Admiral Dahlgren personally requested the return of his son’s remains from President Davis. When the Confederates tried to disinter the body, they found the grave empty. Van Lew had enlisted her agents to remove it, place it in a metal coffin and smuggle it outside the city to a hidden resting place. After the evacuation of Richmond, it was delivered to Admiral Dahlgren and buried in Pennsylvania with great ceremony.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Although most of Richmond did not believe Crazy Bet to anything more than an eccentric Union sympathizer, she was often trailed by detectives seeking to confirm their suspicions that she was something more. At one point the grand jury issued warrants for Van Lew and her mother for ‘trafficking in greenbacks.’ Elizabeth’s mother became ill when she heard that a warrant had been issued against her, but nothing could be proved against either woman.

Although espionage was never proved against them, public sentiment soundly condemned both Mrs. and Miss Van Lew’s pro-Northern sympathies. The Richmond papers reported early in the war: ‘Whilst every true woman in this community had been busy marking articles for our troops, or administering to our sick, these two women have been spending their opulent means in aiding and giving comfort to the miscreants who have invaded our sacred soil.’

Harassment continued. ‘I have had brave men shake their fingers in my face and say terrible things,’ Elizabeth wrote. She even went to President David himself to request protection. When it was not forthcoming, she persuaded Lieutenant Todd’s successor as Libby Prison commandant, a Lieutenant Gibbs, to board his family in the Van Lew house.

On at least one occasion Van Lew’s connection with General Butler was almost betrayed. She had a report on Richmond’s defenses ready to dispatch, but the expected courier did not arrive. As she walked along the street, a man approached her, whispered, ‘I’m going through tonight,’ and continued walking. When she passed the stranger again, he repeated his message, but she considered the risk too great and did not acknowledge him. The next day she recognized the man in his gray uniform as a Confederate regiment marched by.

In February 1865, the Union Secret service sent an English agent named Pole to Richmond. Along the way he met with numerous Union sympathizers and supposedly was to meet with Van Lew. Her journal records her anxiety and suspicion regarding this meeting. Pole went straight from Richmond to Confederate headquarters to betray his Union employers. Van Lew waited in terror as at least two other Union agents were arrested, but apparently Pole had not discovered enough to implicate her, because no charges were brought against her.

The day Richmond fell to the Union Army, Grant ordered Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel to immediately place a guard around the Van Lew mansion. The aide-de-camp sent to personally protect Van Lew had to do some searching; she had gone to the Confederate capital to dig among the ashes of the archives for any documents that might be useful to the Union government.

In her voluminous journal, Van Lew maintained that she did not consider herself a spy nor wished to be referred to as such. ‘A person cannot be called a spy,’ she wrote, ‘for serving their country within its recognized borders. Am I now to be branded a spy by my own country for which I was willing to lay down my life…. God knows there is no vocation more ennobling, more honorable, and even the disgraceful word cannot stain my record.’

After the war, both Van Lew and her brother needed to find employment in order to save the tatters of the family fortune. General Sharpe did what he could to obtain a government grant for the family in light of its service and sacrifice for the Union cause. An indeterminate sum was forthcoming, and the house remained in the family. Near the end of her life, the family of Lt. Col. Paul Revere of Boston, whom she had aided while in Libby Prison, raised a purse for her to meet her expenses.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to