Isabella (Belle) Boyd – The Story of a Confederate Spy (American Civil War)

Posted on July 29, 2015 Updated on July 29, 2015

On 29th July 1862, Belle Boyd, the confederate spy was arrested by the Union troops for providing valuable information to the confederates during the American Civil War.

Isabella Marie Boyd, popularly known as Belle Boyd was born in Martinsburg, Virginia on 9th May 1844. She attended Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore, Maryland and actively participated in fund raising activities for the Confederacy. In July 1861, the Union forces occupied the city of Martinsburg. However, the Boyd house still openly displayed confederate flags. On noticing this, the Union soldiers tried to enter the house and raise the Union flag. In this process one of the soldiers cursed and Boyd’s mother and Boyd retaliated by shooting him to death. Though she was acquitted of all charges, Union soldiers were posted around her house. From here began her career as a “rebel spy” at the age of 17.

Boyd used this opportunity to engage in conversations with Union soldiers and obtain valuable information about the federal troops which she delivered to the confederate soldiers via her servant. During the Battle of Winchester she undertook hazardous journey to personally deliver crucial information to the confederates led by General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson which helped him to defeat General Nathaniel Banks’s forces in the war. Boyd’s continued exploits to provide Union secrets to the Confederacy helped her achieve significant fame.

However, she was arrested and imprisoned in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington on 29th July 1862 and was eventually released as part of exchange of prisoners. Again she was arrested in July 1863 and imprisoned for 3 months. After her release she volunteered to courier confidential confederate papers.

In 1864, she sailed for England with letters from the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The ship was intercepted by a Union vessel. Boyd with the help of Samuel Wylde Hardinge, a naval officer of the Union forces made it possible for the Confederate captain of the vessel to escape. On returning to the United States Hardinge faced court martial for assisting the enemy. Boyd was banished to Canada but she managed to reach England and married Hardinge in August 1964, only to be widowed in early 1965.

In 1865, she published her two-volume memoir of her war time activities, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison.

In 1866 she debuted on the stage in The Lady of Lyons in Manchester. She worked in several plays over the next few years and was proclaimed for her beauty. She retired in 1869 and married John Swainston Hammond. However the marriage was dissolved in 1884.

Boyd returned to the stage to support her family after her third marriage with Nathaniel Rue High of Toledo, Ohio, a stock-company actor. She toured the country staging narratives of her own exploits as a spy.

She died on 11 th June 1900 during her speaking tour in Wisconsin and was buried in the Wisconsin Spring grove Cemetery.

Source: Civil War Trust; American Civil War Story; Encyclopaedia Britannica; National Park Service; The Latin Library