Daily News from New York, New York • 61

mil r3! ft Jl illlllrMrrfilfelTtfflTlt 3 CO eel hf icL i c-tc cc IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEII Illllflllllllft ill! CI II III iiVv III laZ23 XJ dens together to see the show and casion. This is not to imply she 1 I 1 to dally when work was to be done. She took action, but just what action is undecided to this day. According to her book, she clapped on her sunbonnet and set off for the Confederate lines, clad in a dark blue dress and a small white embroidered apron, definitely not the costume for carrying: messages to anyone except maybe the grocer. The lines were about a mile south cf town.

The garrison's pickets were thinly spaced. One or two of the Federals fired et her, but the ehots went wild. The alarm had been given, however, and the garrison's artillery began firing wildly in the direction cf the flying blue figure that was disappearing across the fields. When she reached a point where the could be seen by Jackson's vanguard, she waved her kerchief, signaling for the advance and indicating the direction it should take. Pressing forward at the weak point on Banks' flank, far removed from aid by the other Union forces, Jackson defeated him soundly.

That was on May 23, 1862. For the next week; Jackson chased Banks, defeated him again at Winchester and finally drove him across the Potomac. Almost a hundred Union men were killed in the rout. 4 it i i I lit The Ancestral Home Tha house at 126 E. Burke Martinsburg, W.

where BeII Boyd was born. It is now owned by Mrs. Walter Coover. wasn on the Greyhound, for the Boston Post states both Belle and Pollard were present. Her bitterest critic doesn't even mention her by name.

"The History of Martinsburg and Berkeley County" by F. Vernon Aler, merely calls attention to certain "self-appointed detectives and spies" who took advantage of the war to "gratify spite against their neighbors, to cover themselves with glory and to obtain great credit as patriots." A girl with whom Belle spent the night while traveling in Virginia adds a dainty touch. This girl said that Belle, preparing for bed, bathed, and, before bathing, poured a full bottle of eau de cologne into the tub. Perhaps the most damning fact of all is that in none of the voluminous literature about Stonewall Jackson, who was killed in 1803, is there a mention of Belle. Of course, that proves nothing, since the North and the South both were infested with spies at the tims and there would be no particular reason to single out Belle.

Many of the spies were professionals. In the North they were directed by Allan Pinkerton and later La Fayette Baker. These paid detectives went for the most part anonymous and unhonored, thefr very duties keeping them out of the records of the side they wera serving when they met death by the bullet or noose. But people like Mrs. Grcenltoio and Belle Boyd, who never mads any secret of their sympathies and who never took any great prrcaic tions to hide their activities, cup tared the public mind.

Theirs writ a strictly amateur undertaking, in the sense of being unpaid and. vt well, of being rather inexpert. Mrs. Green how died, but Belle was obit to capitalize on her reputation. Husband Dies Despite Her Fond Nursing.

When Sam finally got Lack to London, Belle nursed him fondly but vainly. He died in 1808, broken by the prison life, and left her with a daughter, Grace. While Belle had been starving: genteelly in London, she had been turning over in her mind a plan which she now put into effect. Her father had died in 1805, a victim of illness and worry. Her family had no money left; other relatives had their own hard ways to make in the days of Reconstruc tion.

So Belle went on the staire. to which she was admirably fitted. tone began lecturing on her ex periences in London, where friends obtained lucrative engagements for her. Then she came back to America, where she continued on the platform, making a good living. In 1801), while on tour, she nut John V.

Hammond, an ex-officer of the British Navy, at New Orleans. They were married there and went to California. They had three children Mrs. Boyd Mowery, JohnF.dmond Hammond and Mrs. Isabel Michael, who died in New York City.

She resumed her lectures at "Belle Boyd the Rebel Spy." She toured G. A. R. encampments, then as frequent and well-attended as American Legion affairs are today. Sometimes her path would cross that of "Major" Pauline Cushman, lecturing as a Union spy, but that is no record of a face-to-fare meeting of the rival espionnes.

She obtained a divorce from Hammond in 1884 and almost immediately married Nathaniel K. High of Toledo, O. This marriage lasted less than a year. They broke up and Belle continued her lecture tour, making no particular place her home. She died in 1900, while she was preparing to lecture at Kilbourne, a Summer resort about 50 miles from Madison.

She is buried at Madison, where her grave is decorated every Memorial Day by G. A. R. veterans or their descendants, who thus keep green the memory of the woman who once hated them. Sam escorted her on shopping trips, Belle was glad to relieve herself of the weight of the money she was carrying.

She almost fainted sometimes from the labor of toting her cash belts. CROM New York, the happy little party of captor and captives proceeded to Boston, still on the Greyhound. On the way, Sam pro posed to Belle. She accepted and they arrived in Boston betrothed. Still unquenchable.

Belle, al though the fiancee of a Federal officer, spent her spare time plotting with Capt. Henry to recapture the ureyhound. Ihis plot faded, out Lapt. Henry escaped to Can ada. His flight- brought official wrath down upon the head of Belle's be loved' Sam, who was accused of complicity and summoned to Washington to answer charcres.

In June, 1864, he resigned from the service under a cloud and left at once for England, after Belle had promised to meet him there. Belle sat down and began to di rect a stream of letters at Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy. She begged that she be permitted 10 proceed to Canada. Welles, seeing a way of getting rid of Belle and curing an official headache, at last told her to go ahead, and forwarded the necessary papers. She eventually reached Enc-land.

Belle Boyd and Sam Wylde Hardinge were married with considerable pomp in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, on Aug. 25, 1864, attended by representatives of the Confederate States of America, of which there were many in London. After a few weeks, Sam went back to the United States to wind up his affairs. It was an unwise move.

After spending a short time in New York, he' started toward Martinsburg to see his bride's family. At Baltimore he was seized on suspicion of being a Rebel spy. He was in ill odor, anyway, as having quit the service to marry La Belle Rebelle. Thrust first into Forrest Hall prison in Georgetown, he was finally removed to Fort Delaware, an especially unpleasant Federal jail in the Delaware River off Wilmington. There he languished for several weeks, admired by the inmates as Belle Boyd's husband.

But this distinction did not immunize him from disease, and when he was freed on Feb. 3, 1865, he was a sick man. Back in London, Belle was short of funds. The British, sympathetic to the Cause, were not carrying their sympathy to the ridiculous length of accepting Confederate paper money. trora living some style, liclle finally descended to a room in a dismal London boarding house, where she occupied herself with writing her story.

This she took to George Augustus Sala, a well known London journalist, whfc found it sufficiently interesting to write an introduction for and to push with a London publisher. PUBLISHED first in London, Belle's appeared in New York in May of 1805 and was well and favorably receive1. Some reviewers looked upon the work sourly. The staid Athenaeum of London said the book was "strangely devoid of definite information, although she shows no disinclination to sound her own praises." People who had been in contact with Belle were inclined to a similar view. Col.

J. N. Colby in his reminiscences, recalls meeting Belle several times. "She was governed by romance," he said, "rather than devotion to a cause. Undeniably good-looking and with a fine figure, she could have been dangerous had she possessed equal good sense and good judgment.

She and her husband were lightweights." Ed A. Pollard, editor of the Richmond Examiner, who was aboard the Greyhound when it was captured, doesn't bo much as mention her in his memoirs of the oc- rM' .1 1 conditions were not so pleasant as in the Old Capitol. CARROLL PEISON was not a salubrious spot. Belle contracted typhoid fever in July of 1863, had a long siege of it and at last recovered. Convalescent, she was unhappy.

Here there were no courtly Confederates who had paid her homage during her other stretch. On the contrary, she was thrown in with "women who did not possess that priceless jewel of womanhood reputation." Instead of ignoring her this time, the Federal Government also contributed to her discomfort. She was tried by a court-martial, found guilty and sentenced to hard labor for the duration. Her unhappy father, broken in health by worry and long service in the field, moved heaven and earth to have her sentence commuted. Through the influence of former associates in the Treasury service, he won.

Belle was sent once more to Richmond, being escorted on board the transport Juniata on Dec. 1, 1863 bv Lieut. Mix, who delivered her across the lines at Fortress Monroe under a flag of truce. She arrived in Richmond this time, according to her story, with $20,000 in Confederate money, 85,000 in Federal greenbacks and $1,000 in gold. Where she got it is anybody's guess.

The Confederate money, of course was worth a dime a bale, the greenbacks not much more but the gold' was worth more than it is now. Belle was feted anew in Richmond. But she decided that her usefulness to the Cause was over, at least in the States. She made preparations to sail for England. Jefferson Davis, grateful or relieved instructed Secretary of State Judah Benjamin to make her a dispatch bearer.

She sailed from Wilmington, N. in April, 1864, aboard the Greyhound, a blockade runner flying the British flag. The sidewheel steamer was commanded by a Capt. Henry, with whom she felt especially safe because she knew his family, which was more important to a Southern girl than his seamanship. It was a false start.

The Greyhound was captured off llatteras by the Connecticut, a Federal vessel. Most of her officers and crew were taken aboard the Connecticut, but Belle remained on the Greyhound, in the custody of Lieut. Sam Wylde Hardinge, a curly-haired, warmly brown-eyed young Federal officer who was in charge of the prize crew. At first contemptuous, as usual, of the Unionists, Belle warmed to Sain as they proceeded under escort to New York. In fact, by the time they were off Sandy Hook, they were fast friends.

So much to that they went to Niblo's Gar That is what her book says. Other Confederate records or not exactly records, but memoirs put it even more romantically, but still credit Belle. They say she invited Banks and his officers to a ball at her uncle's house, then rode 120 miles there and back to arrange with Jackson to attack. She Wins Praise of Stonewall Jackson. Whichever story is correct and' Belle stuck to hers for 35 years Jackson did win.

In one month, with 20,000 men, he outwitted 40,000 Federals in the Shenandoah, took vast spoils and many prisoners, and put Washington in terror capture. Belle got a letter after the battle: May 23, 1862. Miss Belle Boyd: I thank you for myself and for the Army for the immense service you have rendered your country today. THOMAS J. JACKSON, General Commanding the Army of the Shenandoah.

Belle became the Joan of Arc of the South. STILL ambitious to serve the cause, Belle noticed one day in Martinsburg two men in Confederate uniforms standing: under guard. Ignoring the soldiers in charge, she approachei the men and was told they were captured JJebs waiting to be sent aeross the lines in an exchange of prisoners. She asked one of them to carry letter to Jackson and he agreed. The agreeable fellow turned out to be a Union Spy, about to begin a mission.

He turned the letter ever to Gen. Frajnz Sigel. who sent it to Secretary "of War Edwin M. Stanton. The next day, July 30, 1862, Major Francis C.

Sherman of the 12th Illinois presented himself at her home, accompanied by an evil looking individual who turned out to be a G-Man. (Maybe he should be called a P-Man, since he was one of Allan Pinkerton's Secret Service operatives.) She was hauled off to headquarters at Winchester, where Gen. Julius White queried the War Department about what should be done. Secretary Stanton's aid, C. P.

Wolcott, wired back that she should be held in close custody, brought to Washington and placed in the Old Capitol Prison. White was instructed to give Cridge any necessary aid to get her safely to jail. Whether White interpreted this crder strictly and sent along 450 cavalry as an escort for an 18-year-old girl cannot be said, but the cavalry certainly were there. They may have been going that way anyhow. Belle accepted their presence as a tribute to her worth as an informer.

In any event, the G-Man, "squat, bearded and furtive" by Belle's book, delivered her to the Old Capitol Prison, the building hastily erected after the British left in 1812, and abandoned after the new Capitol had reached the stage of occupation. Here she was placed in what she called solitary confinement. Her room was on the second floor, looking into A St. She was permitted to sit in the stair hall of an evening, where she won the admiring glances of all the other prisoners. On the same hallway were Confederate officers, while on the floor above were civilian prisoners, mostly die-hard residents of Belle did not suffer much during the stretch.

On Aug. 29, 1862, she was sent to Fortress Monroe with all the rest of the prisoners of war in the Old Capitol Prison and there was exchanged to the Confederate side. The transfer states that no specific charges were lodged against her. On Aug. SO she arrived in Richmond, where she met with a considerable reception and was commissioned an honorary captain and aide-de-camp to Jackson, who had commended her.

This entitled her to sit on a white horse at reviews, a right she several tiiies exercised. After her Richmond triumphs, Belle embarked upon a tour of the South and was met everywhere with ovations. These she received modestly but complacently. This trip served to develop a poise which later became useful on the lecture platform. The battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) had been fought on Sept.

17, 1862. As a result the Confederates had retired far into Virginia. Her home town once more was in Federal hands. Nevertheless, she returned to Martinsburg and attempted to take up her life as she had known it in the first war year. But she was among strangers now.

The officers she had known were dead or gone to other fields. The outfit occupying Martinsburg had heard of her long before she appeared among them and they looked for the Cleopatra of the Secesh, a Jezebel who with honeyed words would betray them into revealing their nation's secrets. They even feared poison, a knife in the dark or a chloroform sponge in their sleep. Belle enjoyed the fear and suspicion with which she was viewed, since she considered it but an evidence of the craven spirit of the North. But the Secretary of War, among his multitudinous duties, found time to note that Belle was back in his territory.

She had been warned to stay out after her exchange, and the order was not to be disobeyed. She was rearrested in May, 1863, and this time was tossed into Carroll Prison, Washington, where 1.