The Role Of Spies In The Civil War

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"Spies played an important role in the civil war for both sides, gathering intelligence and scouting opposing troop movements and numbers" ("Civil War Spies"). The definition of a spy is a person employed by a government to obtain secret information or intelligence about another, usually hostile, country, especially with reference to military or naval affairs. Throughout the civil war, the act and idea of spying grew to incredible limits. The use of spies during the Civil War was greater than it had ever been before. Many women and men risked their lives as spies during the Civil War for what they believed was right. When the fighting was in their backyards, tearing families apart, countless people decided to fight for the cause. The role which women played in the Civil War was great because women had never …show more content…
Women made incredible spies because they were unexpected and could use different tactics than a male spy.
The South were leaders in the trend of using spies; with the creation of the Confederate Signal Corps set up the first covert intelligence operation for the confederates known as the Secret Service Bureau ("Spying in the Civil War"). A few of the Confederate spies includes the famous Belle Boyd, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, John Yates Beall, Henry Thomas Harrison and Antonia Ford Willard. Born Isabella Marie Boyd, Belle Boyd was a notorious spy who once ran onto a battlefield to inform Confederate Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson about Union troop dispositions. ("National Park Service"). Rose O'Neal Greenhow was the Civil War's most celebrated spy at the beginning of the war. "She is credited with alerting the rebels of enemy military operations just prior to the Battle of Manassas" ("Rose O'Neal Greenhow"). John Yates Beall carried out an elaborate plan to free

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