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Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
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Intelligence in the American Civil War (Paperback, New)
Loot Price: R1,217
Discovery Miles 12 170
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Intelligence in the American Civil War (Paperback, New)
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Though much has been written about the American Civil War itself,
little has been written about the spy war that went on within. The
chronicling of Civil War intelligence activities challenges
historians because of the lack of records, the lack of access to
records, and the questionable truth of other records. Judah P.
Benjamin, the Confederacy's Secretary of State, burned all the
intelligence records he could find as federal troops entered
Richmond. Union intelligence records were kept sealed in the
National Archives until 1953. A few individuals involved in
intelligence gathering burned their personal papers while others
chose to publish their memoirs, though greatly embellishing their
exploits. Even today, the identities of many spies remain secret.
Henry Thomas Harrison, for example, was a Confederate spy whose
intelligence set in motion the events that produced the battle of
Gettysburg. But neither his first name nor details of his long
career as a spy were known until 1986, when historian James O. Hall
published an article about him. Though the idea of centralised
intelligence gathering was decades away, the age-old resistance to
the idea was present even then. Neither side saw the need to create
such intelligence organisations, but each side approached the idea
of effectively acquiring intelligence in their own way. The
Confederacy's Signal Corps, devoted primarily to communications and
intercepts, included a covert agency, the Secret Service Bureau.
This unit ran espionage and counter-espionage operations in the
North. Late in the war, the bureau set up a secret headquarters in
Canada and sent out operatives on covert missions in Northern
states. The Union's Bureau of Military Information, unlike the
Confederacy's Secret Service Bureau, operated for specific generals
rather than for the Union Army itself. But here was born the idea
of what would eventually become a centralised military intelligence
division. Each side still used age-old intelligence techniques,
such as code-breaking, deception, and covert surveillance. However,
into this modern war came two innovations that would endure as
tools of espionage: wiretapping and overhead reconnaissance. What
follows is a look at some of the highlights of how the North and
the South gathered and used their information, the important
missions, and the personalities. From this special view, the focus
is not on the battlefield, but on a battle of wits.
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