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“General Stuart’s New Aid”
"The rebel cavalry leader, Stuart, has appointed to a position on his staff, with the rank of Major, a young lady residing in Fairfax Court House, who has been of great service to him in giving information," etc.--Daily Paper.
During the Civil War, some women served either the Union or the
Confederacy as spies, couriers, informers, smugglers, saboteurs, scouts,
or guides. Rumors of espionage were printed frequently in
newspapers, sometimes maligning the character of the innocent who were
named or inadvertently protecting the operations of the guilty who were
unidentified.
The female spy in this cartoon is Antonia Ford, who was 23 years old
when the Civil War began. She was the daughter of a well-to-do
merchant in Fairfax, Virginia, and the sister of a lieutenant serving in
the Confederate cavalry under General J. E. B. Stuart. After a
skirmish at Fairfax, Union troops occupied the Ford home in 1861.
Antonia Ford listened to conversations and reported what she could to Stuart's troops
located near the Fairfax Courthouse. For the advantageous
intelligence her espionage provided to the Confederate military, Stuart
commissioned her on October 7, 1861, as an honorary aide-de-camp.
She secreted the commission under her mattress, but had to hide it and
other valuables under her hoop skirt when Union troops searched the Ford
house.
The Ford home became a boarding house for Union officers, giving
Antonia an ideal setting to continue her secret
intelligence-gathering. In August 1862, Antonia Ford rode 20 miles in the rain, passing Union troops,
in order to warn Stuart about a Union ploy before the Second Battle of
Bull Run (Manassas). In December 1862, when Union general Edwin Stoughton set up
headquarters at Fairfax Courthouse, she relayed the Federals' movements to Stuart and Lieutenant John Mosby.
On March 8, 1863, a party hosted by General Stoughton for his
visiting mother and sister at the Ford home (where the women were
staying) caused Union security to become lax. The Confederate Mosby was able to capture several Union officers and
60 horses and, later
that night, to nab Stoughton while he was sleeping. (When
President Lincoln learned of the incident, he responded sardonically
that he could make new generals, but not new horses.)
Mosby later denied that Antonia Ford gave him the inside
information, but Union officials suspected her as the likely source and
concocted a plan to expose her clandestine activities. They sent a
female agent, Frankie Abel, to Fairfax, posing as a distressed
Confederate refuge fleeing from Union-occupied New Orleans. The
Ford family generously opened their residence to her, and she soon
became a confidante to Antonia. When Abel left, Federal officers
arrested Antonia Ford and her father on espionage charges. (This
cartoon, which quotes the discovered commission, appeared after her
arrest.) The father was released, but Antonia was held until a prisoner
exchange with the Confederacy was arranged on May 20, 1863. She
resumed her spying, however, and was rearrested and incarcerated in
Washington, D. C.
Imprisonment undermined Antonia Ford's health, but her arresting
officer, Major Joseph Willard, fell in love with her and lobbied for her
release. He obtained it seven months later, after which he
proposed to her. Antonia accepted, he resigned his commission in
the Union army, and the couple were married on March 10, 1864.
They settled in Washington, D. C., where his family owned the renowned
Willard Hotel. The Willards had three children, but Antonia never
fully recovered her health and died seven years later in 1871 at the age
of 33. The couple's only surviving child later served as U.S.
ambassador to Spain and lieutenant governor of Virginia.
Other famous female spies from the Civil War include Rose Greenhow,
Elizabeth Van Lew ("Crazy Bette"), Elizabeth Howland, Belle
Boyd ("Siren of the Shenandoah"), Sarah Edmonds (who posed as
a black man), Emmeline Piggott, and Nancy Hart. Mary Surratt, who was hanged for complicity in the assassination
plot against President Lincoln, was the only American woman executed for
a capital offense related to the Civil War.
Robert C. Kennedy
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