Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War is the third book by New York Times best-selling author Karen Abbott. Though Abbott has recently changed her publishing name to Abbott Kahler, because Liar Temptress, Soldier, Spy is still printed and published as authored by Karen Abbott, this guide will refer to the author by that name. Abbott often writes about American women’s history, focusing on overlooked stories, accomplishments, and contributions of women. Her novels often focus on women living on the fringes of society. Critics at The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times call her narrative-driven, historical nonfiction so “engrossing” that it is hard to put down. Published in 2014, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is no exception. This novel portrays the lives of four women during the Civil War, two on the side of the Union and two on the side of the Confederacy. The novel was The Library Journal’s best book of 2014 and The Christian Science Monitor’s best book of 2014.

This guide refers to the 2015 Harper Collins print edition of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War.

Content Warning: This guide includes descriptions of wartime violence, sexual assault, murder, gun violence, racism, white supremacy, slavery, misogyny, and torture. This guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of period-typical offensive language and slurs, including the n-word.

Summary

Liar, Temptress, Solider, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War follows four women during the American Civil War: Belle Boyd, Emma Edmonson, Rose Greenhow, and Elizabeth Van Lew. The novel is divided into five parts: each year of the war and an Epilogue. Abbott weaves the lives of these women together, illustrating the many ways the women’s various choices and actions affected the others across enemy lines and beyond.

Belle Boyd hailed from Martinsburg, Virginia. The Civil War broke out just as she was coming of age at 17. Belle, who fervently supported the Confederacy, at first took respectable actions, joining sewing circles, making uniforms for soldiers, and passing out religious pamphlets to soldiers. However, dissatisfied, Belle began working as a spy, eventually using her familial connection to Stonewall Jackson’s army to handle intelligence officially on behalf of the Confederacy. Belle flirted with Union soldiers and officials, asking them about troop numbers and movements. Eventually, Belle was placed under house arrest and threatened with prison. While under house arrest, she warned Stonewall Jackson of Union plans, securing a Confederate victory. When the Union recaptured the Shenandoah Valley, Belle was sent to prison in Washington, DC, in 1863. Her father passed away during her imprisonment. Shortly after her release, Belle volunteered to carry Confederate papers to England; on the way, she met her future husband, Samuel Hardinge, a Union naval officer who nearly apprehended her. Ultimately, Belle was exiled, Samuel was discharged from the Union military, and the two reunited and married in Britain. Belle was often drunk and abusive, unhappy after the war. She had one daughter with Samuel, named Grace, and three more children with her second husband. During her first marriage, Belle became an actress, eventually joining the lecture circuit and acting out stories from her time as a Confederate spy. Her second husband discouraged this work, however, so she stayed at home until they divorced 15 years later. Her third husband encouraged her to return to acting. She died in 1900, her legacy and life relegated to the past.

Emma Edmonson was born in Canada and, after a tumultuous childhood and adolescence, ran away and assumed a new identity as a man named Frank Thompson. Emma lived as Frank and sold Bibles for four years until 1861, when she felt compelled by God to enlist in the Union Army and help abolish slavery. Though she had lived as a man for a nearly a decade by the end of the Civil War, Emma did not identify as a man. At the start of the war, Emma worked as a nurse and medic with the Union Army. While treating patients, she met one of her dearest wartime friends, a man named Jerome Robbins. Eventually, Emma trusted him enough to share her secret.

As the war progressed, Emma became a mail carrier and eventually a spy charged with finding food and supplies in the Southern countryside. Though wounded many times in battle, she always refused medical treatment to avoid discovery. In 1863, Emma went behind enemy lines and found herself conscripted into the Confederate Army. However, as quickly as she was drafted, she managed to escape. When Emma returned, the malaria she had contracted during a mission resurfaced; she trusted Jerome to care for her. On hearing that a woman from an Iowa regiment, having been discovered, had died by suicide, Emma left the army. She began living as a woman again and worked as a nurse. After the war, Emma married and had three children, though two died young. She and her husband also adopted two orphaned brothers. Emma wrote a successful memoir and, though the fight took many years, won the right to collect her Civil War veteran’s pension. Emma died from a recurrence of her malaria in 1898.

Elizabeth Van Lew was a wealthy 43-year-old spinster living in Richmond, Virginia, when the Civil War began. She was a Unionist, and the Van Lews used their wealth to free many enslaved African Americans, but she had to be careful: The Confederacy did not tolerate any “disloyal” sentiment. At the start of the war, Elizabeth visited Union prisoners, sneaking them supplies to help them survive the harsh Confederate prisons. To avoid suspicion, Elizabeth invited a commander based at one Richmond prison to stay at the Van Lew mansion while he and his family sought permanent lodging.

Elizabeth also placed a spy, Mary-Jane Bowser, in the Confederate White House. Mary-Jane was a formerly enslaved person who Elizabeth had freed, educated, and now viewed as a daughter. Mary-Jane had an eidetic memory but pretended to be illiterate; she would read Jefferson Davis’s communications while cleaning his office. Mary-Jane passed the information to Elizabeth, who would encode and send it to Union generals. Elizabeth had a tenuous understanding with the head of the Confederacy’s Tobacco Warehouse Prison Complex, General John Winder. She started the Richmond Underground, a spy network that helped Union prisoners of war escape prison and safely gain passage to the North. Despite being the subject of constant scrutiny, she successfully passed information to General Benjamin Butler and smuggled information in and out of the prisons. After the war, Elizabeth was an outcast in Richmond society, with much of her wealth spent during the war. The United States government did not reimburse her as promised. Elizabeth was appointed as postmaster of Richmond during Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency, but after his second term, the next president removed her from the position. Elizabeth failed to sell the mansion; resigned, she lived her final years in isolation with only her niece, Eliza, by her side. Elizabeth passed away in 1900.

When the war broke out, Rose Greenhow was a wealthy widow living in Washington, DC, and an outspoken supporter of the Confederacy. Rose’s deceased husband, Dr. Robert Greenhow, connected Rose with many influential politicians who greatly influenced her. Rose had four daughters with him, though only one lived with her at the time, an eight-year-old named after her mother. As a widow, to maintain her status in Washington, DC, Rose had many affairs and relationships with politicians, businessmen, and officers of the Union Army. She used those relationships to spy on the Union, even building a spy ring of women, and used her network to connect Confederate officials. The intelligence she gathered was immediately helpful to the Confederacy, and she was credited with securing the Confederacy victory at the First Battle of Bullrun.

Rose was eventually arrested by Allan Pinkerton, a highly respected detective hired by General McClellan. After months of house arrest, Rose and Little Rose, as her daughter was called, were officially sent to prison, where the conditions were dreadful. Rose was eventually put on trial and exiled to the South. She stayed in Richmond until becoming an emissary for the Confederacy in Europe.

On traveling to England, Rose and Little Rose met with various members of the aristocracy, but the British Parliament met her pleas to recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation with indifference. She moved on to France, eventually meeting with Emperor Napoleon III. He was sympathetic to the cause, promising to support it, but only if the Confederacy won the war. In 1864, Rose gave up on securing European aid. She traveled back to the Confederacy, intent on doing anything she could to help “the rebel cause.” However, her ship got stuck on a shoal. Instead of waiting for high tide, which would risk capture, Rose demanded to be taken inland immediately. The lifeboat flipped, and Rose drowned. She was lauded as a hero by the Confederacy.