is a class-one felony at my beach. Cheers!

PICK YOUR POISON: TIPS FOR A "PLANT BASED" MYSTERY! by Yvonne Saxon

 

You see "plant-based" options everywhere: in grocery stores, in restaurants, even in fast food establishments. But unless you want to end up as a real-life victim, you'll want to pass on the following plant-based offerings and use these tips in a mystery instead!

1. Don't eat your vegetables! Did you know there's such a thing as "death by lima bean"? Raw lima beans contain extremely high levels of cyanide. How you get your character to ingest them is up to you, but for those you're keeping alive, thoroughly cook the beans, uncovered, so that the poison escapes as gas. Drain the cooking water too, unless you're "offing" more characters!

FIVE FAVORITE TROPES OF AN IRISH MYSTERY by Yvonne Saxon

 

When you think of a cozy Irish mystery, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Castles? Abbeys? Ghosts? Me too! I readily admit that I enjoy the Irish mystery stereotypes. In fact, I’m of the opinion that if a mystery is set in Ireland, it better have one or more of the following familiar elements!

First and foremost, the mystery must have ancient ruins! Give me castles with high battlements, broken walls, and stone staircases so I can question if the victim jumped or was pushed? Lots of drafty secret passages great for spying, kidnapping, or escaping, and centuries old weapons affixed to the wall or the requisite suit of armor. Also at least one ancient church or abbey must make an appearance. Gravestones and a wandering monk or two (either alive or dead) add to the atmosphere. Disappearing relics or Celtic artifacts really get my attention. Stone circles, like the Piper’s Stones in County Wicklow with their mystic background tend to send a shiver up my spine.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! By the Sand in Our Shorts bloggers

All of the writers of the "Sand in our Shorts" blog wish all of our readers a wonderful year to come! We've put together some of our favorite poems to curl up with on a cold winter's day, so grab a blanket and a warm cup of cheer and enjoy!

Maria Hudgins: My favorite poem is "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service.

"Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee . . ."

IF MYSTERY WRITERS WROTE CHRISTMAS SONGS by Yvonne Saxon

If you let a mystery writer loose with the lyrics of a Christmas song, you might end up singing something like this:

On the first day of Christmas, my mystery gave to me, crime scene tape strung on my Christmas tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my mystery gave to me, two inheritance fights, and some crime scene tape strung on my Christmas tree.

On the third day of Christmas, my mystery gave to me, three funny sidekicks, two money fights, and that yellow tape up on my Christmas tree.

TRICK OR TREAT FOR MYSTERY LOVERS! by Yvonne Saxon

 

Today, dear readers, we’re going trick or treating for mysteries! There are eight “houses” on this street and each one has clues to a mystery book, series, or tv/film adaptation. Some you know, others may be new to you. So imagine yourself dressed up as your favorite sleuth, and see if you can figure out what mysteries will be in your treat bag!

The first house is a Cape Cod; you can hear seagulls and smell the salt in the air. There’s no car in the driveway, just a bicycle with a basket leaning against the fence. Inside you can see an old-fashioned typewriter in a cozily decorated room. A basket of saltwater taffy sits beside another with twelve seasons of DVD’s, books, and even video games. You take the treats, but you’re sorry the owner’s gone now: you would have loved to have spent more time with her.

The next house is really old; it looks like it was built in the 1940’s. There are two nice old ladies on the porch serving elderberry wine and cakes. Suddenly, a man dressed like President Teddy Roosevelt charges out the door blowing a trumpet, giving everyone a fright! One of the ladies offers you a glass, but a frantic young man in the bushes gestures “NO!” He tosses a copy of a play in your bag and whispers “get out of here.”

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR MYSTERY, BLACK OR WITH CREAM AND SUGAR? by Yvonne Saxon

 

Choosing a mystery to read is like going into a coffee house and starting at the big board of coffee drinks: there are a lot of choices! Which one do you choose? What do those names even mean? Because mysteries are as varied as coffee drinks, why not choose you next mystery like you’d choose a coffee? How? By looking at the “menu” and the “ingredients”!

Let’s start with the basics. To make a good cup of black coffee, you need the right ratio of boiling water to high quality beans. Whether dripped, poured over, or pressed through, the right amount of water to beans will produce a satisfying cup. The right ratio of crime to be solved and interesting characters to solve it will produce a satisfying mystery.