Born to slaveholding parents in Maryland, Rose Greenhow was a Washington, D.C., socialite and a passionate sympathizer for the Confederate cause who became one of the most infamous Southern spies. A widow, she lived with her young daughter, Little Rose, on 16th Street Northwest near Lafayette Park, in close proximity to the White House, and was among the first Confederate secret agents in the capital.
In the pre-war years, Greenhow became acquainted with people at the highest levels of Washington society, including presidents and members of Congress. She socialized with then-Senator Jefferson Davis, the future President of the Confederacy, and considered Senator John C. Calhoun, the firebrand and ardent defender of slavery from South Carolina, a mentor.
Born to slaveholding parents in Maryland, Rose Greenhow was a Washington, D.C., socialite and a passionate sympathizer for the Confederate cause who became one of the most infamous Southern spies. A widow, she lived with her young daughter, Little Rose, on 16th Street Northwest near Lafayette Park, in close proximity to the White House, and was among the first Confederate secret agents in the capital.
In the pre-war years, Greenhow became acquainted with people at the highest levels of Washington society, including presidents and members of Congress. She socialized with then-Senator Jefferson Davis, the future President of the Confederacy, and considered Senator John C. Calhoun, the firebrand and ardent defender of slavery from South Carolina, a mentor.
At the outset of the war, Greenhow was asked by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jordan, an assistant to General P.G.T. Beauregard, the commanding general of nearby Confederate forces, to organize a spy ring in Washington, D.C., among Southern sympathizers that could provide information on Union military activities. She immediately agreed.
Greenhow became a driven and enthusiastic agent, later described by the Provost Marshal in Washington, D.C. as “formidable,” with “masterly skill.” In the early months of the war, she and her network employed a wide range of tactics to relay intelligence to Confederate forces in Virginia. Couriers carried messages that Rose stitched into tapestries or sewed into silk pouches concealed in garments and hair. Before the Confederates were driven away from the immediate Washington area, she transmitted signals across the Potomac River by placing varying numbers of burning candles in her window and communicated in Morse code using her window blinds.