Civil War historian and celebrated author Philip Van Doren Stern presents an underground history woven from first hand accounts of Civil War spies, scouts, detectives and double agents. Secret Missions of the Civil War gives an inside look into the birth of modern spy warfare: secret codes, Allen Pinkerton, assassinations, McClellan's personal spy, European arms dealing, the Secret Service, Morgan and Mosby, the stunning Mrs. Rose O’Neal, privateers, the New York draft riots and torpedoes. Through astute and carefully documented commentary, Stern shows how seemingly random acts of underground warfare dramatically influenced the course of the war and American history.
The American Civil War was one of the most harrowing conflicts in history. What many of us don't know is the key role that spies played on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line during the four-year struggle. This secret war was waged by an intriguing lineup of participants: detective agency chief Allan Pinkerton, who was said to have thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln; Elizabeth Van Lew, known as "Crazy Bet," the operator of a Union spy ring right in the heart of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia; and John Singleton Mosby, or the "Gray Ghost" as he was known, who created havoc by attacking Union troops behind their own lines - and disappearing into the countryside, seemingly without a trace. The Secret Civil War tells their stories and more in a compelling tale of espionage, daring, and in many cases, conflicting loyalties.
Provides the birth and death dates, astrological sign, nicknames, famous words, and little-known or bizarre facts about the lives of over twenty-five people on the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War.
This unique history of the Civil War considers the impact of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the path to as well as the course of the war. Beginning with the European secret societies that laid the groundwork for Freemasonry in the United States, Mark A. Lause analyzes how the Old World's traditions influenced various underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippard's Brotherhood of the Union, an American attempt to replicate the political secret societies that influenced the European revolutions of 1848. Lause traces the Brotherhood's various manifestations, the most conspicuous being the Knights of the Golden Circle (out of which developed the Ku Klux Klan), and the Confederate secret groups through which John Wilkes Booth and others attempted to undermine the Union. Lause profiles the key leaders of these organizations, with special focus on George Lippard, Hugh Forbes, and George Washington Lafayette Bickley. Antebellum secret societies ranged politically from those with progressive or even revolutionary agendas to those that pursued conservative or oppressive goals. This book shows how, in the years leading up to the Civil War, these clandestine organizations exacerbated existing sectional tensions in the United States. Lause's research indicates that the pervasive influence of secret societies may have played a part in key events such as the Freesoil movement, the beginning of the Republican party, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Lincoln's election, and the Southern secession process of 1860-1861. This exceptional study encompasses both white and African American secret society involvement, revealing the black fraternal experience in antebellum America as well as the clandestine operations that provided assistance to escaped slaves via the Underground Railroad. Unraveling these pervasive and extensive networks of power and influence, A Secret Society History of the Civil War demonstrates that antebellum secret societies played a greater role in affecting Civil War-era politics than has been previously acknowledged.
This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the nation—filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue. Veteran CIA correspondent Douglas Waller delivers a riveting account of the heroes and misfits who carried out a shadow war of espionage and covert operations behind the Confederate battlefields. Lincoln’s Spies follows four agents from the North—three men and one woman—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration after he learns of an assassination attempt from his agents working undercover as Confederate soldiers. But he proved less than competent as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Sharpe deployed secret agents throughout the South, planted misinformation with Robert E. Lee’s army, and outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets that she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of history. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. He assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, DC. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these operatives was Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take whatever chances necessary to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies is a “meticulous chronicle of all facets of Lincoln’s war effort” (Kirkus Reviews) and an excellent choice for those wanting “a cracking good tale” (Publishers Weekly) of espionage in the Civil War.
An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine
“A treasure trove for historians . . . A real addition to Civil War history” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). At the end of the American Civil War, most of the intelligence records disappeared—remaining hidden for over a century. As a result, little has been understood about the role of espionage and other intelligence sources, from balloonists to signalmen with their telescopes. When, at the National Archives, Edwin C. Fishel discovered long-forgotten documents—the operational files of the Army of the Potomac’s Bureau of Military Information—he had the makings of this, the first book to thoroughly and authentically examine the impact of intelligence on the Civil War, providing a new perspective on this period in history. Drawing on these papers as well as over a thousand pages of reports by General McClellan’s intelligence chief, the detective Allan Pinkerton, and other information, he created an account of the Civil War that “breaks much new ground” (The New York Times). “The former chief intelligence reporter for the National Security Agency brings his professional expertise to bear in this detailed analysis, which makes a notable contribution to Civil War literature as the first major study to present the war’s campaigns from an intelligence perspective. Focusing on intelligence work in the eastern theater, 1861–1863, Fishel plays down the role of individual agents like James Longstreet’s famous ‘scout,’ Henry Harrison, concentrating instead on the increasingly sophisticated development of intelligence systems by both sides. . . . Expertly written, organized and researched.” —Publishers Weekly “Fundamentally changes our picture of the secret service in the Civil War.” —The Washington Post
The American Civil War was one of the most harrowing conflicts in history. What many of us don't know is the key role that spies played on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line during the four-year struggle. This secret war was waged by an intriguing lineup of participants: detective agency chief Allan Pinkerton, who was said to have thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln; Elizabeth Van Lew, known as "Crazy Bet," the operator of a Union spy ring right in the heart of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia; and John Singleton Mosby, or the "Gray Ghost" as he was known, who created havoc by attacking Union troops behind their own lines - and disappearing into the countryside, seemingly without a trace. The Secret Civil War tells their stories and more in a compelling tale of espionage, daring, and in many cases, conflicting loyalties.
The American Civil War was one of the most harrowing conflicts in history. What many of us don't know is the key role that spies played on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line during the four-year struggle. This secret war was waged by an intriguing lineup of participants: detective agency chief Allan Pinkerton, who was said to have thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln; Elizabeth Van Lew, known as "Crazy Bet," the operator of a Union spy ring right in the heart of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia; and John Singleton Mosby, or the "Gray Ghost" as he was known, who created havoc by attacking Union troops behind their own lines - and disappearing into the countryside, seemingly without a trace. The Secret Civil War tells their stories and more in a compelling tale of espionage, daring, and in many cases, conflicting loyalties.
The pigpen cipher, the Devil's Coffee Mill, and germ warfare were all a part of the Civil War, but you won't learn that in your history books! Discover the truth about Widow Greenhow's spy ring, how soldiers stole a locomotive, and the identity of the mysterious “Gray Ghost.” Then learn how to make a cipher wheel and send secret light signals to your friends. It's all part of the true stories from the Top Secret Files: The Civil War. Take a look if you dare, but be careful! Some secrets are meant to stay hidden . . . Ages 9-12
