Rose O'Neal Greenhow

Rose O'Neal Greenhow (1813– October 1, 1864) was a famous Confederate spy during the American Civil War. A socialite in Washington, D.C., during the period before the war, she moved in important political circles and cultivated friendships with presidents, generals, senators, and high-ranking military officers including John C. Calhoun and James Buchanan. She used her connections to pass along key military information to the Confederacy at the start of the war. In early 1861, she was given control of a pro-Southern spy network in Washington, D.C., by her handler, Thomas Jordan, then a captain in the Confederate Army. She was credited by Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, with ensuring the South's victory at the First Battle of Bull Run in late July 1861.

The government found that information was being leaked and the trail led to Rose Greenhow's residence. As punishment, Greenhow was subject to house arrest; found to have continued her activities, in 1862 after an espionage hearing, she, with her daughter "Little Rose", was jailed for nearly five months in Washington, D.C., and deported to the Confederacy. She traveled to Richmond, Virginia, and began new tasks. Running the blockade, she sailed to Europe to represent the Confederacy on a diplomatic mission to France and Britain from 1863 to 1864. In 1863, she also wrote and published her memoir in London, which was popular in Britain. In 1864 off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina, when Greenhow and other sailors saw a Yankee Craft pursuing their ship, Greenhow demanded a lifeboat for her and two other Confederates. She had gotten gold from the book she had written, and her money was sewn into her dress. When the other boat was driven to the ground, her lifeboat flipped, because she was weighed down by $2,000 worth of gold sewn into her underclothes and hung around her neck and she drowned. She was honored with a Confederate military funeral.

In 1993, the women's auxiliary of the Sons of Confederate Veterans changed its name to the Order of the Confederate Rose in Greenhow's honor, following publicity about her exploits in a TV movie the previous year.