The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

“It means,” Charlie Dickens replied, “that your grandmother, Rose Greenhow, made this pillow and used it as a hiding place to conceal some of her Confederate correspondence. And unless I miss my guess, the symbols embroidered on the cover are a key to her cipher—the one she used to encode her messages, that is. I haven’t had time yet to work it all out, but that’s my initial impression.”


“You’re saying that my grandmother was a Confederate spy?” Miss Rogers asked uncertainly. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wide.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Charlie Dickens, drawing a chair up to the table and sitting down. “I’ve been doing some reading this afternoon, and I’ve learned quite a lot. Let me tell you about her.”

Bessie pushed back her chair and stood up. “If we’re going to do that,” she said decidedly, “we are must have refreshments. I’ll bring them over to the table and we’ll eat while we listen.” And to Miss Rogers, she said sternly, “And I don’t want to hear a word of objection, Miss Rogers. Not a single word.”





SIXTEEN

The Confederate Rose: “A Dangerous Character”



This is the story that Charlie Dickens told the Dahlias that evening about Miss Rogers’ grandmother, Rose O’Neale Greenhow. He acknowledged that he had read hastily and that there were many gaps yet to fill in. But he would do his best to learn more details, and he promised that when he had collected all the facts—or as many as he was able to get—he would write up a more complete account for the newspaper. For now, he read part of the story from notes he had taken during his afternoon’s research.

Rose O’Neale was born in Port Tobacco, Maryland, in 1813 or 1814. Her father owned a small plantation and grew tobacco and wheat until he was murdered by his slaves, leaving his wife with four daughters, five hundred sixty acres, and very little money. Rose, the youngest, was intelligent, pretty, and quick to learn. When she became a teenager, she was sent with her sister to Washington, D.C., to live with her aunt, Maria Hill. Mrs. Hill and her husband ran a fashionable boardinghouse in the Old Capitol building, where Supreme Court justices, congressmen, and senators lodged while the Court or Congress was in session. The Hills were Southerners and their boardinghouse (which had been the home of Congress for eleven years after the British burned the capitol in 1814) was especially popular with Southern politicians.

Young Rose blossomed in this highly politicized social milieu, where everyone (especially the men) thought her beautiful. And she was. She had a pale olive complexion, shiny black hair parted down the middle and pulled back from her oval face, and an hourglass figure. Bright, well-read, and a lively, opinionated conversationalist, she loved the intrigues and conspiracies of Washington politics and learned to navigate them very well. She was mentored by Dolley Madison, the widow of the former president, considered the queen of Washington society. Mrs. Madison took an interest in the young girl, whose coquettish, flirtatious manner earned her the nickname Wild Rose. She was said to be bold, brave, and brazen, ready for any adventure, the more exciting the better.

In 1835, Rose married Dr. Robert Greenhow, an urbane Virginian who worked in the State Department and pursued an avocation as an historian. They bought a house on K Street, across from the home of former president John Quincy Adams. Through her husband, Rose gained a wider knowledge of the inner workings of the government and a greater acquaintance with government officials, for the Greenhows entertained often. Rose bore her husband eight children. The last, a girl born in 1853 and named for her mother, was called Little Rose. Robert Greenhow died the following year. At forty, Rose was a grieving but strikingly handsome widow, widely recognized as a lady of influence—and still as bold and brazen as the Wild Rose of her youth.

Over the years, Rose had strengthened her social and political contacts with the South. Her sympathy for state’s rights, her conviction that slavery was constitutionally protected and morally sound, and her belief in the right to secession continued to grow after her husband’s death. She was strongly influenced by her friendship with John C. Calhoun and particularly with James Buchanan, whom she advised to run for president in 1856 and with whom she corresponded and met frequently during his presidency. When Lincoln was elected in 1860 and talk about secession turned into calls for action, a Southern colonel named Thomas Jordan asked Rose to organize her friends and Confederate sympathizers into a ring of spies. Colonel Jordan gave her a cipher and asked her to encrypt all her messages to him. She spent many hours practicing with the cipher, until she could use it quickly and accurately.