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We
are independent support group to the SCV and local camps thereof. Each State
Society has its own bylaws and standing rules. We are nonprofit, nonracial,
nonpolitical and nonsectarian. We assist the SCV with their historical,
educational, benevolent and social functions. Special emphasis is placed on the
preservation of Confederate symbols. As there are few rules and restrictions to
stifle the creativity of its members, each Society is free to focus on the
activities important to its members and local SCV Camps along with supporting
their efforts on the state and national levels.
The
Order of Confederate Rose is named in honor of Rose O'Neal Greenhow.
Sarah's Rose 24, Order of Confederate Rose what name for Governor Lanham's wife, Sarah Beona Meng Lanham. For more information about the Order of Confederate Rose and to obtain a membership application Click.
E-Mail for Chapter President.
A Heroic Woman
During
the Civil War, a number of women were arrested for intelligence work on behalf
of the Confederacy, but none achieved the celebrity of Rose O’Neal Greenhow. Her
story is filled with intrigue, love, and tragedy.
As a teenager, Rose O’Neal traveled with her sister to Washington, D.C., where
they resided with an aunt who maintained a boardinghouse in the Old Capitol
building (later, ironically, to become the Old Capitol Prison). There the
beautiful young sisters had the opportunity to associate with many of their
aunt’s male borders, many of whom were up-and-coming politicians. In this
setting, Rose developed a taste for living an active social life and rubbed
shoulders with people in power. At the age of 26, she married 43-year-old Dr.
Robert Greenhow, a Virginian, who was both wealthy and socially well placed.
By
the time she was in her mid-thirties, Rose was the mother of four daughters and
living in the nation’s Capital. Surrounded by the many advantages that her
prestigious husband could offer her, Greenhow became well-known for her beauty,
her manners, her gift for intrigue, and her determination to accomplish
whatever she set her heart upon. In 1850, Greenhow and her husband left
Washington and traveled west due to the promise of greater financial gains.
Instead, an injury led to the early death of Dr. Greenhow in San Francisco.
Rose returned to Washington and gained a reputation as a woman to be reckoned
with, thanks to her ability to obtain favors, influence members of Congress, and
advance her friends’ careers.
As
1860 arrived and sectional tensions increased, Greenhow openly revealed herself
to be a staunch supporter of the Confederacy and as the war began, she
immediately became an activist for the rebels. She developed a close association
"with Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jordan (alias Thomas John Rayford) of Virginia,
a former quartermaster in the United States Army who was in the process of
developing an elaborate Confederate spy network in the federal Capital." From
Jordan, Greenhow learned the use of a 26-symbol cipher, and "began to exploit
her connections with the prominent Unionists for the purpose of eliciting
information that she then transmitted in code to relevant figures in the
Confederacy." Over time, Greenhow and Jordan enlisted the regular help of
various others, forming an extensive spy ring that included both men and women.
Greenhow
became best known for her spy work that gave the Confederate army the edge in
its first major confrontation with Union soldiers at the first battle of Bull
Run in July 1861 as evidenced by the following quote:
An 1863 letter written by General P.G.T. Beauregard – second in command of the
Confederate army’s ranking officer, General Joseph E. Johnston, in the summer of
1861 – confirms that on July 10, Greenhow sent an attractive young woman named
Betty Duvall to Beauregard’s post at Fairfax Court House, just a few miles from
Bull Run, bearing – tightly wound in her chignon a message concerning Union
commander Irvin McDowell’s preparation to advance on the Confederacy six days
later. General Milledge L. Bonham of South Carolina received the message and
transmitted it directly to Beauregard, who notified President Davis and then
immediately began preparations to undermine McDowell’s advance. On the
sixteenth, Greenhow communicated a second time with Beauregard, who was now
encamped with the army near Bull Run. With the help of George Donellan, a former
Interior Department clerk, Greenhow sent Beauregard an encoded dispatch
containing the news that, as Beauregard later wrote, "the enemy – 55,000 strong,
I believe – would positively commence that day his advance from Arlington
Heights and Alexandria on to Manassas (near Bull Run), via Fairfax Courthouse
and Centerville."
This
news Beauregard also forwarded by telegraph to President Davis, who ordered
General Johnston, stationed 50 miles away, to bring his troops into the area as
reinforcements. While awaiting Johnston’s arrival, Beauregard shifted his own
troops to meet the advancing federals, and on July 21, the Union suffered a
stunning and humiliating defeat. The following day Greenhow received from Thomas
Jordan an expression of Jefferson Davis’s gratitude for her loyal service.
Greenhow
continued to transmit intelligence information to the Confederate army. Soon, as
a result, her activities led Federal officials to become suspicious. By late
July 1861, Allan Pinkerton, the head of the newly formed secret service
organization for the federal government ordered close surveillance of the
Greenhow home.
The following month, Pinkerton placed Greenhow under house arrest and stationed
guards inside the house. Although Greenhow was able to destroy a number of
papers, enough was uncovered to incriminate her and heap suspicion upon some
prominent Unionist figures that came under her influence. One of these was the
powerful senator from Massachusetts, Henry Wilson, who seems to have been one of
Greenhow’s primary sources and perhaps even her lover. "(Many interpreters of
Greenhow’s papers believe that Senator Wilson was the author of a stack of love
letters found in her home)."
"Word
spread quickly that federal agents had captured a major figure in Confederate
espionage, and a woman," and "on August 26, both the New York Times and the New
York Herald smugly reported Greenhow’s arrest." Greenhow remained under house
arrest with her youngest daughter, "Little Rose," until she was transferred with
her daughter to the Old Capitol Prison, January 18, 1862. For five months, she
and her daughter remained at the
Old
Capitol Prison, now prisoners in the same spot where as a teenager Greenhow had
acquired her first taste of social life in Washington. However, even her
imprisonment did not deter her from continuing to provide information to
Southern loyalists. This prompted Federal authorities to banish her south, where
they presumed she could do less harm. On June 2, the New York Times recorded her
release and removal under close custody.
Traveling
to the Confederate Capital, Greenhow enjoyed praise from various dignitaries to
include President Davis and General Beauregard. From that point on, as a last
effort, she assumed the "role of blockade runner, in connection with which she
traveled to England and France." "There she socialized, tried to drum up foreign
support for the Confederacy, and produced her memoir, My Imprisonment, and the
First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington, a work that brought the loyalty and
good sense of a number of important Union men into question." After some time,
Greenhow yearned to return to America where she owned property. With this in
mind, and with two thousand dollars in gold in her possession, Greenhow boarded
a blockade-runner, the Condor, bound for North Carolina in September 1864.
As
fate would have it, tragedy befell Greenhow; therefore, returning to America
brought an end to her intriguing story. The still beautiful Rose failed to make
it home to the Confederacy. Spied by a Union gunboat in the waters just off the
coast near Wilmington, North Carolina, the Condor raced ahead up the Cape Fear
River hoping to avoid confrontation. Instead, the Condor ran aground on a
sandbar. "Desperate to escape, Greenhow demanded that she be allowed to board a
lifeboat, although the weather was ominous." Against the captain’s wishes and
advice, Greenhow and two other passengers attempted to make it to shore. "Their
lifeboat capsized in the rough water, and within moments, Greenhow, weighed down
by her cache of gold, drowned." After her body was recovered the following day,
she was laid out in state in a hospital chapel in Wilmington with a Confederate
flag for a shroud. She was buried on October 1, 1864.
(Source: All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies; Leonard, Elizabeth D; 1999)
