Mary Bowser: The Slave-Turned-Union Spy In The Civil War
Wikimedia CommonsThis photo was previously believed to be a portrait of Mary Bowser but that has been debunked. There are no known portraits of her.
Not much is known about Mary Bowser’s life. But what little we do know is remarkable: she became a real asset for the Union’s cause against the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Bowser was born a slave in Virginia and worked on the Richmond plantation of a hardware merchant named John Van Lew. But after his death, Lew’s daughter Elizabeth — a progressive Quaker woman and abolitionist — set Bowser and the rest of the family’s slaves free.
Yet, Bowser chose to stay and work as a servant in the Van Lew house. Bowser’s obvious intelligence caused Van Lew to send her to be educated at the Quaker School for Negroes in Philadelphia.
The relationship between Mary Bowser and her mistress later helped solidify the espionage efforts that Van Lew had formed to help the Union win.
Van Lew used her elite status and connections to successfully place Mary Bowser as a new Black servant in the most effective post for their spying: the Confederate White House, also known as the headquarters of Confederacy president Jefferson Davis.
National ArchivesBowser was planted in the Confederate White House where she successfully spied on the Confederacy.
Mary Bowser fulfilled her duties as a Union spy remarkably well. She used the Confederacy’s racism against Black people — their inherently false belief that Black people were inferior to whites — to her advantage, playing up her role as a feeble-minded servant which made them ignore her presence.
Her literacy — something the Confederates probably didn’t think she possessed — enabled her to read the confidential documents they carelessly left around. Her photographic memory also served her well in absorbing the information and relaying it to her Union contacts like Thomas McNiven.
McNiven, a local baker who made deliveries to the Confederate White House, recalled Mary Bowser’s ability to repeat documents “word for word” when she passed on information to him. Bowser’s spy tactics worked until she was unexpectedly discovered and forced to flee.
It was later found that the intelligence Bowser fed the Union contributed to the Northern victory. Her espionage efforts were lost to the annals of time — and only recovered in 1995 when the U.S. government posthumously inducted Mary Bowser into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.
She has since been cherished and remembered as an important figure in the Union’s victory against the Confederacy.
