e plans and movements of troops."
And she did not disappoint them in the slightest detail.

She must have a disguise in which she could go about the city and its
environs without fear of detection, and she must also gain more
valuable and accurate information from headquarters of the
Confederacy. This she resolved, and then set to work to achieve her
end. At once she wrote to a negro girl, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, who had
been one of the Van Lews' slaves, but who had been freed and sent
North to be educated, inviting her to visit the stately mansion where
she had grown up, and the invitation was eagerly accepted. On her
arrival in Richmond, she was closeted a long time with her one-time
mistress, to whom she owed her liberty, and when the interview ended
the girl's eyes were shining, and she wore an air of fixed resolve
only equaled by that of Betty Van Lew.

A waitress was needed in the White House of the Southern Confederacy.
Three days after Mary Bowser arrived at the Van Lews', she had applied
for the position and become a member of Jefferson Davis's household.
Another link had been forged in the long chain of details by which the
Spy worked her will and gained her ends.

Despite the suspicion and ill-will felt in Richmond for the Van Lews,
more than one Confederate officer and public official continued to
call there throughout the war, to be entertained by them. The fare was
meager in comparison to the old lavish entertaining, but the
conversation was brilliant and diverting, and so cleverly did Betty
lead it that "many a young officer unwittingly revealed much
important information of which he never realized the value, but which
was of great use to 'Crazy Bet' when combined with what she already
knew.

"And when night fell over the city Betty would steal out in her
disguise of a farm-hand, in the buckskin leggins, one-piece skirt and
waist of cotton, and the huge calico sunbonnet, going about her secret
business, a little lonely, unnoticed figure, and in a thousand
unsuspected, simple ways she executed her plans and found out such
things as she needed to know to aid the Federal authorities."

History was in the making in those stirring days of 1862, when, having
failed to take Richmond, General McClellan had returned North by sea,
when the Confederates under General Lee prepared to invade the North,
but were turned back after the great battle of Antietam. Thrilling
days they were to live through, and to the ur