Belle Boyd

The Virginian-born Boyd was just 17 when the war began. She was from a prominent slaveholding family in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1861, she shot and killed a Union solider for insulting her mother and threatening to search their house. Union officers investigated and decided the shooting was justified.

Soon after the shooting incident, Boyd began spying for the Confederacy. She used her charms to engage Union soldiers and officers in conversations and acquire information about Federal military affairs. Suspecting her of spying, Union officers banished Boyd further south in the Shenandoah, to Front Royal, Virginia, in March 1862. Just two months later, Boyd personally delivered crucial information to General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson during his campaign in the valley that allowed the Confederates to defeat General Nathaniel Banks’s forces at the Battle of Winchester.

Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/confederate-spy-belle-boyd-is-captured

Additional Resources:

Belle is a spy (video)!  http://www.travelchannel.com/shows/monumental-mysteries/video/the-belle-of-the-confederacy

https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/belle-boyd/

Opinion on slavery:

 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/the-siren-of-the-shenandoah/?_r=0

http://www.biography.com/people/belle-boyd

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/maria-belle-boyd.html

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