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During the period where the British had control of Philadelphia, Quaker Lydia Darragh overheard British officers scheming and planning a surprise attack on George Washington’s army. Upon hearing this shocking news she then took the decision to cross enemy lines under the disguise of buying flour to find a patriot solider to alert of the news she had just heard. Thanks to Darraghs trip and warning Washington’s Army was prepared for the attacks and the British were forced back. -
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Ann Bates, a loyalist school teacher was a spy for the British when she posed as a peddler and collected critical intelligence on the patriots information leading General Henry Clinton to send more troops to Rhode Island which in turn forced the patriots to retreat. -
Nancy Morgan Hart is considered a spy for the patriots as she lured and tricked six British soliders into her home. While there she got them drunk and listened in to game plans while stealing their weapons which she later used to hold them at gun point with. -
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Agent 355 was a female spy known for her report on a British plan to attack French forces who had just arrived in Newport, Rhode Island. This information was later passed to George Washington that led him to report back false information to British agents. This led to mass confusion that caused the British to take a step back from their attempt which in turn saved the French forces. Till this day Agent 355 is only known by her alias while her existence is still questioned. -
Peggy Shippen is known as one of the highest paying spies of the American Revolution. She was the wife of General Benedict Arnold, acted as a go-between for her husband and British Major John Andre, passing cipher messages hidden in her personal letters. She enabled the conspiracy for Arnold to surrender the fort at West
Point to the British. After André's capture, she feigned hysterics to distract George Washington, which helped Arnold escape. -
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A prominent Confederate socialite and spy in Washington, D.C., Rose O'Neal Greenhow provided timely information that affected the outcome of the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). Greenhow leveraged her social circle to gain intelligence on Union plans. She passed information to the Confederacy that allowed their forces to prepare for the attack, leading to a Confederate victory. -
In 1861, detective Kate Warne of the Pinkerton Agency was tasked with investigating a potential plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln on his train journey to Washington, D.C. Warne successfully exposed the conspiracy and helped devise a plan to get Lincoln to Washington safely. She disguised Lincoln on a late-night train, using her skills as a detective to ensure his safety. -
During the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was a spy and military commander for the Union Army. The Combahee River Raid was a military operation to free enslaved people in South Carolina. Leading a contingent of three U.S. gunboats and 150 African American soldiers, Tubman used intelligence she had gathered to guide the raid, which ultimately freed over 750 enslaved people. -
Devoted to the Union, actress Pauline Cushman was recruited to hunt for Confederate sympathizers and spies during the Civil War. Working as an undercover agent in Kentucky and Tennessee, she posed as a Confederate supporter to learn how they were transporting information and supplies into Confederate territory. She was eventually captured but later released. -
During the Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew ran an extensive spy ring for the Union from her home in Richmond, Virginia. Van Lew, a prominent abolitionist, hid coded messages in her clothes and used her social connections to learn about Confederate troop movements, which she passed to the Union Army. Her network helped pave the way for the fall of the Confederate capital. -
