Teenage Southern ‘Belle’ Charmed Union Troops And Shared Their Secrets With The Confederacy
This day in history
The year is 1862 …
And Union soldiers are about to arrest 18-year-old Isabelle “Belle” Boyd for spying on behalf of the Confederacy.
Working out of her father’s hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, Belle had been wooing Union troops to pry out any valuable secrets that she could then pass on to the rebels. The information she gathered proved quite useful, and in one instance, she gave it to the famous Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, helping him secure victory in the First Battle of Winchester.
Belle would be arrested six times and imprisoned on three occasions. Her willingness to spy for the Confederates appears to stem from an early encounter with Union soldiers at the start of the war in 1861. A group of soldiers had gotten word that she was hanging a Confederate flag in her bedroom. The men came to her house to investigate, at which point one of them cursed out her mother. Furious, Belle pulled out a pistol and shot him dead. She was exonerated, but from then on, sentries were stationed outside the house to keep a close eye on her activities.
After the war, Belle married a Union captain who had previously captured her. She later became an actress, dying on stage in Wisconsin in 1900. She was 56. To say she lived an interesting life would be an understatement.
Over the years, newspapers have had a field day with Belle’s story, dubbing her the “Cleopatra of the Secession”, “The Siren of the Shenandoah”, and “The Confederate Mata Hari”.
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