By Kevin Seabrooke
Elizabeth Van Lew was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1818, to parents from Philadelphia and Long Island. Raised in a mansion in the city, she finished her education in Philadelphia. Her family had gone to great lengths to adapt to their southern home, even going so far as to own 21 enslaved people before the Civil War. She and her mother, Eliza, opposed slavery (her father had died in 1843) and supported African colonization, a proposal to deport blacks to Liberia in Africa. Van Lew freed some of her family’s slaves, but still owned some well into the war. Early in the war, as a wealthy woman, she was able to visit Union prisoners without much suspicion. These men passed on information overheard from the guards, and she even helped some of them escape.
When she was barred from visiting the prisons, she managed to assemble a clandestine network of Unionists, abolitionists, slaves and others to be her eyes and ears in the heart of the Confederate Capital. She was able to get information to Washington, D.C., and General Ulysses Grant with couriers and coded ciphers. Willis brings into the light for a broader audience the courage of a dedicated group of people led by an extraordinarily principled woman whose actions are often overlooked.
Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster (Gerri Willis, Harper/ HarperCollins, New York NY, 2025, 288 pp., $28.99, HC)
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