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Show A WOMAN SPY OF CIVIL WAR, Miss Van Lew, a Richmond woman, was a spy for the federal government the most important spy of the rebellion, rebel-lion, inasmuch a. her wurk ' merited General Grant's tribute,' "Yon have sent me the moat valuable informatioa received from Richmond during the war." For four long years, without respite, she faced-death to obtain that information. Day after day snspeeted, spied upon, threatenedv persecuted, she worked with a courage far hislier than the excitement mad valor of battle-fleWs. battle-fleWs. ' The jfreatar part of the military information in-formation received from Richmond by the army of the Potomac was collected and transmitted by Miss Van Lew. Hoe established five secret stations for forwarding for-warding her cipher . dispatehas s chain of relay -pointa whose farther end was the headquarters of Oea. George Uv Sharpe (the authority for these statements), state-ments), chief of the bureau ef military mili-tary information, but the Richmond end of the chain was the old an Lew mansion. There she received and harbored har-bored the secret agents who stole in from the federal army; whetl no federal fed-eral agents could reach her she sent her own servants as messengers through the confederate armies. There, in the Van I jew, house in the1 heart of Richmond, she concealed many of the escaped union priuoners . from Castle Thunder, the Lihby and Belle Jle; there she planned aid for those who remained in the prisons, to whom she sent or carried food and books anil clothing; for their relief she poured out her money thousand, of dollars until all her eosvertible property was gone. Clerks in the confederate war and navy departments were in bef eon-idenee; eon-idenee; counsel for union sympathii-ers sympathii-ers on trial by the confederacy were employed by her money. These statements -of - General Rharpe's were made in a letter which was written to recommend tffat Miss Vsn Lew be reimbursed bv the government gov-ernment to the amount pf tlS.000. The money was never collected. W. G. Beym'er in Harper's Magazine for June. |