Daily News from New York, New York • 60

IIIWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHIIIIIIIIIIIi IftxTrrall eiiiiiiif iiiiiiiiJa Lj3 LE3. 3x lr 'itm 11 "ff. PC fc-1 rA i 1 I iff -s Baffle of Fronf Royal Thi old engraving show the Federals entering Front Royal, V. Later they were driven out by Stonewall Jackson, working on information given him by Belle Boyd. Spy.

in Crinoline, Belle Boyd Lived Romantic Story By 11. 15. SULLIVAN WAS Belle Boyd, "La Belle Rebelle" and the Cleopatra of the Secession, just a busybody or did her darincr deeds as a spy really help the Confederate i Army? Whether we believe her admirers or side with her enemies, Belle now lies in a cold Northern grave, and her light footprint has left only a slight dent in history. Her story remains one of the most romantic to emerge from the record of the War Between the States. She was 17 and just entering her first "season" in Washington society when the war began.

She became something worse than a case of hives to the Federal Government; had a hand In sending a number of Union soldiers to their deaths in af least one battle; kept an endless stream of secret" notes, valuable and worthless, pouring past the "Union lines, and finally outdid herself by marrying the Northern naval officer who captured her at sea. lVIle luTself has told her story stationed at Harpers Ferry, 30 in her hook, Boyd in Camp miles or so away, an 1 Prison." Serious researchers "Well," said the officer, "she's a independent one, anyway. And he departed. There was considerable marching and countermarching in the vicinity of Martinsburg in the early months of the war. The house was full of dust-covered Federals.

Every time they gathered for a council in the dining room Belle would speed upstairs to her own room, immediately above, and apply her shell-like ear to an extremely providential knothole. The information gathered at this post, and from officers with whom she became friendly in a ladvlike way, she immediately committed to writing and dispatched by trusty messenger to Jeb Stuart, who in turn passed it to Johnston and Jackson. Soon she fell under suspicion. The federals, who had looked upon her indulgently, voiv watched her carefully. Nothing daunted, she continued a collection of swords and guns laid off by relaxing officers who later would wonder where the danged things had got to and her collection of facts, accurate and inaccurate.

She always had a handy mes senger one of the colored folks or Sophia (otherwise un- identified), who once walked the seven miles from Martinsburg with a message for Jackson in his camp. The ease with which these Southern beauties crossed and recrossed the lines is amazing, until it is considered that Belle always had a pocketful of passes cadged from Federal officers. While Belle was busily gathering every scrap of information, important military operations were afoot in the neighborhood. Major Gen. Irwin McDowell was planning to strike at Gen.

Pierre Beauregard near Manassas Junction. Beauregard withdrew under pressure to Bull Run and sent a hasty appeal to Jefferson Davis to direct Johnston to help him. McDowell's colleague, Patterson, was to prevent Johnston from joining Beauregard. But by a forced march overnight, and because Patterson stupidly moved in the wrong direction to intercept him, Johnston avoided a trap. In the meantime, things had been going badly with Beauregard, whose troops were crumbling under McDowell's attack.

They broke and ran all but the brigade of Jackson, which stood "like a stone wall." Beauregard rallied his troops as Johnston's advance guard arrived in support. The tides of battle swayed and for a while it was any man's fight. Then at the crucial moment, Johnston's remaining troops came up. The Union forces panicked. They threw away their guns and accoutrements and fled incontinently giving the first battle of Bull Run to the South on July 21, 1861.

This meant the complete defeat of a maneuver which was to have ended the war at one blow. The defeated Army of the Potomac took 10 months or more to recover. Belle at this time, was still in Martinsburg. She varied her life with visits to an aunt at Front Royal, at the southern end of the road through Winchester to Martinsburg. Rebelle" Cleopatra of the Secession, as she younger days.

tete-a-tete, allowing Shields to talk his head off. She also was visited by other Union officers with whom she had become acquainted through her proximity to the arena. They brought her poetry, flowers and information. The South was in a very bad spot at the time. Fort Donelson had fallen on Feb.

16. 1862; the North was pressing through the Tennessee Valley. New Orleans had capitulated and other reverses were feared momentarily. The Northern plan in the Shenandoah Valley was this: Major Gen. Nathaniel P.

Banks was in command of a small force at the head of the Valley not far from Front Royal; Major Gen. John C. Fremont was to join him and together they -would converge on Stonewall Jackson. By engaging him, they would release other forces which could march on Richmond. Shields was to take part in the action.

The night before he was to leave May 21, 1862 Belle overheard a conversation in which the plans were prominently featured. She hastily wrote the stuff down in cipher, threw on a cape, stole to the stables and had her horse saddled by a faithful retainer. Armed with a fistful of passes, she penetrated the Federal lines. Once through the pickets, she galloped to the camp of Col. Henry Ashby, an old friend who headed a eavalnj detachment, and pressed into his hand her note for Jackson.

The next day Shields left with his men to begin laying as he thought a trap for Jackson. BACK in Front Royal, in a light sweat at her narrow escape. Belle learned through her underground channels that Jackson was marching on the town. He had evaded the trap set for him by Shields. She wasn't sure whether her information had helped him, but she was willing to take the credit.

Belle knew how the Federals were distributed Banks near by with 4,000 men; Julius White at Harpers Ferry with more; Shields and Geary not far away; Fremont deeper in the Valley. They outnumbered Jackson's 20,000 men by two to one. La Belle Rebelle was never one "La Belle Belle Boyd, sometimes called the looked in her Martinsburg, in the center of the theatre of war, was captured and recaptured, but it takes more than a little fighting to keep a Southern girl from her visiting. It is well to remember that Belle was only IT. She icas tall, well-built and a blonde.

She was not pretty in the usual sense and became less so as she grew older, but she pozsesed a store of personal magnetism that made it possible for her to win friends wherever she went. THEN, in one of her journeyings to Fr.ont Royal early in 1802, she found her uncle and aunt packing to go South. They were sick of not knowing who would have the town the next day. The Rebels were about to clear out again, so Belle started back toward Martinsburg. In Winchester on her way home, she was denounced as a spy and arrested, although she had a pass from the Federal Gen.

James Shields. Detained in City's Finest Hotel. Taken to Baltimore by two Federal officers and chaperoned by a maid she was handed over to Major Gen. John A. Dix and was lodged in the Eutaw House, then the city's finest hotel.

There she was well treated and was called upon by scores of Rebel sympathizers, with which the city swarmed. She was held for a week, after which time the Federals decided she was harmless and allowed her to return to Martins- Arriving home, she came to the decision that the spot was too hot even for one of her valiant temperament. She started southward in an attempt to reach Richmond. At Front Royal, on her way, she found Gen. Shields occupying her uncle's house.

Resting from her journey, Belle received Shields in the drawing room. They had a long, comfortable conversation in which Shields expressed confidence that he would defeat Stonewall Jackson in some carefully planned actions which were soon to take place. He also said he believed Johnston's army was demoralized. Belle was scornful, but remained silent during the the war and its ramifications have exhibited varying reactions concerning her adventures some Km i led, some grinned, some sneered and some didn't even mention her. Bell was born in 1844 at 126 E.

Burke Martinsburg, then in Virginia but now in Berkeley County, W. Va. Her family was an otfshwot of the proud Boyd clan of Scotland that emigrated in the 17th' Century. War Forces Her Back to Family. Her father, Ben Boyd, was connected with the Federal Government as a Treasury official; the family was comfortably off.

At the of 12, she was packed olf to Mt. Washington Female College in Baltimore to acquire the polish necessary to a soft Dixie belle. And in 1801 she was making an unofficial debut in Washington when the vast, inexorable train of events about which, up to this time, she had known little and cared less at last plunged the country into war. The exigencies of war made it vccesxary fur her to return to the buxom' of her family in quiet Ular-tiiishitrff. Belle's father joined the Second Virginia Cavalry, whose motto was "Our God, our country and our women." He went off to war, but not very far from home.

The womenfolk of the Boyd family would go out on Sundays with dainties for Dad, whose outfit was IN May, 1861, the Union's Major Gen. Robert Patterson started south toward Martinsburg, at the head of the Shenandoah Valley. Major Gen. George B. McClellan also was headed that way.

The Boyd family picnics had to stop when Gen. Joseph. E. Johnston, who had seized Harpers Ferry at the outset of the war, was compelled to Jail back on Winchester, south of Martinsburg, with his main force. Lieut.

Gen. Thomas J. (not yet Stonewall) Jackson had sent a brigade toward Martinsburg to help Col. J. E.B.

Stuart's cavalry destroy the almost completed B. O. shops there lest they fall into the hands of the Union army. When the of destruction was finished, Jackson's brigade withdrew to join Johnston's force. The moment his picks left the town the Union men poured into Martinsburg some 20,000 strong, a throng Belle described as "infuriated and undisciplined." She added that the Irish predominated.

Belle was in the town hospital, comforting two Conferates who, weak with some digestive complaint, had been left behind. A Federal officer came in. rebels," he spat out. (The is Belle's.) "Sir," she said defiantly "they are helpless as babies and cannot answer "your insults." "And who may you be, Miss?" he asked her. "She's a Rebel lady," said her colored maid when Belle refused to answer..