Spies

Following Virginia's secession in April of 1861, Elizabeth Van Lew joined with other Richmond Unionists to create an underground network to hinder the Confederate war effort and give aid and comfort to captured Union soldiers. The infamous Libby Prison, which held scores of Union officers in deplorable conditions, was located only blocks from Van Lew's home.

Actress and Civil War spy, Pauline Cushman-Fryer narrowly escaped execution for her service to the Union cause. Undercover in Tennessee she performed an illness to escape hanging. She is buried in the Officer's section of the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio.

Although women were barred from military service during the Civil War, Sarah Edmonds didn't let that stop her.

Espionage was a vital tool for both sides, and the tip this spy gave South was one of its most valuable, changing the course of the war.

Harriet Tubman has long been associated with her extraordinary work with abolitionist causes and as the Underground Railroad's most famous "conductor." Her heroic efforts in personally leading approximately 70 people out of slavery to freedom in the North defined her as the "Moses of her People."

Victorian novelists could not come up with a better plot: pretty young Virginia belle is accused of spying on the Yankees, is imprisoned, falls in love with her married captor, scandal ensues, he gets a divorce, they marry...and she romantically dies of consumption. Antonia Ford may or may not have been a spy, but her story certainly rivals any novel.

One of the Confederacy's most famous spies, Belle Boyd's life played out like a James Bond character: she was betrayed by a lover, later captured taking Confederate papers to England, and fell in love with and married her captor.

An American feminist, suffragist, suspected spy, prisoner of war and surgeon, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker remains the only women ever to receive the Medal of Honor, which she was awarded for her service during the Civil War.