0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The years 1861, in America, is on the grips of a bloody civil war that will change it, forever. 0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: In Richmond, the capital of the new Confederate States, Southern Bells and Ladies are sewing uniforms, throwing fundraising gallows, and nursing injured soldiers, all with the support of young female slaves. 0:25 [SPEAKER_00]: They can't go into the battlefield, but they're doing the best they can 0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But in the middle of all this southern charity, is one woman who separates herself from the pack, choosing to visit the union prisoners in the Libby prison, rather than the injured confederates and the hospitals. 0:45 [SPEAKER_00]: She takes them books, food, and anything else, that comfort them, despite the fact that as a wealthy white southerner, she is the natural enemy, the Yankee. 0:55 [SPEAKER_00]: But she's told the warden, she's just doing the right thing, the Christian thing, the southern thing, she says, to succeed we must begin with charity, to the thankless, the unworthy. 1:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And because she looks the part, expensive clothes, gentle accent, black servants, no one thinks to question her charity. 1:14 [SPEAKER_00]: That is their first mistake, because this woman is not like her peers. 1:18 [SPEAKER_00]: She is not a loyal southerner nor is she pro-slavery. 1:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Her name is Elizabeth Van Lue, and by the end of the war, Ulysses S. Grant will call her the source of the most valuable information received from Richmond during the war. 1:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth Van Lue was born into a wealthy, slave-owning Virginia family. 1:39 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1818, their mansion was the center of social gatherings and they were at the heart of Richmond's upper class. 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Traditionally, that would set Elizabeth up for a privileged marriage and family 1:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But it was not to be, she never married, and her loyalty to the union made her an enemy of her peers. 1:57 [SPEAKER_00]: When she was young, Elizabeth's parents sent her north to Philadelphia for her education, where she started questioning the world she'd been born into. 2:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Particularly, the institution of slavery. 2:07 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time she returned home to Richmond, she was a staunch abolitionist. 2:11 [SPEAKER_00]: and, as soon as she could, she organized for all the family slaves to be freed. 2:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Unsurprisingly, when the war came, she could not support the Confederacy. 2:20 [SPEAKER_00]: From the outset, it's remarkable that she publicly made the decision to care for union prisoners instead of injured Confederates. 2:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But her story gets more unusual and interesting the closer you look. 2:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Because before she made deliveries to the prisoners, she hit coded messages in the books she lent them. 2:36 [SPEAKER_00]: These messages were hidden by a cipher of her own design and included everything from questions about prison conditions to intelligence about escape routes. 2:46 [SPEAKER_00]: We do not know exactly how many escapes Elizabeth Van Liu facilitated, under the cover of charity, but the number has to be big. 2:53 [SPEAKER_00]: She had a network of safe houses, including her own three-story mansion, where soldiers could stay after their escape. 3:00 [SPEAKER_00]: She also provided them with false papers and uniforms. 3:04 [SPEAKER_00]: To enable them to make it safely, back into Union Territory, several times during the war, Elizabeth would have Union men, hidden in a secret room on the top level of her house, at the same time as she hosted Confederate generals, soldiers, and supporters downstairs. 3:19 [SPEAKER_00]: On one occasion, she was visited by a pair of detectives who suspected her involvement in the prison breaks. 3:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And despite the fact, she had two prisoners upstairs. 3:28 [SPEAKER_00]: She was able to 3:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Assuming her innocent, there is also evidence that her house was one of the stations on the underground railroad, helping escape slaves, make the journey north, former slaves were key collaborators in Elizabeth's by-work, her household staff, of freed slaves, doubled as a spiring, they could go places and talk to people, she could not, and were her main source of information. 3:54 [SPEAKER_00]: They also carried contraband, and baskets are clothing items. 3:58 [SPEAKER_00]: When the rest of Richmond just thought they were running errands. 4:01 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most important of these people was a young woman named Mary Jane Bouser. 4:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Mary Jane had been born one of the van loose slaves, but was freed as a child. 4:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth had paid for her to be educated in the north, and supported her through four years of missionary work in Africa when the war started. 4:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Mary Jane was living in Elizabeth's house as a servant, having been illegally snuck back into the city, under Virginia and law, freed slaves, who had been educated, weren't allowed back in the state. 4:32 [SPEAKER_00]: So Elizabeth Y to those around her claiming Mary Jane was still a slave, this lie would become instrumental during the war. 4:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1861, Elizabeth saw an advertisement in the local newspaper and in it a powerful opportunity for espionage, varina Davis, wife of the president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, was seeking qualified help in Elizabeth new just the person. 4:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It was common in the 1800s for wealthy women to lend each other slaves, so no one thought it was suspicious. 5:04 [SPEAKER_00]: When Elizabeth put on one of her best walking dresses and walked the short distance to the White House of the Confederacy to pay a call on the most politically powerful woman in the South after making small talk about the war in Verena's family. 5:18 [SPEAKER_00]: It Elizabeth got to the point. 5:20 [SPEAKER_00]: She knew Verena needed help around the house and she was more than happy to 5:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's important to know that Verena Davis was something of an outsider too, despite her rank. 5:33 [SPEAKER_00]: She was too northern, too dark, and too brash for southern society. 5:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And not a popular woman among her peers, because of this, she was lonely. 5:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So when the classy, charismatic socialite, like Elizabeth Fayan knew called on her, offering to bring her into the southern practice of slave lending, she must have been almost relieved. 5:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Burrina agreed and Mary Jane moved in. 5:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Slavery was everywhere in the 19th century south, and the racial bias of many slave-owning whites included the assumption that black slaves were not smart enough for espionage. 6:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Paradoxically, the invisibility of slaves, as political actors, under the score of racism, made Mary Jane's success possible. 6:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Verena Davis and her husband, the president of the Confederacy, was completely blind to the reality of their new made, they didn't suspect that she was educated, highly intelligent, courageous, and according to some accounts, blessed with photographic memory, Mary Jane could remember whole conversations, documents, and maps after only seeing the morons. 6:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But because she was in their eyes, just to slave, the Davises didn't notice that she lingered in the President's study, and they didn't think to avoid important political or military discussion. 6:48 [SPEAKER_00]: When she was around, all of this meant that Mary Jane was the perfect secret weapon, able to gather crucial information about the state of Confederate troops, cofers, and politics. 6:58 [SPEAKER_00]: She transcribed this information onto small pieces of paper that she 7:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Before Elizabeth had visited Varine Davis, her and Mary Jane had met with a local seamstress, who, like Elizabeth, was loyal to the Union, they had hatched an ingenious plan. 7:16 [SPEAKER_00]: When Mary Jane was tasked with taking Varine's dresses to the menders, which was one of her most common jobs. 7:21 [SPEAKER_00]: She would secretly open its hem or waistband and hide a message inside, then she take it to a local seamstress, loyal to the union and Elizabeth. 7:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The seamstress would remove the message, put it aside for Elizabeth, and men the dress before sending it back to the White House, wherever we are, would be none the wiser. 7:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Mary Jane was one of the most interesting members of Elizabeth's spy network, but she was not the only one, by virtue of her privilege and capital. 7:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth won the loyalty, a free African-Americans, poor immigrant business owners, and war department clerks unconvinced by the Confederacy. 7:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Using her extensive network, she protected prisoners gathered information about troop numbers and movements, and smuggled information, goods, and people into the Union territory. 8:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of this information, she sent to the heroes of the Union, General's Benjamin Butler, and Ulysses S. Grant. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it was because of information from Elizabeth that grants troops won the last battle of the Civil War. 8:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Between 1861 and 1865, Elizabeth Van Liu was the Union's eyes, and ears, enrichment, and doubtless, save the lives of hundreds of soldiers. 8:30 [SPEAKER_00]: She is one of the only major female spies of the Civil War to never spend time in prison. 8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: However, that does not mean the war did not take its toll on her. 8:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Until her death, she was ostracized by Richmond Society, and plagued by poverty, after investing all of her money in her spy work, and the freedom of her family's slaves. 8:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Her house fell into disrepair, and her diary, and behavior, show that she struggled with mental health, and paranoia in the later years of the war, 8:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Afterwards, there were stored union dead attempt to reward her service. 9:06 [SPEAKER_00]: During Grant's presidency, he made her postmaster of Richmond, the highest government position a woman could hold, and won with the healthy salary, but when Grant's presidency ended, so did the support as future presidents attempted to move on from the war. 9:20 [SPEAKER_00]: When she died in 1900, Elizabeth was alone, broke, and broken, her grave stone was paid for, her charity donations gathered by abolitionists, and reads, she risked everything that was dear to her, friends, fortune, comfort, health, life itself, all for the one absorbing desire of her heart that slavery be abolished. 9:41 [SPEAKER_00]: and the union preserved. 9:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth VanLoo defied her class in gender to pull off some of the biggest espionage coups of war, freeing countless soldiers, planting a spy in the Confederate White House, orchestrating a vast spy ring in the heart of the Confederacy, and transmitting valuable military information to one of the most important generals in American history. 10:03 [SPEAKER_00]: However, ironically, it was because of her class in gender that she was able to do it all. 10:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The 19th century didn't think much of women, it did not think them threatening, or dangerous, or at all smart, sudden women in particular were seen as only wives, mothers and ornaments. 10:22 [SPEAKER_00]: All of that made them trustworthy, despite the reality of female espionage, men had a very hard time believing that women were capable of subterfuge, so they were unlikely to suspect them. 10:33 [SPEAKER_00]: on one occasion Elizabeth herself wrote to Benjamin Butler, attempting to convince him to stop letting Confederate women cross the border between Maryland and Virginia because they do a great deal of harm by hiding messages, money, and medicine in their skirts and updues. 10:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Further, much of Elizabeth's power came from her control over traditionally feminine domestic spaces because she ran her house and staff, she could hide prisoners upstairs and play the hostess downstairs. 11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Use her home as a base of espionage operations and send her servants on spy missions disguised as domestic errands. 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: That was why it wasn't suspicious for her to visit the prison. 11:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Or to lend Mary Jane to the Davises, she was just doing what Southern women did, extending charity and hospitality to soldiers and each other. 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And it goes without saying that most of Elizabeth's success would have been impossible without the daring of all the former slaves and poor whites she brought into her spiring, particularly Mary Jane Bowser. 11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, it was the quiet former slave that ran the greatest risks, walking right into the equivalent of the oval office of the Confederacy. 11:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Together, these two women changed the civil war in the future of America. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth Van Lue managed to join the inner circles of both civil war presidents at once, in Mary Jane. 11:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Renee won woman operation almost unrivaled in the history of our country as they each exported their roles in society and the prejudices attached to them. 12:02 [SPEAKER_00]: These two women were able to help accomplish what they enlived tombstone called the warn absorbing desire of her heart the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the union.
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