Authors: Jennifer Chiaverini
A blast of frigid temperatures struck Richmond in the middle of the month, freezing the ice in the canal so hard that men and boys skated upon it even as it drove most of the population indoors. The prisoners on Belle Isle retreated to the feeble shelter of their thin tents, and although her sources had frustratingly little contact with anyone on the island, Lizzie knew the death tolls climbed steadily, shockingly higher as the cold snap stretched on.
The first day after the severe freeze lifted, Lizzie received a startling note from Mr. Rowley, delivered by his eldest son, Merritt. “My Dear Miss Van Lew,” he wrote, “you will be pleasantly surprised to hear that our mutual friend Mr. Howard is visiting again. He says he would enjoy nothing better than the pleasure of your company, to which end I invite you to come for supper tomorrow.”
Lizzie read the letter over again, dumbfounded. Mr. Rowley had not employed the hollow egg, so his letter was necessarily circumspect in case it was intercepted. Lizzie searched her memory, but the only Mr. Howard that came to mind was Captain Howard, the former fugitive of Libby whom she believed safe in the North or returned to his regiment. “Has this Mr. Howard visited your farm before?” she asked Merritt.
He nodded, but he kept his expression carefully impassive. “Yes, Miss Van Lew. He stayed with us a few days last month.”
“And now he has returned.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Merritt hesitated before adding, “My father was surprised to see him, but glad.”
The youth had clearly been instructed to say as little as possible about their unexpected visitor. “Please tell your parents that I look forward to dining with you tomorrow.”
Merritt nodded and turned to go, but Lizzie called him back, laughing, and insisted he stay for lunch before riding home.
The next day, Lizzie had Peter drive her in the carriage out to Rowley’s farm, employing General Winder’s old pass, now so creased and worn that it was barely legible, to leave the city. Mr. Rowley and his wife, Catharine, greeted her warmly, but Lizzie was so distracted that she could hardly reply to their kind welcome, because there in the middle of the parlor stood Captain Howard, looking remarkably more vigorous than the last time they had last met.
“It
is
you,” she said in wonder as she shook his hand. “Dr. McCullough is well also, I hope?”
Captain Howard smiled. “He is, and I’ll be sure to let him know you asked about him.”
“And my deliveries?” she teased. “Did you give my bouquet and letter to General Butler?”
“The flowers, alas, did not survive the journey, but Dr. McCullough placed your letter into the general’s hands himself. I informed General Butler how you and your associates arranged our escape so adroitly, and he was very impressed indeed.”
For a moment Lizzie could only blink at him in astonishment. She had expected demurrals and apologies, and perhaps a promise to keep trying to deliver her letter, but not this. “I assume,” she managed to say, “he enjoyed the adventurous tale so much that he insisted you return and pay me his compliments.”
“In a manner of speaking.” Captain Howard beckoned to Mr. Rowley. “Mr. Rowley, Miss Van Lew, I have a matter of grave importance to discuss with you, if you would be seated.”
The rest of the Rowley family understood this as their cue to depart. Lizzie’s heart pounded from excitement, but she managed an outward appearance of calm as she gracefully seated herself, folded her hands in her lap, and awaited Captain Howard’s address.
“Miss Van Lew has generously offered to act as General Butler’s correspondent in Richmond,” the captain said, looking from her to Mr. Rowley. “The general hopes to enlist your aid too, Mr. Rowley, and he formally requests for you both to become his federal agents in the Confederate capital.”
“With all my heart, I accept,” said Lizzie promptly, and then she glanced at Mr. Rowley. “Of course, I can speak only for myself.”
“I accept as well,” said Mr. Rowley somberly.
The captain smiled, his relief readily apparent, but he cautioned, “Make no mistake, this is dangerous work.”
“We are well aware of the danger,” said Mr. Rowley. “We’ve been living with it for years.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Lizzie. “And yet we never let that dissuade us. If we’re going to risk our lives and freedom anyway, why not do so under the auspices of General Butler’s command?”
“Excellently put, Madam.” Captain Howard took a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Lizzie. “A letter for you, from an admirer.”
Lizzie broke the seal and read an innocuous missive from a fellow named James Ap. Jones to his “Dear Aunt”—someone named Mary was recovering from a bad cough, Jennie sent her love, and Mother had given up all hope of seeing the dear aunt again until they met in heaven. “Should I know these people?” she asked, scanning the letter a second time before returning it to the captain.
“No, because they don’t exist.” Captain Howard draped his handkerchief over his lap, lay the letter flat upon it, produced a small vial of clear liquid from his pocket, and poured the contents over the page. Lizzie smelled vinegar as he rose and held the letter close to the lamp until the paper was in danger of scorching—and watched in amazement as more lines of writing appeared perpendicular to those she had already seen. With a satisfied smile, Captain Howard handed her the transformed letter and gestured for her to read it.
My Dear Miss:
The doctor who came through and spoke to me said that you would be willing to aid the Union cause by furnishing me with information if I would devise a means. You can write through Flag of Truce, directed to James Ap. Jones, Norfolk, the letter being written as this is, and with the means furnished by the messenger who brings this. I cannot refrain from saying to you, although personally unknown, how much I am rejoiced to hear of the strong feeling for the Union which exists in your breast and among some of the ladies of Richmond. I have the honor to be,
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant.
Lizzie felt a heady rush of excitement that left her momentarily breathless. She handed the letter to Mr. Rowley, who read it, frowning thoughtfully, and as she studied him, she felt her first twinge of doubt. “Captain,” she said, “we’ve always relied upon our own couriers to smuggle intelligence past Confederate lines. Not one has ever been caught. While it’s true that it would require less risk to life and limb to send letters through the flag of truce boats, we must assume that the Confederates read and censor our mail.”
Mr. Rowley nodded his agreement. “I would in their place.”
“If they do, and I’ve no doubt they will, they will read nothing more than an innocently dull conversation between a dutiful nephew and his doting aunt.” Captain Howard reached into his coat pocket and produced two small glass bottles containing a transparent liquid. “This is the same substance General Butler used to write to you. Write with it as you would any ink. The lines will appear with the application of a mild acid and heat.” He handed each of them a bottle. “I will also give you a cipher in case you run out of the fluid, or if you wish to doubly secure your message.”
The cipher he taught them was a system of converting letters to numbers, a grid of forty-nine squares with numbers along the left column and bottom row and letters filling the rest. Lizzie and Mr. Rowley copied the key over carefully, and when Captain Howard exhorted them to conceal them in the most secure location they knew, Lizzie needed little time to decide. She folded the paper as small as she could and tucked it into the back of the case of her pocket watch, which she carried with her always.
When they parted company, Lizzie promised to send General Butler a report on the state of Richmond’s defenses and prisons as soon as she could gather enough credible information. “My code name is Quaker,” Mr. Rowley said ruefully as he escorted her to her carriage, where Peter already had the horses ready. “I’m a Dunkard.”
Lizzie, whose alias was the straightforward Eliza A. Jones, laughed. “Perhaps that’s all a part of the ruse. If you were called Dunkard, it would lead the rebels right to your doorstep.”
It was easy to be lighthearted in that moment, when they had at last made contact with the gentlemen most likely to put their hard-won intelligence to good use. But as Lizzie rode home in the gathering twilight, she knew that invisible ink and an impenetrable code provided them with but scant protection. If it fell into the wrong hands, a message written in an indecipherable string of numbers would incriminate them as swiftly as one put down in plain English.
Although the Union army did not threaten the capital directly as that bleak January dragged on, disturbances within the borders of its defenses unsettled the populace. Almost daily the newspapers reported escapes from Castle Thunder, and on a single night, eighteen Yankee deserters believed to be spies fled the provost prison established in the Palmer & Allison tobacco warehouse on Cary Street by cutting through a wall into an adjoining commissary storehouse. Five nights later, on the same evening the president and Mrs. Davis hosted a gala reception at the Executive Mansion, an arsonist attempted to burn down the residence by placing a large quantity of combustible matter in one of the basement rooms and setting it on fire. Smoke billowing up the basement stairs alerted the occupants in time for them to extinguish the fire before much damage was done, but too late to prevent the culprit from helping himself to a quantity of groceries. Two days after that, arson or accident destroyed seven buildings at Camp Winder. Although the fire caused no injuries or deaths, more than fifty thousand dollars’ worth of damage was done, including the loss of the commissary’s building and most of the contents.
Compounding the pervasive anxiety was the dire scarcity of food. Lizzie’s heart ached for the suffering of the very poor. Women who had never had to resort to begging before now stood on the sidewalks pleading for bread with tears in their eyes, often with hungry children clinging to their skirts. One day Lizzie went to the market to buy cornmeal, only to learn there was not a grain to be found. Undaunted, she proceeded to the City Mills, where she was told they had no corn and could procure none.
“But I hear the grinding of the mill,” protested Lizzie. The noise of the millstones turning was loud and unmistakable.
“We grind what people bring to us,” the miller explained. “If not for the toll we keep, I would have nothing to provide my own family. The people come to me crying for meal and I don’t know what to do. I have nothing to give them, so they must starve.”
“What shall we do?” said Lizzie faintly, more to herself than to him. She felt her knees grow weak and wished she could sit down. How would the city survive? It was too early in the year to plant a kitchen garden, much less harvest anything from one, and the Van Lews’ winter stores of their farm’s bounty were almost depleted. Their family was wealthier than most, but no fortune could buy what could not be had.
“I hear they’re grinding at a little mill on the dock,” the miller told her. “If you go there at once, they might have some left.”
Lizzie thanked him and quickly raced off to Rocketts Wharf, where she found crowds swarming near the mill. They were indeed selling cornmeal, but they refused to sell more than a single peck to each family at any price. Although Lizzie would have preferred to acquire more, she supposed the rationing was only fair and promoted the greater good of all. A peck for her family cost her five dollars, astonishingly inexpensive for the times.
A few days later, she managed to obtain one hundred pounds of rice for fifty dollars, and soon thereafter she bought a bushel of cornmeal for seventy. That would keep the household fed for a while, but not forever. A starvation panic had gripped the city, and when she thought back to the Bread Riots of the previous spring, she realized that the fear of starvation could prove as dangerous as starvation itself.
All the while, compelled, perhaps, in part by hunger, Lizzie avidly searched for useful information to send to General Butler, determined to do her part to hasten the liberation of Richmond. At the end of the month, employing the cipher and the mysterious ink, she wrote her first official dispatch, hidden beneath a pleasantly boring letter from an aunt to her nephew about inflation and the weather.
January 30, 1864
Dear Sir:
It is intended to remove to Georgia very soon all the Federal prisoners; butchers and bakers to go at once. They are already notified and selected. Quaker knows this to be true. Are building batteries on the Danville road.
This from Quaker: Beware of new and rash council! Beware! This I send you by direction of all your friends. No attempt should be made with less than 30,000 cavalry, from 10,000 to 15,000 infantry to support them, amounting in all to 40,000 or 45,000 troops. Do not underrate their strength and desperation. Forces could probably be called into action in from five to ten days; 25,000, mostly artillery. Hoke’s and Kemper’s brigades gone to North Carolina; Pickett’s in or about Petersburg. Three regiments of cavalry disbanded by General Lee for want of horses. Morgan is applying for 1,000 choice men for a raid.
Lizzie fervently wanted General Butler to understand that time was of the essence if he wanted to capture Richmond before thousands of prisoners were conveyed south beyond his reach, but he must strike with abundant forces or not at all, or the consequences would be disastrous. Her message was too urgent and too important to trust to the flag of truce ships, despite the protections of aliases and ciphers and invisible writing. To her relief, Merritt Rowley offered to carry the letter to General Butler himself. When his parents consented, Lizzie gratefully accepted, and after Mr. Rowley found Merritt a trustworthy guide, she sent off her dispatch with prayers for the youth’s safety.