Unlike Belle and Rose, Elizabeth was neither a beauty nor a flirt, but she was good at using flattery, subterfuge, a network of spies, and a hidden room to smuggle secrets and Confederate prisoners to safety. Her persona was so popular that later she went on the lecture tour circuit, and she faced competition by multiple imposters.Įlizabeth Van Lew (Union): Elizabeth was a Union supporter in a Confederate town, and as such her neighbors always held her in suspicion. She combined flirting with Union officers to get information with daredevil rides through woods and, in one occasion, across a battlefield, to deliver information. Belle was a headstrong teenager who longed for freedom, drama, attention, and adventure. Rose was an exasperating, infuriating figure but her ability to ferret out information and smuggle it into the right hands is undeniable.īelle Boyd (Confederacy): It’s interesting that both Belle and Rose were able to get all kinds of secrets from men despite being completely open about their animosity towards the North. Rose was eventually freed and sent by the Confederacy to France where she worked as a diplomat. Rose was arrested for espionage and she was outraged, OUTRAGED, that anyone would search the home and possessions of a defenseless woman and lock her up (Rose, honey, YOU’RE A SPY). She made no secret of her secessionist views and she was hideously, virulently, very vocally racist, even by the standards of the time and place. Rose O’Neal Greenhow (Confederacy): Rose was a society woman from the South with a knack for flirting with Northern men in power. Here’s a look at the four women profiled in the book:

The book is interesting and exciting and paints incredible pictures of very different women who, love them or hate them, lived unusual lives of great political and personal passion and daring. Two women worked for the North and two for the South. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is a riveting non-fiction book about four women who conducted espionage (and, in one case, fought undercover as a soldier) in the Civil War.

Liar temptress soldier spy