War history. All at the university of virginia. Thankfully, shes not a hockey buff. I dont believe she is. She said, go caps. What has happened to the American Sports scene . I dont know. I never thought in a civil war conference people would be jawing about hockey. Such is life. A very accomplished scholar. Shes published a number of books, including we mean to be counted, white women and the politics in antebellum virginia. This union, one of my favorite overviews of the 1850s. Published by university of North Carolina press. Victory, defeat and freedom at the end of the civil war, published by oxford. Its an outstanding book. Its a way to look beyond the surrender proceedings and material culture, visual culture. How it resided in american memory. Its outstanding. I cant say enough good things about it. Today, subject of her talk, she published true story of Elizabeth Van lew, a union agent in the heart of the confederacy. [ applause ] i bring you greetings from virginia and im delighted today to tell you about a remarkable virginian. Elizabeth van lew, i wrote a biographer of her 15 years ago. As we approach the 200th anniversary of her birth she was born september 25, 1818. Were coming up on the anniversary. Im more fascinated by her than ever. In part because new details of her life continue to come to light. In part, because we now know more than ever about the phenomena that van lew represented, white southern unionism, something about which i will say a good deal here and in our discussion after. It was clear to me from the start when i began researching van lews life more than 20 years ago that she is in many ways a problematic subject for a biographer. Part of the problem is that at the time i started writing, the vast majority of americans had never heard of her. She was an obscure figure for most of the reading. At the same time, among civil war aficionados, folks like us, she was a mythical figure, known but cloaked in all sorts of twicetold tales. Finally, for people in her native richmond, van lew has been a very polarizing figure. Shes regarded as a heroin in some quarters and a pariah in others. I will sketch, the myth, the legends handed down. I will focus on offering my corrective to that myth. Then i will close with some observations about van lews historical significance and her significance for our field of civil war studies. The legend first. The principal features of the van lew legend are as follows. Van lew was, so the story goes, a rare white southern abolitionist whose antisavory sentiments can be traced to her northern parentage and education in philadelphia. She headed up a union spy ring that aided prisoners there, federal prisoners. She had, according to the myth, almost unfettered access to the Union Soldiers in confederate prisons. Although her northern sympathies were wellknown to many confederate richmonders, so the story goes, van lew avoided detection during the war by crafting a reputation as an imbalanced and therefore essentially harmless old spinster. She has been remembered as crazy bet. Over the years, many a treatment of van lew has suggested that the role of crazy bet came easy to her because she was, an odd and eccentric woman. This mythical view is proven resilient in part because of the nature of the sources available to us. Very imperfect sources. Van lew kept a journal during the war and left behind to the New York Public Library a disorganized set of personal papers. During the war, she kept the papers buried in an undisclosed location so if confederate authorities burst into her house they wouldnt find them. Working with the papers is tough going. If we plum their murky depths and put them this context and recover other voices and perspectives on van lew, we can reconstruct her story. I will make the case today that the true story of elisebee lili lew is more compelling than the mythologic mythological. First of all, van lews views on slavery. Second, the military significance of her spy network. Did it matter in the end that she led this richmond underground . Did the underground matter . The issue why she never got caught. She escapes detection all the way through. One of the things that made her a tough subject for biographers. It was a clandestine operation. She was trying to hide what she did from public view. I will Say Something about the origins and problems with this crazy bet van lew as crazy bet image. Lets go back to her early life. I will take on this topic of slavery first. According to the van lew myth, van lew was an abolitionist. Someone who knew from the time she was a child that slavery was wrong. Someone who committed herself to emancipation. The word abolitionism, of course, was and is a loaded term and has to be unpacked, if you will. For van lews detractors, sympathetic to the confederacy, calling her abolitionist was a way to brand her as an outsider to the south. Someone who thanks to her northern parentage and her views she picked up was never a real virginian. For van lews defenders, over the years, calling her an abolitionist has been a way to paint her as a moral paragon. Someone who saw the light when her fellow southerners could not. A close reading of the sources reveals that van lew was not an abolitionist in the sense that William Lloyd garrison were abolitionists. Instead of rejecting slavery in the company of slaveholders, they staked out a position of middle ground. The van lew family, upper middle class family, lived in a mansion on church hill. They made every effort to fully assimilate into Southern Society and the van lew family during the antebellum period owned dozens of saves. Van lew and her mother with whom she was very close privately lamented the evils of slavery, hoping all the while that through individual acts of kindness and charity, freeing individual slaves, they could erode slavery from the inside. Van lew and her family supported the african colonialization movement which sought to deport blacks to africa. Van lew sent her most valued slave to liberia as a teenager to ask she be returned to her to slavery in richmond a few years later. I will come back to that story. Puzzling and improbable. While there is some evidence that sources are murky here that van lew secretly freed some of her slaves and allowed them to stay on working for wages. Freed slaves had to leave within a year. That she gave a secret freedom to some slaves. Her family had ownership of at least half a dozen slaves. Mary richards among them. Well into the civil war. This is not the provifile of an abolitionist. Van lew believed in voluntary e emancipation. This was no northern thing. This was a virginian outlook. In her youth, an attitude support for colonialization and other schemes that fell out of favor over the course of the antebellum period. As the quote unquote positive good defense of slavery emerges. Here is the key to understanding van lews life and spy career. She did not see herself as someone who repudiated the confederacy or repudiated the south. Instead, van lew believed that secessionists and confederates were the traitors to the south. In her reckoning, it was they who in the wake of lincolns 1860 election abandoned virginias heritage of political moderation. It was they who rejected reform and compromise. It was they who became blinded by their proslavery creed. The secession crisis which she watched carefully, the debates in richmond, represented for van lew a catastrophe and an epiphany. Van lew did, would eventually elaborate a critique of slavery. That was forged in the firestorm of secession. She concluded that slavery had made southern whites an s antidemocratic and dangerously selfrighteous. Slavery was the cause of the madness of secession. She, like other unconditional unionists, those folks who would remain true blue throughout, rejected the secessionists boasts, one rebel could whip ten yankees. She believed as most of the unconditional unionists did, that the war would be a carnival of death. No quick end and victory. Theres tantalizing evidence that suggests that van lew may have been influenced by africanamericans in her household. To see slavery in this framework of sin and redemption. Not long after virginias secession van lew would write, one of the family servants predicted the downfall of the confederacy telling her, quote, you will see, they shall fall down slain, that is the fulfillment of prophecy. Van lew wrote those words in her journal followed by a brief empathetic postscript. So said with clear eye and bright hope, the intelligent colored man that called us owners. Van lew shared the bright hope. She looked to the union army to fulfill his prophecy. Van lew would take measures to promote emancipation and help africanamericans, including those working in her household, to flee the south. Thus it was only after secession closed off that imagined middle ground in the slavery debate that elizabeth embraced abolition. She chose to stay in richmond after secession. She could have decamped to the north. She had relatives in new york and pennsylvania. She chose to stay in richmond where she felt she had, as she put it an awful responsibility to her fellow virginians, particularly the blacks in her orbit. In her political calculus, its the unionists remaining true to the state. Van lew in short was not born and raise ed an abolitionist bu evolved into one. This is key to understanding her mentality. She would bring to her war work, her spy work, the special zeal from guilt and regret of a late comer to the truth. Someone trying to make right. How was van lew to fulfill that awful responsibility . As she saw it. Its long been established that van lew rallied to the assistance of Union Prisoners of war. She helped them to survive. She helped them escape. This especially in the first two years of the war. In the second half of the war, she headed an intelligence operation quite elaborate which gathered Vital Information for grants army. Even this aspect of her story has cloaked in myth, as i suggested. According to the crazy bet legend, van lew was regarded as so crazy and harmless, she was allowed to wander confederate prisons as will, hatching plans with the prisoners and gathering data to send to union forces. Its true then in the first year of the war, van lew did have access to some confederate prisons in richmond. She did befriend and assist inmates, union men in prison there. She secured that access by manipulating her image as a southern lady. She publically justified hy eies acts of charity to the unworthy as she put it. In keeping with the female imperative to be benevolent. After martial law was imposed, a measure followed by sweeping arrests of dozens of suspected unionists, van lew could no longer visit with union pr prisoners. She was never allowed to enter the notorious libby prison. The Union Underground, socalled, that coalesces under her leadership, managed somehow in spite of a new atmosphere of scrutiny, managed to provide relief and means of escape. For Union Soldiers in prison in richmond. And to help civilians, white and black southern unionists flee the confederacy and find refuge in the north. Richmond unionists in her circle it was a small and brave circle of operatives worked with her to provide escapees with safe houses, with passes and disguises and guides and contacts to take them to union lines. The main weapons in van lews arsenal in these early days were her familys wealth, which she spent liberally to bribe confederate guards and officials, and her familys social standing. They were a wellrespected southern family. Her mother in particular thought of as a sort of southern matron. Very high standing in the community. She parlayed that social standing into numerous favors from influential confederates. Its true that van lew resorted to play acting to get her way. Her favorite role was the role of the loyal, respectable confederate lady. When in the presence of confederate officialdom, she and her mother did their best to, quote, talk southern confederacy, unquote. To fit in. They even took in confederate borders and opened their home to the rebel wounded in what were intended to be conspicuous shows of loyalty to the confederacy that would throw confederates off the scent. Perhaps the most important asset for the Union Underground this play acting and her Family Resources were important, but the most important asset was the cooperation of africanamerican unionists who risked life and limb for this Union Underground. According to the memoirs of a colonel who was stationed at grants headquarters at city point in the last year of the war, i will quote, miss van lew kept two or three bright, sharp colored money on the watch near libby prison who were ready to conduct an escaped prisoner to safety. Ney on the watch near libby prison who were ready to conduct an escaped prisoner to safety. Eney on the watch near libby prison who were ready to conduct an escaped prisoner to safety. Y on the watch near libby prison who were ready to conduct an escaped prisoner to safety. On the watch near libby prison who were ready to conduct an escaped prisoner to safety. It represents interracial interaction. Her family mansion on church hill provided this way station for fugitives on the journey. The most fabled of those africanamericans who worked for the underground is the mysterious Mary Elizabeth bouser. Rumors began to circulate that during the war she had planted a black servant as a spy in the very inner sanctum of the white house. It seems so improbable. An article published in 1900 furnished some details. The story began to come to light as van lew is passing from the scene. According to this article, the van lews had sent one of their slaves to philadelphia to be educated and sent her to liberia to welcome her back to richmond on eve of the war. This same mysterious slave who the papers did not name initially was planted so the the article claimed, in the Confederate White House where in her guise as a domestic servant the spy gathered intelligence for the Union Underground and funneled it on to van lew. The story took on a new life when van lews executor of her estate, a northern man, purportedly ascertained the identity of the mysterious white house spy from elizabeths niece who remembered the name of the agent as Mary Elizabeth bowser. They passed the name on to a journalist who made this information as the white house spy public in a 1911 article. As i research van lews life, i was keen to learn as you can imagine everything i could about ma mary bowser. What i learned trying to follow this is that the woman all these years that we had membered as mary bowser was, in fact, one Mary Jane Richards. The records of the American Colonization Society along with other sources demonstrated that it was a slave girl named Mary Richards who they sent north to be educated and sent to liberia and summoned back to richmond on the eve of the war. This Mary Richards stayed one step ahead of the authorities as she worked in the richmond underground by using a series of aliases, including mary henley and mary jones. We fast forward to reconstruction, there we have letters in richards hand, revealing she had served as a federal agent during the war. I was able to corroborate the story and map it on the bowser story. Interestingly this is an object lesson in what historians do and the joys and pit falls of our work. The most striking piece of evidence on Mary Richards wartime exploits didnt come to light until after i published a book. Some years after i published my book about van lew, someone at the state library in virginia sent me a newspaper article from a new york newspaper, one of the premiere africanamerican count newspapers in the country. That article covered a speech given by a woman going by the name Richmonia Richards to the brooklyn, new york, baptist church. In this article, we see the claim we see richards credited with having said she had gone into the president s house seeking for washing and making her way into a private office where she opened the drawers and scrutinized papers. Here is evidence from just a few months after the war that really puts Mary Jane Richards in the Confederate White House, something i looked for and not found in all those my own many days of research. So i was thrilled by the emergence of this source. It confirmed that bowser is richards and richards was in the Confederate White House. I was chagrinned i hadnt found it myself. I hadnt thought in a million years that Mary Jane Richards would pop up in brooklyn in september of 1865. Of course, with our wonderful digital newspapers, we can key word search, i might have found the source more quickly using modern technology. That article represents a new set of leads i hope folks will follow in this story. Riches and others like her key to van lews network. Beginning in the winter of 1863, van lews double life, where shes pretending to be a loyal confederate lady while working for the union, her double life becomes more risky as she and her fellow union operatives are enlisted in the federal secret service. Took a while to get together but finally they do. They have gotten wind from various people who made their way out of richard mondof richms an underground. They sign her up. Van lews role at this point is crucial. Her mansion is the nerve center of this spy operation. She is best described as a spy master who oversaw and deployed a devoted group of unionist operatives. People willing it take her orders without question and to risk their lives to do so. To my mind, again, as all of this came to light in my research, the very existence of this network to me undercut the crazy bet theory. Its hard to believe that men and women who have trusted their lives to van lew if she made it a practice of acting erratic in public. She inspired the trust of the people in her network. That network reached far beyond richmond into the neighboring counties. Her operatives practiced a primitive but effective spy trade craft. They used code names. They used invisible ink to write messages. They carried those hidden in their shoes and clothing. It was primitive but very effective. The key thing i want to emphasize here now is that this not only a great story of daring and all the rest. This work had profound military and political implications for the Union War Effort. At a time particularly in the last year of the war, when grant was having to fight simultaneously on two fronts in virginia, along the richmond petersburg corridor and the s n valley, they provided information on the movement between lees army. Lee doesnt have many chess pieces left. Van lew has insights into how he is moving them. When the underground able to report to grant, for example, the troops are leaving the richmond perimeter and being transferred to the valley, grant can strike blows at the richmond defenses, conversely when the Union Underground is able to say that divisions of earlies have arrived in richmond, they can strike blows. This is a set of tactical insights. It cant be emphasized enough that this was primitive enough. Van lew knew men were moving back and forth because she had guys at the railroad station. When troops got on and off the cars, that was information she thought grant should have. Van lew and her fellow unionists knew that grant relied on this information and that relied on them not only for military intelligence, but also for assessments of the political atmosphere and Living Conditions in the rebel capital of richmond. Taken together, unionists reports from the last year of the war provide a picture of increasing desolation in the rebel capital as grant is laying siege. Business is suspended in richmond. Inflation, old men and boys being herded into the rebel army, bitterness at lincolns election. Rumors richmond was to be evacuated. She had her finger on the pulse of richmond and the morale in the city. This information was crucial to grant. It confirmed for him we talked about this just now in the panel on grant and his war attrition. This information confirmed for grant during a time at which he was under a lot of public criticism in the north for the high casualties and lack of decisive victories, it confirmed for him that his plan was working. His grand strategy was working. The siege was draining confederate resources. Van lew told him it was. It was sapping rebel morale. Just how much the federal high command valued these insights is revealed by Staff Officers who have wrote that grant was so eager for news from richmond that he would meet in person with van lew scouts. One of the favorite topics of conversation around the fire at night was the latest news from the richmond underground. Van lew was in almost daily contact with grant. Thats how effective her spy ring was. Moreover, the work of the richmond underground influenced Public Opinion in the north and in the south. Theres ripples of influence we can trace. We have testimony of scores of escapees and refugees from richmond who were aided by van lew to leave richmond. They made their way to the north. They talked to the Northern Press. They provided the Northern Press with support for the case that the confederate regime was repre repressive and southerners yearning to be liberated from the slave power. This an Important Message that stoked northern morale. Escaped prisoners attested to the fact that they had been aided yankee men, prisoners, aided by southern blacks in their flight. These agents of van lew. The positive image of africanamerican contributions to the Union War Effort helped foster sympathy for emancipation in the north. Here is the key point. The undergrounds efforts sapped and undermined confederate morale. The most dra tmatic feats tw thing u. Things you couldnt make up if you tried. An escape of 109 union officers. Heart of the confederate capital. They dug a tunnel. Van lew helped many make their way to safety in the north. The second of the most dramatic contributions, the reburial on unionist soil of slain Union Colonel dalgren who had been killed leading a raid. The con fed they called this the great escape and great resurrection. Its a failure, he is killed, confederates find on his body papers suggesting his marches orders were to assess natuassin jefferson davis. The confederates are so livid at this finding that they mutilate his body and give him what they consider a dogs burial in an unmarked grave. Meant as an act of disrespect and dishonoring. Dalgren was the son of an admiral. He lobbied to have his boys body returned to him. The confederates say no. Eventually, they relent and they will have a terrible surprise when they go to dig up his body. Van lew and her operatives have gotten there first. They had dug up his body, established where that undisclosed location was and taken him in a cart covered with produce and taken him to the farm of a virginia unionist and given him a proper burial. When authorities go to seize his body, its not there. The great resurrection. This kind of activity suggested to confederates that this richmond underground was literally capable of working miracles. This was understandably unnerving to confederates. The mo george sharp, the union chief of military intelligence for the army of the potomac, sharp would write in a postwar letter, and i quote, for a long, long time, van lew represented all that was left of the power of the u. S. Government in the city of richmond. End quote. This is a remarkable thing for a 19th century man to say about a 19th century woman. Van lew couldnt vote. Didnt have a basic right of citizenship. Was clearly on the outs in the confederacy. She represented nothing less than the power of the u. S. Government in the estimation of this intelligence chief. Lets turn thats an overview of what she did. Lets turn to why she wasnt caught. All of this begs the question, how did she get away with it all . The crazy bet myth suggests that van lews mantle of madness the fact she went around town dressed in a bedraggled way, her mantle of madness gave her impunity. Its not so. Van lews agents were literally traveling to and from her house with dispatches and orders and missions. The van lew family was vulnerable during the war. Vulnerable to exposure by false friends or suspicious neighbors. A moment of reckoning comes in 1864. Evidently, acting on a tip, the confederate authorities launch a formal investigation of the van lews. Now they will be under the microscope, elizabeth and her mother. The confederate state police seek to build a case against the women by getting inside her social circle. They want to find someone who will finger her. They interrogate family, friends, those friends dont do anything to betray the family. Then they find the star witness in the form of elizabeths he s estranged sisterinlaw. This sisterinlaw will swear in a deposition in september of 1864 that she had, quote, often heard elizabeth and her mother express desire for the success of federal arms and the failure of the Confederate States to establish its independence. Mary van lew, accusing Elizabeth Van lew of treason. A few weeks after this deposition is taken, a marshal in charge of the case sends a copy to the Inspector Generals Office asking, shall other evidence be taken with a view for the removal of the van lews . The note that van lews are people of wealth and position. The answer of the Generals Office to this query sheds more light than any on how van lew got away with her espionage. Charles blackford in that office stipulated that, quote, miss Elizabeth Van lew of this city is very unfriendly in her sentiments towards the government. He went on to say, like most of her sex, she seems to have talked freely. But, he continued, and i quote, it does not appear that she has ever done anything to infirm the cause. Talked freely. Women will do that. She has never done anything to inform the cause. At this point, she had helped 109 union men tunnel their way out of prison. She was in almost daily contact with grant. She had reburied dalgren and so on. The ultimate finding in her case was, no action to be taken. Clearly, the qualities imputed to van lew by those judging her were her wealth and position of her family and her bad habit of talking too much. It served to insulate van lew. The sexism of the men whose job it was to root out disloyalty, disinclined them to believe a frail spinner is lady was capable of disloyalty. It was only when authorities infiltrated van lews family that they were able to gather evidence of her disloyal sentiments. They could not find hard proof of her disloyal actions. Van lew was acute enough to overestimate her enemies, even as they foolishly underestimated her. Lets turn to the postwar picture. When richmond finally falls to union forces in april 1865, Elizabeth Van lew felt it to be a personal vindication. She would write in her journal, army of my country, how glorious was your welcome. At that historic moment, van lew confronted the truth that so many white americans could not bring themselves to face. Although the war was ending, the work of reckoning with racism had only just begun. Van lew would write in her journal of the freed people, quote, when eternality shall unknot the records of time, you will see written for them by their unpenned stories to be read before a listening universe. Van lews journal she kept speaks to us in tones that are poignant and solemn. Revealing that she hoped history would prize her for her honesty and vision. Here is the irony of this story. A central theme, perhaps the central theme running through van lews journal is her conviction she was a pillar of sanity in a world gone mad. The tragedy of van lews life in a sense is that again and again the world rejected her vision of herself and rebuffed her attempts to project an image of courage and competence. The story of van lews wartime exploits became known by the public this clandestine story goes above ground after the war. It becomes widely known when in 1869 shes appointed postmaster of richmond by u. S. Grant in one of his first acts as president. In recognition of her service to his army during the war. At first, i didnt know what to make of this. We think of a postmaster as a bureaucratic position. In this day, its the plum patronage job. All the old party postmasters are kicked out. Each is supposed to be the head of a partisan army. He has it in his power to appoint other of the Party Faithful to positions in the post office. The post office controls the flow of information. It was widely understood that a postmastership was a stepping stone to political influence. Franklin was a postmaster. Lincoln was a postmaster. If you got a major city, it carried a nice salary. Here van lew is appointed postmaster of richmond because she led a spy ring during the war. White richmonders, needless to say, former confederates, railed against a female. No one charged van lew with craziness yet. In her eight years in office, as postmaster of richmond, during grands two terms, van lew, by her own account, tried to project a public image of fairness and efficiency. She took the job seriously. She refused to albe with one political fraction. Being friendly to the good men across the political spectrum. At the same time, she very bravely and with great pride adopted the mantle of truth teller on the subject of Race Relations in richmond. She wrote letters as post matter postmaster revealing the treatment trying to convey the facts as they are, this racist prescription that fell upon freed people. Neither the white republicans or white democrats in richmond were willing to concede van lews economy tension and rationality, only the south African Americans were willing to honor her. She made the unprecedented move of hiring africanamericans to work in the post office and using her office as a bully pulpit for the cause of civil rights. In 1877, as she battles t d to retain her office, africanamerican men headed by william c. Roan passed a resolution declaring if any other person is appointed postmaster, the color people will have no chance of getting employment in the post office. White men across the political spectrum responded to van lews handling of this office by marshaling allegations that van lew was erratic and hysterical. Their words. It was this backlash against her Office Holding more than her wartime comportment that inclined some to regard van lew as crazy. Again, its important to note that it wasnt only former confederates who resented her behavior as postmaster, republican men who believed that job was a mans job and that salary should be a mans salary also resented her. We have this tragic situation. Van lew in her waning years, she loses the postmastership. In her last years, she is poverty stricken. She spent much of the family fortune on her spy work during the war. She is frightened for her life. She receives in her papers there are Death Threats from white supremacists. She in public seems to appear. Shes obsessed with her perce persecution. In a sense, what happens is that over the years, as this reconstruction story inflicts van lews reputation, we see an image of crazy bet, bedraggled and nervous, povertystricken crohn supplant the things she was and prided her self on havig been. Let me on having been. Let me take the few last minutes to say a few words about van lews historical significance in civil war studies. Theres great recent scholarship that has trained our attention on the contributions of women to the war effort in both the north and south and we have a lot of great recent books on dissent within the south and how dissent within the south contributed to the demise of the confederacy and also great recent work on the memory of the civil war commemoration and the memory of wars. And van lews life wonderfully dramatically connects these themes, womens war work and southern unionism and civil war memory. I will just say a few brief words about the womens history theme, im happy to answer questions on it but i will move on to the other two. Van lew represents those countless women, we all know many of their stories who were determined to go beyond what the gender conventions of the time asked of them during the war and demanded of them. According to the doctrine of separate spheres women were to be essentially domestic creatures and their wartime role was to sacrifice their men to their domestic causes and put their skills to work on behalf of the armies. Van lew wanted to do more and was among those women who breached the boundary between battle front and home front. Represents womens wartime politicization, growing Political Agency and more interestingly she represents debates about female accountability during the civil war more and more people thought women shouldnt be classed among the innocents in war, they should be held accountable by their political reactions. Rewarded or punished. Van lew is an object study in the debates over political accountability. Van lew also represents and this is the thing thats really emerged for me as a frame in which to see her better, i talked about how work goes on, you finish a book, learn new things. One of the new things ive learned is the sort of strength and importance of southern unionism. Of course, its commonplace for us to say we do all the time as a shorthand that the south lost the war, commonplace to equate the confederacy in the south, but as a number of recent studies have shown, that shorthand glosses over crucial divisions within the south and obscures the strong presence of these white southern unionists and their symbolic importance. A great book by bill freeling called the south certificate vus the south gives us jaw dropping statistics on this subject. 4r 450,000 men from slave states wore blue uniforms. Most of these were African Americans in the union army and border state whites from places like missouri and kentucky. But 100,000 white men from Confederate States wore union blue. George thoms about whom we just heard some in the Previous Panel perhaps the best most famous example of a virginian who wore the union blue. These statistics give us a new perspective on an old debate, did the confederacy lose because of the overwhelming numbers of the north or die because of internal causes a failure of the will. If we recognize the presence of these unionists in the south we can in a sense fuse these two explanations and see how internal divisions within the south contributed to the norths advantages in manpower and resources. And really this southern unionism its primary importance is political or symbolic, if you will. We have to stipulate, we have to recognize and emphasize indeed that the vast majority of whites in the Confederate States supported the confederacy, no question about that. Unionists were a minority but they are an important minority because as Parton Meyers has shown in his terrific book about South Carolina the unionists werent able to sort of establish control over swaths of the south, they did destabilize the home front and destabilize certain counties. They represented brush fires that the confederacy had to put out and that it had to devote resources to putting out. I have a new book coming out next february called armies of deliverance in which i will argue, make a case about the important, symbolic importance of these southern unionists. I will argue as northerners march off to war in 1861 they believe their mission is to save the south, to deliver it not to sub u gate it. Once the slave power is broken and ee late is displaced the south can be redeemed for the union, that there are people like van lew who can be a vanguard who will lead other southerners into the light. Finally and this will be my last point so we have some time for questions, van lews after life, if you will, her memory, is a window into the memory wars of the late 19th century. There is a reason we dont see monuments to southern unionists on the southern landscape and in places like my hometown, charlottesville. The lost cause memory tradition with its emphasis on confederate righteousness and unity crowded out and suppressed an obscured and wiped out rival memory traditions that emphasized union and emancipation. And van lew is again a very good illustration of this. It wasnt enough for former confederates to drive van lew and her fellow native born republicans out of office, the southe southern, quote unquote, scalley wags, confederates tried to write them out of existence. The myth that Elizabeth Van lew was a crazy lonely old spinster, a lone vicksen as one richmond paper put it was far less dangerous ideology than the truth, which is she was part of reform minded virginians, the myth easy to dismiss. Frederick douglass said there was a right side and a wrong side in the late war which no sentiment ought to cause us to forget. So that van lew would have said, amen. She felt, however, like douglas did in 1878 that americans in her lifetime and the postwar period were for getting that basic truth. She was appalled to watch richmond become the hub of the lost cause cult. She would write in 1890 ever since the lee unveiling i have felt this was no place for me. It was that moment not all the other things she had suffered and endured that made her feel there was no place for her. After she dies in 1900 richmond whites confederate sympathies will remember hr as a maligned spirit literally haunting her Old Neighborhood of churchill. Interestingly at the very same time that stories of crazy bet are circulating in the press elizabeths oldest friend, coworker in the post office, a woman eliza nolan was trying to publish her account of her life. She said i proposed to portray the philanthropic characteristics of van lew. Van lew believed slavery to be a blot on the nation. When Patrick Henry stood and shouted give me liberty ert or give me death the walls of the van lew mansion echoed and van lews heart tried give them liberty or give me death. Love for her family sustained her in her trials through her life. I have never known as noble a woman. We owe it to Elizabeth Van lew to butt the myth of crazy bette in its context. A woman we should remember not only for her intelligence gathering but for her intelligence and not only for her ability to conceal the truth but for her ability to tell it. Thank you. [ applause ] i would have most delighted to take questions if folks have them. Yes, sir. Dr. John will in washington, d. C. My fatherinlaw grew up in churchill not very far away from the van lew mansion. I have always heard the story, i want you to clarify, about the crazy act that you seem to say that that really wasnt used too much. I thought thats how she actually got into libby prison to visit with the union troops in there by acting crazy. Yeah, again, i think that van lew did play act and i think that there were times she disguised herself and theres some evidence that at times she disguised herself, pretended to be someone else, but i dont think that she wanted to give the impression that she, Elizabeth Van lew, was crazy. And it was much more ive tried to argue it was much more her family connections and her play acting the role of a loyal confederate woman than it was a ruiz that they was crazy that afforded her access to prisons. Her success was never as great as myth would have it and it very important to note that van lew is the mastermind of this operation. Shes a middleaged woman, quite frail at the time all of this is going on physically and she is directing her operatives and agents and i felt, again, that the there were many things about the crazy bette myth that didnt add up, one of them was that there was no intimation of it in that formal investigation of her that the confederacy does in 1864 if it was widely thought that she was crazy why wouldnt that have come up as they interviewed people and so on. Theres no intimation of it there. And, again, the thing more than anything else that gave me pause was the fact that both her own operatives and then Union Authorities reached out to her and placed a great deal of trust in her. I mean, it cant be overemphasized if you were caught as a unionist in richmond the fate was poor, you would be clapped into castle thunder, a miserable prison for civil i dont know dissenters, might be banished, property confiscated or you might be executed. There were executions. So it was a very, very nervy game she was playing. Bob woods from new york. Wasnt her appointment to such a high position kind of evidence of her collaboration and why wasnt she outed by somebody and then wouldnt she be at great risk physically . Yes, absolutely. When she is appointed its its she is a in the papers in 1869 when appointed as postmaster because the story does come to light to a certain extent. She obviously had to be very, very careful about not revealing she faced some of the same challenges the underground railroad did, that is to say, both operations tried to selectively let the enemy know they were there without compromising their networks and identities of people because theyre fighting a game a battle over Public Opinion as well as as well as a battle to move people across the landscape. So she faced that. Thats a balancing act. She wanted her store to be known to a certain extent, but while protecting crucial details that might make people vulnerable to reprisals. Her People Associated with her absolutely were vulnerable to reprisals and she was, you know its sort of hard to convey how how socially isolated she was particularly in her later years. During congressional reconstruction when you have a union Army Presence in richmond and in the south and that project is ongoing and you have white southern republicans in leadership positions she had a measure of protection. Its when reconstruction ends that she is really at her you know, in extreme vulnerability. Sir. Yes, given her prominent social position during the war, im just wondering did she have any social contact with prominent women like marina davis, i know that mary chestnut also spent a lot of time in richmond or other confederate officials in general . Thats a great question. I dont think she ever met verena davis, i suppose its not impossible. The van lew family is best described as upper middle class, they belonged to a social milieu of businessminded formerly wig merchan merchants, her father was a mercha merchant. As we explain her unionism theres lots of varieties of unionism and her unionism was very much colored by her familys wiggery, these are people who believe that the south in virginia would be better off if it would develop economically, if the economy would diversify, supporters of whig policy. The family were friends with john minor bots a popular virginia unionist. The sources i read didnt reveal much about her socializing with confederate neighbors, although one has to presume that she did, that that was part of the act. First thank you for bringing such an interesting woman to our lives. My pleasure. But secondly there any Historical Documents on the life of mary jane after the war . Thats a great question. As i said theres some friedmans Bureau Records which again that was a very exciting find for me to find someone that signed her name as Mary Jane Richards, literal, working was for the freed ans bureau in places like georgia after the war as a teacher herself, Mary Jane Richards and she said that in the richards speech in the Brooklyn Church that i mentioned was a big advocate of education. She shared that with van lew. I am certain and i hope someone does this work, i sort of moved on to other to other projects and im sort of two minds about this dilemma about whether to go back to this, but i think that the article in the new york anglo african suggests theres other such clues out there and that they represent a whole new set of leads to follow when it comes to Mary Jane Richards. I believe that much more is knowable about Mary Jane Richards than i thought when i wrote the book 15 years ago partly because of the vast number of sources that have been digitized. So i havent done the work of going to every available 19th century database and typing in all of the terms that would be relevant, but whoever does that work i think will be rewarded with more details about Mary Richards life. I think we are at the end of our time. Thank you all so very much for coming. [ applause ]. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv airing weekdays. Tonight beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern its a look at africanamericans and world war i. We visit the Smithsonian National museum of africanAmerican History and culture to speak with a military history guest curator. Watch American History tv now and over the weekend on cspan 3. Modern transport poses new dangers of complete universal contagion. The struggle against epidemics is a global one. For the danger of death is worldwide. Sunday on American History tv at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on real america, the 1948 film the eternal fight. From a disease infected zone the traveler now became unwittingly a carrier of deadly germs. Wherever he went the germs stayed and spread. And sunday at 6 00 p. M. John hancock created the entire Continental Congress as a committee of whole. To gather amongst ourselves an individual caucuses and decide how we should proceed. Do we really want independency and then he appointed another committee of five men to draft our declaration of american independency. From a virtual tour of monticello with bill barker. Do you know i served 40 years in Public Service and yet ive often thought if heaven had given me a position to migrate it would have been upon a small spot of ground well watered and near a good market for the produce. Gardening is one of my greatest delights. This weekend on American History tv on cspan 3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is and raise your hand if you had ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial before this class. The deepest cause where we will find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. So we are going to talk about both of these sides of this story here, right, the tools, the techniques of slave owner power and we will also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan 3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. And lectures in history is available as a podcast, find it where you listen to podcasts. American history tv continues now with a look at the president ial election of 1864. We heard about the republican and democratic platforms, who the candidates were and the logistics of getting soldiers to vote. This talk was part of a symposium hosted by the emerging civil war blog. Good afternoon. Its my pleasure to introduce rea andrew redd, a native of washington county, pennsylvania, he holds a bachelors degree in history and english from Waynesburg University and
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.