Sepia Saturday: A Real-Life Spy
Not that I'm endorsing spying, you understand, but somehow I think of spying in wartime as a guy thing. So it was intriguing to find these old images of Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy, in the Library of Congress Photo Collection (images from the Brady-Handy Studio in Washington, D.C.). She gathered intelligence for the South from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia. Her information proved so valuable to General "Stonewall" Jackson during the campaign in the Shenandoah Valley that he commissioned her as a Captain and aide-de-camp on his staff. She was eventually betrayed by her lover in summer 1862 and imprisoned for a month in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. She was then part of a prisoner exchange and was released. She, undaunted, continued her spy career. She was arrested again in June 1863. She was released from prison on December 1, 1863 suffering from typhoid and went to Europe to regain her health. While in England, she had a career on t...