The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Hostilities began in April 1861 when the South attacked Fort Sumter and Lincoln called up troops, intending to quickly put down the Southern rebellion. The two sides were at war, and Rose was listening to a variety of informants. Some shared military secrets straight from the War Department, while others simply reported what they saw and heard around the city, where the Union troops were gathering, arms and munitions were being stored, and blockade plans were being discussed.

In July, Rose learned that the Union army was preparing to attack General Beauregard’s headquarters a few miles outside of Washington, near a small river called Bull Run. She sent two secret messages via courier alerting Beauregard to the plan and giving him enough time to summon General Joseph E. Johnston, who brought his army by train from the Shenandoah Valley. Joining forces, the two Southern armies surprised the Yankees with the ferocity of their defense, and the forces of the North were utterly routed. It was the first battle—and the first victory—of the war. When it was over, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was happy to give Mrs. Greenhow the credit for the South’s success. “She is,” he said, “our Confederate Rose.”

From April through July, Rose continued to use her cipher to send coded messages about the activities of General McClellan and General McDowell, reporting the number of troops, their movements, and their artillery. She sewed these notes into various pieces of clothing that she gave to her female couriers. Women crossing the lines were rarely searched, so it’s likely that a fair amount of information was conveyed.

But suspicions were raised in Lincoln’s War Office when it became known that Rose was entertaining far into the night. Her guests included several important federal officials, notably Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, the powerful chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. Pillow talk, exclaimed the War Office, and called in Allan Pinkerton, who was directing counterintelligence operations in Washington.

“Mrs. Greenhow must be attended to,” the assistant secretary of war told Pinkerton. “She is becoming a dangerous character.” Pinkerton began to watch Rose’s house, taking note of the comings and goings of her many male visitors, and on August 23, he placed her under house arrest. Upon searching her home for further evidence, he found thirteen love letters from Senator Wilson, as well as maps of Washington fortifications and notes on military movements. But while he was convinced that she was communicating in code, he was unable to find the key to her cipher.

Rose was confined to her home for five months. During this time, she took every opportunity to send the Confederacy as much information as she could gather. Finally, in January 1862, with her eight-year-old Little Rose, she was sent to Old Capitol Prison—ironically, the very same building that had once been her aunt’s fashionable boardinghouse. She was held there until May, when she and her daughter were released and deported to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy.

In Richmond, the Confederate Rose was hailed as a heroine and feted throughout the city. But Jefferson Davis had need of her diplomatic skills and soon dispatched her to Europe. For the next two years, she traveled through France, attempting to enlist the aid of European countries on behalf of the South. In France, she was received by Napoleon III. In Britain, she had an audience with Queen Victoria and wrote a memoir titled My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington. Meanwhile, she found a Parisian school for Little Rose, the Convent du Sacré Coeur, where she felt that the girl would gain a good education.

In September 1864, Rose left Europe to return to the Confederate States, carrying official dispatches and two thousand dollars in gold earned from the sale of her memoir and intended for a Southern relief fund. She sailed on the Condor, a British blockade runner that ran aground near Wilmington, North Carolina. Rose fled the grounded ship by lifeboat for the nearby shore. But the skiff capsized, and Rose, weighted down by the gold she carried, was drowned.

As the word spread, the Confederate Rose was mourned across the South. When her body was recovered, she was given a state burial in Wilmington, where her coffin rested on a bier covered with a Confederate flag and every civic leader praised her heroism and patriotic devotion. The Wilmington Sentinel had the last word:

At the last day, when the martyrs who have with their blood sealed their devotions to liberty shall stand together, firm witnesses that truth is stronger than death, foremost among the shining throng, coequal with the Rolands and Joan d’Arcs of history, will appear the Confederate heroine, Rose A. Greenhow.





SEVENTEEN

Charlie