Washington D.C. resident Rose O’Neal Greenhow had been asked to discover troop movements and battle plans. She had information that Union troops had been ordered to attack Manassas. As a Confederate spy, she had a network of folks to deliver the coded message to Confederate General Beauregard. She gave the information to sixteen-year-old Bettie Duvall. (One source spelled her name “Betty.”)
On July 9, 1861, Bettie, a beautiful Southerner, disguised herself by selling buttermilk and sweet cream at the city market. She left the city, alone, on a farm cart. She rode past the 1st Massachusetts Infantry headquarters. A dirt lane led her to a friend’s plantation near Langley where she stayed for the night.
The next morning, she relinquished the farm cart. Dressed in a stylish riding habit, Bettie rode horseback to her intended destination—the village of Fairfax Court House. Manassas was ten miles from the village.
She met Confederate soldiers at an outpost near Vienna. At her request to speak with Brig. Gen. Milledge Bonham, they took her to his headquarters in Fairfax Court House. Beauregard had just taken over command, but Bonham was his top aide.
At first, Bonham refused to meet her. Upon learning that the beautiful woman was prepared to take the message to General Beauregard herself, he agreed to talk with her.
He recognized her “sparkling blue eyes, perfect features, glossy black hair” as a Southern lady from the spectator gallery at Congress. He agreed to forward on her message.
To his astonishment, she removed the combs from her hair knot. Shaking her beautiful hair loose, she untied a small silk package about the size of a silver dollar from the long strands and gave it to him.
Beauregard learned from the message that an attack was ordered within a week.
The advance warning led to a Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run.
-Sandra Merville Hart
Sources
Monson, Marianne. Women of the Blue & Gray, Thorndike Press, 2018.
Winkler, H. Donald. Stealing Secrets, Cumberland House, 2010.
Zeinert, Karen. Those Courageous Women of the Civil War, The Millbrook Press, 1998.
Sandra Merville Hart 