The
south steps of the Confederate White House teeming with Southern
officers and soldiers. Freedwoman Mary Bowser, posing as a slave, often
spied here for the Union.
The
typical Southern officer’s opinion of African Americans was that they
were an inferior subhuman race, lacking in intelligence or cunning.
Their ignorance and subsequent disregard of the slaves in their midst
led to the most successful intelligence gathering of the Civil War.
The
black men and women that provided information to the Union did so at
extreme peril and risk that they would never outlive, even long after
the war was over. They did this gambling that the pay-off would be
winning the war and trusting that they would hopefully gain
their freedom. There would be no accolades or acknowledgment. Such
attention, even long after the South fell, would put them in danger of
retaliation from disgruntled former Confederates.
