Mary Bowser

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Fictional portrayal of Mary Bowers of the CIA

Mary Jane Bowser (* probably 1841 , probably in Richmond , Virginia as Mary Jane Richards , † after June 1867 ), also known as Mary Elizabeth Bowser and Mary Richards Bowser , was an African-American spy for the Northern States during the American Civil War . Originally a slave , she was freed by her mistress Elizabeth van Lew , sent to school and sent to Liberia as a missionary . Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, she returned and smuggled herself into the Confederation White House as an alleged slave . There she spied for the northern states for years. To protect herself from acts of revenge, she used various pseudonyms after the war.

Life

youth

Mary was born a slave to the rich van Lew family. Her exact date of birth is unknown, but she was named on a ship's cargo list from December 1855 as fourteen, which is why 1841 is assumed to be her year of birth. The identity of her parents is also not known, as Mary made contradicting information on this in later years. In one version, her mother was a slave of the van Lews, which would be plausible, since under the law of the time, the children of a slave automatically became slaves as well. Another time she claimed that her mother was white and her father was black of Cuban descent. In another version, she stated that she did not know who her parents were. Since she used the surname Richards before and after the war, it is also possible that her parents belonged to the Richards family, relatives of the van Lews. Her owners had her baptized under the name Mary Jane in St. John's Episcopal Church on May 17, 1846 , an unusual choice for the time, as the other slaves in the family were baptized in a black church.

Elizabeth van Lew

In 1843, Mary's owner, John van Lew, died. His daughter Elizabeth had become an abolitionist after a stay in the north and began to release the family's slaves together with her mother in the 1850s. She sent Mary to school in about 1850 and 1851, respectively. It was illegal to teach slaves in the southern states, so Elizabeth van Lew took them north, where Mary attended school in either Princeton or Philadelphia . It is sometimes claimed that Mary was sent to a Quaker school, but the van Lews were members of the Episcopal Church of the United States and no connection with Quakerism can be established. After her education, in December 1855, at the age of fourteen she was sent to Monrovia , Liberia , under the name Mary Jane Richards, to work as a missionary. Mary spent nearly five years in Africa, but Elizabeth van Lew's correspondence with a member of the American Colonization Society shows that she was very unhappy in Liberia. At the beginning of 1860, Mary returned to Virginia.

However, she quickly ran into trouble over a law prohibiting educated blacks from returning to Virginia. She was arrested on August 21, 1860. The Richmond newspaper Whig reported, "Mary Jones, aka Mary Jane Henley, probably a mulatto , about twenty years old, arrested for traveling without valid papers, was detained for nine days." This episode shows Mary using pseudonyms with strangers , a habit to keep after the war. Nine days later, after she ended her detention, the paper wrote again about Mary. This time it was mentioned that her real name was Mary J. Richards and that she only called herself Mary Jane Henley, and that Elizabeth van Lew had received a summons for "letting her slave run free". Since the legal situation in Virginia and various clauses in John van Lew's will made it difficult, if not impossible, to free slaves, the validity of Mary's release and thus her legal status as free blacks was controversial. On April 16, 1861, the day before Virginia split from the Union, Mary married Wilson Bowser, a black servant of the van Lews, at St. John's Episcopal Church.

espionage

When the Civil War began, Elizabeth van Lew organized a spy ring for the Union known as The Richmond Underground . Mary Bowser was to play a key role in this. A friend of the van Lews took Mary to the Confederate White House in Richmond , saying she was a slave who could help with the receptions of the Confederate First Lady , Varina Davis . According to some sources, Mary took the name Ellen Bond for this purpose. At first she only worked part-time in the White House, then she was employed and stayed almost until the end of the war. Slaves were generally ignored by their masters, so Mary was free to overhear conversations while she was serving meals. She herself reported in a lecture after the war that she “entered the rebel senate when it met in secret”. Strategic and secret documents were also left open while she cleaned the rooms, as no one expected a slave to be able to read. One of her fellow spies was Thomas McNiven, a baker who supplied households across Richmond. Whenever he dropped off his wares at the Confederate White House, he and Mary exchanged information. After the war, he told his daughter that Mary could get the most important information

“Because she worked right in the Davis family home and had a photographic memory. Everything she saw on the rebel president's desk she could repeat word for word. Unlike most people of color, she could read and write. She always came to my car when I was delivering to the Davis' house to give me a report. "

Confederate White House, April 1865

Some historians view McNiven's memoirs with skepticism, however, as they were passed down orally and were not written down until 1952. Since all material from the Richmond Underground was destroyed after the war in order to protect the spies, it can no longer be said with certainty which information actually came from Mary Bowser. However, there are indications of activities that Mary participated in. She herself said after the war that she helped capture Confederate officers in Fredericksburg and confiscate smuggled tobacco. A post-war article in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper described her as involved in a mass escape of captured Union soldiers from the Libby Prison Confederate prison in Richmond on February 9, 1864. She exchanged information with other prisoners. What she learned, she shared with Elizabeth van Lew, who wrote about Mary:

“When I open my eyes in the morning I ask the maid, 'What's new, Mary?' and my informant never fails! Most of the time we get the most reliable information from the blacks, and they show wisdom, discretion and prudence, which is wonderful. "

According to some sources, Mary Bowser fled in January 1865 after trying to set fire to the Confederate White House. However, there is no historical evidence of this, and at the end of the war a few months later, there is evidence that Mary was still in Richmond.

After the war

In April 1865 the Civil War ended and by the end of the month Mary was already a teacher for now free slaves. During this time she again took the surname Richards and never called herself Bowser again. Her husband Wilson Bowser, however, still lived in Richmond, which suggests that the marriage may have been divorced. In September Mary traveled north, where she gave lectures about her experiences and experiences before and during the war. However, she used pseudonyms because she was afraid of acts of revenge. In a lecture in Manhattan on September 11th she called herself Richmonia Richards, about two weeks later in Brooklyn she used the name Richmonia R. St. Pierre. She may have given more lectures, but due to their pseudonyms, they cannot be clearly assigned to Mary. Another difficulty is that depending on the audience, Mary changed not only her name but also her biography in order to achieve the greatest possible impact.

The New York newspaper The Anglo African described Mary as "very sarcastic and quite humorous," but also as very critical of the North. Mary reported in the article how Union soldiers harassed blacks after their invasion of Richmond, and that free blacks in the north were more interested in fashion and social status than education and welfare. She compared them with the people she had met in Liberia and claimed: "The Mandinka never drink, lie or steal" and are therefore "much better than the colored people here". The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper also reported that Mary was calling for blacks to vote and for full equality in both the north and south. According to her, even the Freedmen's Bureau , an institution of the federal government in support of the freed slaves, behaved discriminatory against blacks, and in the following years she repeatedly reported of the barely concealed hostility of whites.

Over the next few years she toured various places in Virginia and Florida under the name of Mary J. Richards , where she continued to teach liberated blacks. In 1867 she founded a school on behalf of the Freedmen's Bureau in St. Marys , Georgia , where she received a visit in March from Harriet Beecher Stowe and her brother Charles Beecher, who were on a trip with her friend Crammond Kennedy. Beecher's diary entry about Mary is the only surviving contemporary description: "a Juno , made of dark marble, her features even and expressive, her eyes exceptionally clever and sharp, her shape and movements of perfect grace". Mary's letters from this period to Gilbert L. Eberhart, Freedmen's Bureau Education Officer , are her only surviving correspondence. In them she reported about her difficulties as the only teacher of 70 day, 12 adult evening and 100 Sunday students. "I do hope I'll be willing to do whatever I can, but I'm afraid it won't be much in the end." Then there was the hostility that she and her students were exposed to. In one of her last letters she wrote:

“I wish there was a law here or some protection. I know the southerners pretty well because, having served as a detective for so long, I still keep a close watch on them. You have that malicious look in your eyes and a quiet but bitter sensation that indicates evil. Once they have some whiskey, they will dare anything. Do not think that I am scared and do not laugh at my letter. "

At some unspecified time before June 1, 1867, Mary had remarried and asked Eberhart to call her Mary JR Garvin in the future. All that is known about her second husband is Mary's statement that he had moved to Havana , Cuba and that Mary claimed her outstanding salary on June 27 so that she could follow her husband to the West Indies . Her school was closed at the same time. Afterwards, all trace of Mary Bowser is lost, but there is a possibly symbolic gravestone for her in the Woodland Cemetery in Richmond.

aftermath

Mary Bowser is one of the least known spies of the Civil War, on the one hand because of her pseudonyms, which make clear allocation difficult, on the other hand, because all information from the Richmond Underground was destroyed after the war. Even her name remained unknown to the public for decades after the war. Varina Davis denied that there was ever an educated slave in her home, which would have been an indication of Mary's presence. It was not until 1900, when an article appeared in a Richmond newspaper about Elizabeth van Lew's life on the occasion of her death, that a nameless “maid of unusually high intelligence” was mentioned for the first time. About ten years later, a niece of Van Lews, who was ten at the end of the war, identified this maid as Mary Bowser, and in June 1911 Harper's Magazine first published the spy's name as Mary Elizabeth Bowser, which is still frequent today is used for them. A 1900 photograph of a woman long identified with Mary Bowser turned out to be a portrait of another woman of the same name in June 2013.

In 2002 National Public Radio broadcasted the story that McEva Bowser, whose husband was descended from Wilson Bowser's relatives, discovered Mary Bowser's diary in the attic in the 1950s and threw it in the trash for fear of racist violence. However, it is unknown whether Mary ever kept a diary, and it is doubtful that she would have left it at the Bowser's house when she left Virginia. On May 15, 2012 the historical novel The Secrets of Mary Bowser by the historian Lois Leveen was published.

In recognition of the service rendered to the Union, Mary Bowser was inducted into the U.S. Army Intelligence Hall of Fame on June 30, 1995, Fort Huachuca , Arizona . McEva Bowser attended the ceremony and accepted the award on behalf of the company. As a reason for Mary's admission, the Military Intelligence wrote :

“Jefferson Davis knew the Union was somehow figuring out Confederate plans, but never saw the leak in his household. It is clear that Mary Bowser succeeded in a highly dangerous mission which was instrumental in the work of the Union. She was one of the most highly positioned and most productive agents of the civil war. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Mary Richards Bowser (fl. 1846–1867) . Encyclopedia Virginia, January 27, 2014. Accessed September 9, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Lois Leveen: A Black Spy in the Confederate White House . The New York Times, June 21, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2016.
  3. ↑ Harnett Thomas Kane: Spies for the Blue and Gray . 1st edition, Ace Books 1954, p. 167.
  4. ↑ Mary Richards Bowser (fl. 1846-1867) . Encyclopedia Virginia, January 27, 2014. Accessed September 9, 2016: “On August 21, 1860, the Richmond Whig reported" [...] She was sent to the North about nine years ago [...] "”.
  5. ^ Black Dispatches: Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence During the Civil War . Accessed September 4, 2016.
  6. ↑ a b c Lyde Cullen Sizer: Bowser, Mary Elizabeth (1839? -?), Union spy during the Civil War ( Memento of the original from September 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, accessed September 16, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu
  7. ↑ Lois Leveen: A Black Spy in the Confederate White House . The New York Times, June 21, 2012: “When I open my eyes in the morning, I say to the servant, 'What news, Mary?' and my caterer never fails! Most generally our reliable news is gathered from negroes, and they certainly show wisdom, discretion and prudence which is wonderful. " Accessed September 8, 2016.
  8. ↑ Lois Leveen: A Black Spy in the Confederate White House . The New York Times, June 21, 2012: “I wish there was some law here, or some protection. I know the southerners pretty well… having been in the service so long as a detective that I still find myself scrutinizing them closely. There is… that sinister expression about the eye, and the quiet but bitterly expressed feeling that I know portends evil… with a little whiskey in them, they dare do anything… Do not think I am frightened and laugh at my letter. ” Accessed September 8, 2016.
  9. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Bowser on findagrave.com. Accessed September 18, 2016
  10. ↑ Bowser, Mary Elizabeth . Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame. Accessed September 18, 2016.
  11. ↑ AMERICAN CIVIL WAR Union Richmond Underground : “Jefferson Davis knew the Union somehow kept discovering Confederate plans but never discovered the leak in his household staff [...] it is certain that Mary Bowser succeeded in a highly dangerous mission that significantly benefitted the Union effort. She was one of the highest-placed and most productive espionage agents of the Civil War. "
personal data
SURNAME Bowser, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richards, Mary Jane; Bowser, Mary Elizabeth; Bowser, Mary Richards
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African American spy
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Richmond , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH after June 1867