Defenseless Women

Wherein the Rebel Rose is sent to jail

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Greenhow and her daughter at the Old Capitol prison

On January 18, Allan Pinkerton's patience ran out. Since the end of August, Rose O'Neal Greenhow had been under house arrest at her house on 16th and K [site of today's Hay-Adams Hotel] for aiding the Confederacy, particularly in the run up to Bull Run. In that time she had been nothing short of a nightmare for Washington's provost-marshal, Brig. General Andrew Porter, responsible for maintaining military security across the expanding area of operations for the Army of the Potomac. Greenhow was alternating charming and haughty, and loved playing the beleaguered Southern woman to the press.

She also was still sending messages to the Confederate Army of the Potomac and her old friend, Thomas Jordan, adjutant to General G.T. Beauregard. On December 26 she had managed to smuggle out a letter to Jordan through a mutual friend and member of his spy ring in Washington.

In a day or two, 1,200 cavalry supported by four batteries of artillery will cross the river above to get behind Manassas and cut off railroad and other communications with our army, whilst an attack is made in front. For God's sake, heed this. It is positive. They are obliged to move or give up.

Gotcha!

Wherein the Rebel Rose is nabbed

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On August 23, the somewhat sour-faced Scot took pleasure in a good night's work. He had found the Rebels' leak in Washington and plugged it. Rose O'Neal Greenhow was now his prisoner.

Rose Greenhow

The man was Allan Pinkerton, and he was on temporary absence from his detective firm (the famed Pinkerton National Detective Agency) by special request of Major General George McClellan to found the Union Intelligence Service in Washington to root out spies, especially those that had delivered news to Confederate Brigadier General G.T. Beauregard about the build up and movement of Union forces. In reality, Beauregard probably didn't need their reports since the army had moved so slowly and destructively. But in the paranoia following Bull Run, spies were given undue importance. Besides, there was no area of the defense of Washington McClellan wasn't sure he could improve.

As far as spies went, Greenhow wasn't a particularly a good one. She had been born in Port Tobacco, Maryland around the time of the British raid that burned Washington, but when her father was killed by rebellious slaves in 1817, young Rose went to live with an aunt in the rebuilt Washington City. At her boarding house, Rose grew-up around Washington's social elites and Members of Congress and important national figures came to enjoy being around the high-spirited young woman. She fell in with Dolley Madison's social circle and met the man she would marry (with Dolley's blessing, of course), Dr. Robert Greenhow.