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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Coming up on the show, we're going to

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Speaker 1: mention the household of Elizabeth Van lu who ran a

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Speaker 1: spine network for the Union during the US Civil War

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Speaker 1: and she ran it from the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

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Speaker 1: Previous hosts actually talked about Van Lou and her spy network,

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Speaker 1: and that is in Today's Saturday Classic, which is about

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Speaker 1: one of her spies, Mary Elizabeth Bowser. This episode was

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Speaker 1: by previous hosts of the show, Sarah and Deblina, and

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Speaker 1: it originally came out on July, So enjoy Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblina

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Speaker 1: Chalko Boarding and and we are taking another look in

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Speaker 1: this episode at what is apparently my new favorite topic, spies.

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Speaker 1: I sent you an article last week and you were

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Speaker 1: pretty thrilled about it. Yeah, I was. I'm sorry, Sarah,

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Speaker 1: I'm afraid you think I might be obsessed with this

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Speaker 1: subject r spy. I wish I were a spy, but

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Speaker 1: really I'm not obsessed with this topic. I just think

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Speaker 1: it's really fascinating and there are so many different facets

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Speaker 1: to it that you can look at and we're going

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Speaker 1: to get off of it soon or at least move

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Speaker 1: on to something else civil war related. But we couldn't

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Speaker 1: do that without at least taking a look at this

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Speaker 1: last or one other facet I should say, of the

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Speaker 1: of Civil War espionage, which is African American spies. And

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Speaker 1: it appears as though many Black Americans took an active

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Speaker 1: role in Union espionage during the war, although, as we'll

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Speaker 1: see a little later on, in most cases there aren't

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Speaker 1: a lot of records around now to tell us exactly

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Speaker 1: what their individual accomplishments were. Yeah, and there are a

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Speaker 1: few reasons for that. It's due in part to racial prejudice,

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Speaker 1: but also because Union spy masters would often destroy any

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Speaker 1: record of their contributions after the war to protect the

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Speaker 1: African American spies. And then most didn't want their identities

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Speaker 1: to become known in the first place, even after the war,

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Speaker 1: because they feared repercussions if Confederate sympathizers ever found out

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Speaker 1: about it. They had taken a big risk spying in

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Speaker 1: the first place and didn't want to get caught after

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Speaker 1: the fact. Yeah, the penalty was death, so it would

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Speaker 1: be really bad if you were found out. But According

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Speaker 1: to the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, intelligence

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Speaker 1: on the Confederates provided by African Americans, which was known

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Speaker 1: as Black dispatches, was the quote most prolific and productive

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Speaker 1: category of intelligence obtained and acted on by Union forces

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Speaker 1: throughout the Civil War. So former slaves and free blacks

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Speaker 1: alike participated in this and Harriet Tubman is probably the

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Speaker 1: most well known name in this category of spies, although

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Speaker 1: she's probably better known for her work with the Underground Railroad.

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Speaker 1: That's how most people know her, I think, but existing

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Speaker 1: records and books written by other self proclaimed spies. In

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Speaker 1: other words, white spies give us information to substantiate about

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Speaker 1: eight to ten more include Udine. The person we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about in this episode, Mary Elizabeth Bowser. We

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Speaker 1: don't know that much about Bowser, including whether that was

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Speaker 1: even her real name. Some people still question her very existence,

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Speaker 1: but she was eventually inducted into the U. S. Army

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Speaker 1: Intelligence Hall of Fame, so clearly some people believe in

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Speaker 1: her contributions. Yeah, you can't tell her story though, without

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Speaker 1: talking about someone whose existence is definitely known, that of

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Speaker 1: her Union spy master Elizabeth Van lou who started a

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Speaker 1: ring of spies in Richmond, and with the help of

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Speaker 1: Van lou story, we learned the generally accepted version of

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Speaker 1: events concerning Bowser too and can explore the mystery surrounding her.

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Speaker 1: Who was she really all right? So, Mary Elizabeth Bowser

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Speaker 1: was born into slavery in about eighteen thirty nine, and

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Speaker 1: there's some questions surrounding her exact name, as we mentioned,

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Speaker 1: but it's likely that in those days she was known

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Speaker 1: just as Mary or even van Lose Mary, because she

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Speaker 1: was the slave of John van Lou who was a

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Speaker 1: wealthy hardware merchant in Richmond, Virginia, and the Van Leus

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Speaker 1: were a very prominent family. They were well connected, they

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Speaker 1: were well respected. They had this huge mansion on the

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Speaker 1: highest hill in Richmond. Things started to change though for

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Speaker 1: the family after John van Lew died, and sources differ

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Speaker 1: as to when that was eighteen forty three or eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty one. But it wasn't the wealth that changed. The

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Speaker 1: family definitely inherited all of that. It was some of

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Speaker 1: their social conventions and beliefs that started to change. Right. So,

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Speaker 1: after his death, the eldest Van lou daughter, Elizabeth van Leu,

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Speaker 1: convinced her mother to free all nine of the family

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Speaker 1: slaves Mary included, and she also supposedly bought the relatives

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Speaker 1: of those slaves and freed them too. So why did

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Speaker 1: she free these slaves? Well, Elizabeth had always had a

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Speaker 1: sympathy for slaves, but she had also been educated by

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Speaker 1: a school in Philadelphia that opposed slavery, so that just

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Speaker 1: reinforced her beliefs and kind of solidified them. Several slaves

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Speaker 1: chose to stay on as paid servants in the Van

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Speaker 1: Lou household, and Mary was one of them. Elizabeth, though,

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Speaker 1: after being around Mary for a wild did recognize her

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Speaker 1: intelligence and ended up sending her up to school up

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Speaker 1: north in the late eighteen fifties. We're not sure where

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Speaker 1: exactly it was, but may have been a Quaker school

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Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. Mary did return to Richmond though, before the

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Speaker 1: war started, and according to a two thousand six article

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Speaker 1: in American History, public record does show that she married

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Speaker 1: a free black man named William or perhaps Wilson Bowser

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one in St. John's Church, and that's

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Speaker 1: where her last name of Bowser comes from. But she

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Speaker 1: seems to have immediately taken up with the Van Lou

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Speaker 1: household again, this time though it was to do a

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Speaker 1: very different kind of work. Yeah, because after the war started,

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth van Leu really didn't waste any time contributing to

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Speaker 1: the union effort. She got permission to nerves wounded union

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Speaker 1: soldiers in Libby Prison, and conditions there were really pretty bad.

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Speaker 1: She would visit regularly and assist the soldiers, you know,

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Speaker 1: bringing them items like books and stationary and food, and

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Speaker 1: she in this way started her spy efforts too, because

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Speaker 1: she would carry letters and messages in and out of

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Speaker 1: the prison, and the way she'd do this was pretty clever.

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Speaker 1: She'd hide them in books or in the bottom of

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Speaker 1: a food pan, and then relay those messages to union officers.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes she would just talk to the new prisoners and

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Speaker 1: they would tell her what they'd seen, and other times, uh,

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Speaker 1: they'd tell her what they had overheard from doctors or

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Speaker 1: nurses or guards who were talking in the prison. So

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Speaker 1: she had a lot of different means of communication going

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Speaker 1: on within the prison, but also some cool ways to

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Speaker 1: code or messages. Yeah. Sometimes the books she carried out,

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Speaker 1: for example, would have faintly underlined letters and numbers that

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Speaker 1: formed a message when you put them together and read

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Speaker 1: them altogether. A little smarter than Bell Boyd's tactic of

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Speaker 1: signing Bell at the end of her aspect or early

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Speaker 1: tactic at least or the pages of the books would

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Speaker 1: have tiny pin pricks on them that meant something, so

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Speaker 1: the books were used in that way. But another tactic

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Speaker 1: of Eliza Bits is that she would write letters that

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Speaker 1: had coded messages written in invisible ink between the lines,

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Speaker 1: and the ink would turn black if you applied milk

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Speaker 1: to it. And Sarah loves this one because she used

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Speaker 1: to be quite the connoisseur of invisible ink. I was

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Speaker 1: kind of the treehouse spy in my day, and I

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Speaker 1: did have some invisible ink, which which I used a

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Speaker 1: great effect. But Elizabeth would carry the CIPHERD code for

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Speaker 1: all of these messages in the back of her watch,

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Speaker 1: which I thought that was really interesting too, because who's

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Speaker 1: going to take apart this Richmond socialites watch when she's

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Speaker 1: leaving the prison, you know, just a real clever final

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Speaker 1: detail for all of this. Yeah, And it said that

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Speaker 1: years later when she died, they actually found that code

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Speaker 1: in the same place, So she kept it all those years,

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Speaker 1: even after the war, right, so when it became dangerous

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Speaker 1: to send this information through the mail or through the post.

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth set up an elaborate network with five courier relay

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Speaker 1: points between her home and Union army officers. Sometimes she

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Speaker 1: would um tear a message into pieces and have each

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Speaker 1: piece delivered by a different agent to keep it hidden. Yeah. Again,

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Speaker 1: pretty amazing tactics. So of course others in Richmond noticed

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Speaker 1: that this woman had clear union sympathies. She was visiting

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Speaker 1: the prison and all of that, and they didn't improve.

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Speaker 1: So to offset suspicion, she started up an act. She

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Speaker 1: pretended to be crazy. She wore dirty, torn clothing, she

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Speaker 1: left her hair uncombed, it got all matted. She would hum,

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Speaker 1: she would jerk her head back and forth and carry

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Speaker 1: on conversations with herself while she walked down the street.

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Speaker 1: People even started calling her crazy bet, so nobody paid

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Speaker 1: that much heed to what she was doing. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: again to compare her to Bell Boyd, I mean, in

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Speaker 1: that episode we talked about how Bell used her feminine

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Speaker 1: wiles to carry off her spine draw out information from

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Speaker 1: from union men. Yeah, exactly. And Elizabeth has had to

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Speaker 1: pretend to be crazy and you know, use all these

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Speaker 1: secret codes, all these kind of involved tactics because she

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Speaker 1: was in her forties when she started spying and was

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Speaker 1: a spinster, not necessarily considered that attractive, so she took

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Speaker 1: a different approach. She did um and it was a

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Speaker 1: fairly effective one. Another thing that she did that was

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Speaker 1: different from Bell too, though, is that she didn't work alone,

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Speaker 1: and probably the best known for is establishing this extensive

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Speaker 1: network of spies in Richmond that the Federals dubbed the

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Speaker 1: Richmond Ring, and it consisted of hundreds of spies that

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Speaker 1: managed to work their way into pretty much every arm

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Speaker 1: of the Confederate establishment, Libby prison, the war, Navy departments,

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Speaker 1: Richmond businesses, and with the help of Mary Bowser, into

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Speaker 1: the Confederate Executive Mansion itself. All right, So we've got

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Speaker 1: to explain the background behind that. It said that Elizabeth,

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Speaker 1: perhaps through the recommendation of society connections, got Mary a

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Speaker 1: job as a servant in none other than Jefferson Davis's

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Speaker 1: household under the name Ellen Bond. And Mary, of course

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Speaker 1: was said to be intelligent, she had gone to school,

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Speaker 1: but she also put on an act, just like Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: in a way she didn't let others know how smart

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Speaker 1: she really was. She pretended to be kind of dim

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Speaker 1: wit it a little bit loopy, so no one in

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Speaker 1: the executive mansion would think anything of saying important things

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Speaker 1: in front of her. Yeah, up to that point, slaves

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Speaker 1: in general were underestimated, though that started to change a

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Speaker 1: little bit as the war went on. That was one

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Speaker 1: of the things that really blew me away about this

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Speaker 1: this podcast too, that that you would have to go

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Speaker 1: through that transformation of feeling that people would be so

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Speaker 1: confident to speak in front of their slaves at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the war at least. Yeah, it's hard for

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Speaker 1: us to imagine nowadays. But in eighteen sixty three, General

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Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee made a statement that I think was

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Speaker 1: kind of a revelation at the time. His quote was,

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Speaker 1: the chief source of information to the enemy is through

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Speaker 1: our negroes. I mean, people didn't even realize that their

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Speaker 1: servants would be listening or would be taking in and

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Speaker 1: interpreting the information that they were so freely giving out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so apparently Mary's tactic worked. You know, she made herself

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Speaker 1: blend into the background, just kind of a spacey young

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Speaker 1: woman who was working in the house. And meanwhile, though

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Speaker 1: she was listening to everything she heard while she was

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Speaker 1: serving meals in the Presidential dining room, she saved scraps

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Speaker 1: from Davis's waiste basket while she cleaned up his study.

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Speaker 1: She would memorize messages that she read on his desk

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Speaker 1: while she was dusting. And a man named Thomas McNiven,

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Speaker 1: who was a Scottish baker in Richmond at the time

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Speaker 1: and also a union spy and the one who gave

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Speaker 1: us the only documented reference to Mary as a union spy,

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Speaker 1: said that she had a photographic memory, so she could

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Speaker 1: remember every word of the mess wages that she saw. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the info that she got included things like true movements,

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Speaker 1: military strategies, treasury reports, and from time to time Mary

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Speaker 1: would meet up with Elizabeth near the Van lou mansion

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Speaker 1: to give her reports of what she learned, and then

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth would come dressed as a countrywoman so that she

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be recognized, basically, and it said that McNiven, for

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Speaker 1: his part, would sometimes serve as a courier for Mary too.

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Speaker 1: When his bakery wagon came around to the Executive mansion,

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Speaker 1: she'd passed information along to him, and nobody thought anything

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Speaker 1: of it because it was just the baker coming backer

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Speaker 1: and the servant picking up the goods. So Mary pulled

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Speaker 1: off this act from about eighteen sixty three to eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty five, and Elizabeth reported everything she found out back

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Speaker 1: to Ulysses s. Grant, and it said at one point

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Speaker 1: General Lee complained that the enemy received his directives before

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Speaker 1: they even reached his own lieutenant. So clearly there was

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Speaker 1: a pretty sophisticated spying system going on in Richmond. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's all said that Davis suspected that there was

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Speaker 1: a leak in his house, but he never managed to

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Speaker 1: really figure out who it was. But Mary must have

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Speaker 1: felt the heat of suspicion because in eighteen sixty five

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Speaker 1: she just disappeared. She fled the capital, and some even

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Speaker 1: say that she may have tried to burn down the

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Speaker 1: house on her way out the door. We're not sure

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Speaker 1: if that's actually kind of call attention to your own flight,

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Speaker 1: but nonetheless, no one knows what happened to her. So

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Speaker 1: after the war, Van Loo and the federal government destroyed

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Speaker 1: all the records of the Richmond Ring to protect the

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Speaker 1: lives of everybody who was involved. But again that's why

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Speaker 1: so many details of Mary's life are still very sketchy.

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Speaker 1: So we mentioned McNiven and how he gave us our

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Speaker 1: only documented source of Mary's spying, but some people even

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Speaker 1: feel that his account can't be trusted because he had

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Speaker 1: this tendency to exaggerate. Nevertheless, stories about Mary did start

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Speaker 1: showing up as earliest nineteen hundred in Richmond newspapers, and

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Speaker 1: Van Loo's niece even revealed her name in an inner

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Speaker 1: you in nineteen ten, So clearly some people knew who

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Speaker 1: this was, and they were talking about her well after

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Speaker 1: the fact, right Bowser maybe even left a diary behind,

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Speaker 1: and it had reportedly been seen by the wife of

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Speaker 1: her great great grand nephew as late as in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty two and would have been a gold mine of

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Speaker 1: information about her life potentially, but it was thrown away.

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Speaker 1: And we mentioned in the beginning that we weren't even

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Speaker 1: exactly sure about what Mary's real name was, because more

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Speaker 1: recent research by scholar Elizabeth Varren, who wrote a book

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Speaker 1: on Van Lou, suggests that Mary's name was actually married

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Speaker 1: Jane Richards and Mary Jane Richards was a Van Lou

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Speaker 1: slave who was sent to be educated in New Jersey

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Speaker 1: as a child, and after the war, Richard's married this

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Speaker 1: guy with the last named Garvin and went on to

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Speaker 1: become an educator, and a couple of times in an

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Speaker 1: interview and in a letter, she did admit to working

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Speaker 1: in the Secret Service during the war as a detective,

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Speaker 1: even though parts of her story contradict some other account

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Speaker 1: of Bowser's life. So it's it's hard to say. Maybe

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Speaker 1: this is the same woman, maybe maybe it's different. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but maybe it does lend some validity to Bowser's story though,

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Speaker 1: the story that a person like her existed after the war.

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Speaker 1: Verena Davis Jefferson, Davis's wife, was asked about the espionage

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Speaker 1: work of her former maid, Mary Bowser, and she denied

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Speaker 1: that any of her Richmond servants could have been spies,

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Speaker 1: and in nineteen o five letters she even said quote,

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Speaker 1: I had no educated Negro in my household and really

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Speaker 1: just flatly denied having hired anyone from Van lou So

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Speaker 1: her response is considered kind of questionable, though, because she

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Speaker 1: reportedly had a few servants on staff who were very

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Speaker 1: well known and widely known around the area to be educated.

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Speaker 1: So she may have just said this because she didn't

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Speaker 1: want to admit that she had been duped by someone

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Speaker 1: working in her household. Yeah, or maybe she wasn't even

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Speaker 1: aware of what was going on in her household, didn't

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Speaker 1: realize her own servants were educated, especially since we know

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Speaker 1: Mary was putting on an act. Presumably others could have

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Speaker 1: been too, And that's a good point. But as for

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Speaker 1: Van lou, Grant praised her after the war for her contributions.

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Speaker 1: He said, quote, you have sent me the most valuable

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Speaker 1: information received from Richmond during the war. So very high praise.

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Speaker 1: And when he became president, he appointed her Richmond postmaster,

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Speaker 1: a position that paid four thousand dollars a year, but

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Speaker 1: after he left office, she lost that gig. She went

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Speaker 1: on to work in the Washington Post Office, but eventually

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Speaker 1: had to leave that too, and then couldn't get work. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and by the time she died on September at the

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Speaker 1: age of eighty two, she was very poor. She was lonely.

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Speaker 1: She had spent all her money off her inheritance on

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Speaker 1: her spy efforts during the war and helping former slaves

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Speaker 1: after that, And in the end, the family of a

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Speaker 1: man she had helped in Libby prison came through for her.

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Speaker 1: They gave her some income, but she still had no

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Speaker 1: friends locally because of that controversial stance. She had taken

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Speaker 1: during the war, so kind of a sad ending to

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Speaker 1: the story of a master spy that interesting in the US.

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Speaker 1: She certainly stuck to her principles. We can can say

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Speaker 1: that for Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Since this episode is out of the archive, if you

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Speaker 1: heard an email address or Facebook U r L or

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Speaker 1: something similar over the course of the show that could

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Speaker 1: be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast

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Speaker 1: at i heart radio dot com. Our old house stuff

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Speaker 1: works email address no longer works, and you can find

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Speaker 1: us all over social media at missed in History. And

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