The Secret Civil War

The Secret Civil War by John Reynolds Sawyer is about spies and guerrillas during The War between the States, sometimes called the Northern War of Aggression by Southerners. The author does not take sides in the book. Spies of both sides are treated fairly; the guerilla warfare was pretty much done by Southerners except for the Kansas-Missouri conflicts between the Jayhawkers and the Bushwackers, called by one man, “ragged, half-armed, diseased, mutinous rabble.”

The book is well researched; the author lists about 60 sources at the back of the book. He writes about some people I had never heard of although Civil War buffs probably know most of them. I did recognize Allan Pinkerton as the man who headed up a group of railroad detectives, generally known as the Pinkertons. He ultimately became the head of a group that worked for Abraham Lincoln. Pinkerton liked to style himself as the head of the first secret service arm in the federal government, but that was a stretch on the truth. When he started in Chicago, he and another fellow had a sign made, an unblinking eye with the statement “We never sleep” under it. It is from that sign and motto that we get the term private eye. Those are the kinds of things I am always interested in.

Bloody Bill Anderson, Quantrill’s Raiders, and a few others are mentioned in the chapter on guerilla warfare. Ladies did their part on both sides of the conflict. They seemed to be real charmers, and one is mentioned for her beauty. They overheard things or got admirers to tell them things they then passed on to those they were working for. Some were pretty ingenious in how they got the messages out. The author points out that spying in that day and age was rather unorganized and somewhat made up by the spies as they went along.

The book is rather short, interesting to read if you like human interest stories and are fond of history, especially the Civil War era. It is a bit choppy due to the various stories and characters that he writes about. The only thread of connection is that they were all involved in spying and disruptive activities of some sort. In Pinkerton’s case, he was trying to catch spies and protect the interests of the North, in particular President Lincoln and a couple of railroads, but his men did provide intelligence regarding some enemy troop movements also. He and George McClellan were friends due to their railroad association.

Belle Boyd and Rose Greenhow were Confederate sympathizers and were quite successful in ferreting out good information that helped the Confederacy, especially regarding movements of troops and supplies. The chapter on these ladies is called, “Petticoat Spies; the Confederacy Owes You a Debt.” There is a chapter on the signal corps, and the curious thing is the two fellows who developed it worked together prior to the war but ended up on different sides during the war. Another chapter is devoted to General Grant’s spy network and one about partisans, mostly local sympathizers living in areas where the opposition was generally in control.

One chapter, “The Great Locomotive Chase,” had some drama to it. Thirty men headed by James J. Andrews, a Union scout, went into Chattanooga and stole a train with the idea of sabotaging bridges, tunnels, and tracks along the way out. They are chased, and it is a good story. A song and a movie by the same name as the chapter title were made. After the war all of the survivors were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first recipients ever to do so.

In sum, I liked the book. I was a jumble of stories determined by the content, but it made it easy to pick up and put down after a chapter since there was no continuity from story to story. Truly it was the secret side of the war in two senses; it was done mostly in the shadows, and it doesn’t appear in the history books we generally read.

good fun read!

Just a listing of characters on both sides who spied for one or the other or both, along with a brief background of each person.