Espionage During The Civil War
In April 1861, shortly after the Civil War began, Van Camp's son, Eugene, enlisted in a Confederate cavalry unit and became an orderly for General P.G.T. Beauregard before the First Battle of Bull Run. Aaron and his son Eugene then assisted Rose Greenhow in smuggling information pertaining to Union troop movements prior to that battle. The elder Van Camp and Rose Greenhow were then imprisoned as suspected spies in downtown Washington in the Old Capitol Prison. Van Camp was released from custody in March 1862 after signing an oath of allegiance to the Union.
However, in January 1864, both Van Camps were reported to have been engaging in spying activities for the Confederates in the Vicksburg, Mississippi, area, according to a confidential letter sent to U. S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton by a Union sympathizer. They were alleged to be conducting such espionage under the cover of trading in cotton. No arrests were made, however.
In April, 1864, Van Camp arranged to secure a trading permit for Eugene to open a store at Union controlled Fort Pillow. In an attack by Confederate cavalry under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest a few days later, Eugene was badly wounded by a Confederate minie ball and was evacuated by Union forces to Illinois and then to New York.
In January, 1865, Van Camp sent a letter to President Abraham Lincoln seeking that Eugene be "protected from the draft" which was denied; however, Eugene was permitted to return with Van Camp to their family home in Washington, D.C..
Read more about this topic: Aaron Van Camp
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, espionage, civil and/or war:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“He hadn’t known me fifteen minutes, and yet he was ... ready to talk ... I was still to learn that Munshin, like many people from the capital, could talk openly about his personal life while remaining a dream of espionage in his business operations.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red:
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the Judgment Day:—
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray.”
—Francis Miles Finch (1827–1907)