Rose O'Neal Greenhow (1813– October 1, 1864) was a famous Confederate spy during the American Civil War. A socialite in Washington, D.C., during the period before the war, she moved in important political circles and cultivated friendships with presidents, generals, senators, and high-ranking military officers including John C. Calhoun and James Buchanan. She used her connections to pass along key military information to the Confederacy at the start of the war. In early 1861, she was given control of a pro-Southern spy network in Washington, D.C., by her handler, Thomas Jordan, then a captain in the Confederate Army. She was credited by Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, with ensuring the South's victory at the First Battle of Bull Run in late July 1861.
The government found that information was being leaked and the trail led to Rose Greenhow's residence. Greenhow was subject to house arrest; found to have continued her activities, in 1862 after an espionage hearing, she, with her daughter "Little Rose", was imprisoned for nearly five months in Washington, D.C. Deported to the Confederacy, she traveled to Richmond, Virginia, and began new tasks. Running the blockade, she sailed to Europe to represent the Confederacy on a diplomatic mission to France and Britain from 1863 to 1864. In 1863, she also wrote and published her memoir in London, which was popular in Britain. After her returning ship ran aground in 1864 off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina, she drowned when her rowboat overturned as she tried to escape a Union gunboat. She was honored with a Confederate military funeral.
In 1993, the women's auxiliary of the Sons of Confederate Veterans changed its name to the Order of the Confederate Rose in Greenhow's honor, following publicity about her exploits in a TV movie the previous year.
Early life
She was born in 1813 as Maria Rosetta O'Neale on a small plantation in Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington, D.C. (Note: The biographical note on Greenhow at the National Archives and Records Administration, which holds a collection of her papers, says that O'Neal was born in 1817 in Port Tobacco, Maryland, but it is unclear what the documentation is for this.) She was the third of five daughters of John O'Neale, a planter and slaveholder, and his wife Eliza Henrietta Hamilton, who were Catholic. Called Rose as a child, O'Neal was the third born and close to her next older sister, Ellen (Mary Eleanor) and the final "e" was dropped off the family name in Rose's early childhood. Their father died in 1817, murdered by his black valet. His widow, Eliza O'Neal, had four daughters to support and a cash-poor farm.
After being orphaned as children, Greenhow and her sister Ellen were invited to live with their aunt in Washington, D.C., around the year 1830. Their aunt, Mrs. Maria Ann Hill, ran a stylish boarding house at the Old Capitol Building (later the Old Capitol Prison) and the girls met many important figures in the Washington area. Her olive skin "delicately flushed with color" earned her the nickname "Wild Rose."
In the 1830s, she met Robert Greenhow Jr., a prominent doctor, lawyer, and linguist from Virginia. Their courtship was well received by Washington society, including famed society matron Dolley Madison. In 1833, Greenhow's sister Ellen O'Neal married Dolley's nephew James Madison Cutts. In 1856, their daughter Adele Cutts married the widower Stephen A. Douglas, the senator from Illinois.
Marriage and family
In 1835, Rose married Dr. Robert Greenhow Jr. with Dolley's blessing, and by the 1850s had long been an established socialite in the capital. Robert Greenhow worked at the U.S. Department of State. Robert's step-sister, Mary Greenhow Lee, would visit him and Greenhow and the two women became close friends.
The Greenhows had four daughters: Florence, Gertrude, Leila, and Rose. Their youngest child was named Rose O'Neal Greenhow (her middle name being her mother's maiden), and was nicknamed "Little Rose". In 1871, Little Rose married Army officer William P. Duvall. They were the parents of two children, son William (died 1874) and daughter Lee, who later took the name Mary and was the wife of Louis Eugene Marié. The Duvalls divorced in 1899.