My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington

Rose O'Neale Greenhow (1817-1864) was a renowned Confederate spy. As a leader in Washington, D.C. society during the period prior to the American Civil War, she travelled in important political circles and cultivated friendships with presidents, generals, senators, and high-ranking military officers, using her connections to pass along key military information to the Confederacy at the start of the war. On August 23, 1861, she was apprehended and placed under house arrest. On January 18, 1862, Greenhow was transferred to Old Capitol Prison. Her eight-year-old daughter "Little" Rose, was permitted to remain with her. On May 31, 1862, Greenhow and her daughter were released from prison. In September 1864, Greenhow travelled on the Condor, a British blockade runner which ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina. Fearing capture and reimprisonment, Greenhow fled the grounded Condor by rowboat. The rowboat was capsized by a wave, and Greenhow, weighed down with $2,000 worth of gold from her memoir royalties intended for the Confederate treasury, drowned.