Good Morning POU! This is just a great subject and these stories are severely underreported, if reported at all. Think of the pride our youth would feel if they learned about this.
Tens of thousands of ex-slaves fought and died for the Union in military units. Less known is the work of other African-Americans who risked their lives in secret, gathering intelligence or while entering enemy territory as scouts. Brigadier General Grenville M. Dodge mentioned how he used black scouts during a search for Confederate troops in Tennessee: “Two negroes led our cavalry to them, guiding them around their pickets. No white man had the pluck to do it.”
Slaves were thought of as animals or pieces of furniture, therefore Confederate generals would freely speak of their plans in front of them without a thought.
Throughout the official records of the war, there are frequent references to bits of intelligence coming from “contrabands.” The term tracks back to a demand for runaway slaves from a Virginia slaveowner who cited the Fugitive Slave Law when he learned that his slaves had fled to Union territory. Responding, Major General Benjamin Butler said that since secession, Virginia had not been under federal law. Butler referred to the slaves as “contraband of war,” and the term caught on.
In a typical report: “Three contrabands came in from Fort Johnson yesterday. They were officers’ servants, and report, from conversation of the officers there, that north and northwest faces of Fort Sumter are nearly as badly breached as the gorge wall, and that many of our projectiles passed through both walls, and that the fort contains no serviceable guns.”
George Scott escaped from a plantation near Yorktown and headed for Fort Monroe, at the mouth of the James River on the tip of the Virginia peninsula. On the way, he noted two large fortifications. To gather more intelligence, Scott joined a Union officer on scouting missions.
On one such mission, Scott was the target of a Confederate picket, whose bullet missed Scott’s body, but put a hole in his jacket. Another slave worked on the defenses of Leesburg. He escaped, bringing with him his detailed observations about the deployment of 5,000 Confederate troops. Many other slaves provided similar information about Confederate plans and maneuvers.
While Allan Pinkerton was serving as Major General George D. McClellan’s intelligence chief, the private detective ordered a careful debriefing of runaway slaves, some of whom he personally recruited to go back as agents. One black spy for Pinkerton was W. H. Ringgold, a free man who had been forced to work on a Virginia riverboat that was moving Confederate troops and supplies. After about six months, he and the other crewmen were allowed to return to the North. Debriefed by Pinkerton, Ringgold told all he knew about Confederate fortifications on the Virginia peninsula. When McClellan began his peninsula campaign in March 1862, the best intelligence he had was from Ringgold.
Slaves were able to listen and remember detailed conversations had in their presence because as Jefferson Davis’ widow claimed, none were “educated” in their eyes.
Jefferson Davis’ widow, Varina, responding to an inquiry in 1905, denied that the Richmond White House had harbored a spy. “I had no ‘educated negro’ in my household,” she wrote. She did not mention that her coachman, William A. Jackson, had crossed into Union lines, bringing with him military conversations that he had overheard. In a letter from Major General
Irvin McDowell to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, “Jeff Davis’ coachman” is cited as the source of information about Confederate deployments. A butler who served Jefferson Davis also made his way to Union lines.
Although McDowell and other Union generals could attest to the value of the Black Dispatches, the best endorsement came from General Robert E. Lee. “The
chief source of information to the enemy,” he wrote, “is through our negroes.”