The roles of women in the Civil War varied greatly. One of the many ways they aided the war effort was by working as spies.
Female spies were successful during the Civil War:
<em>-Because they could move across Union and Confederate lines easily. </em>Elizabeth Van Lew and Rose O’Neal Greenhow were operating central spy rings for the Union and the Confederacy, respectively —and they both documented their experiences thoroughly. Abbott uncovered two other women who had engaged in Civil War subterfuge and recorded their personal histories in great detail: Sarah Emma Evelyn Edmondson, a Canadian expat who had served as a Union soldier as her male alter-ego, Franklin Thompson; and Maria Isabella “Belle” Boyd, a brazen teenager who operated as a Confederate courier and made a game out of stealing weapons from Union camps.
<em>-They also could use flirtation to coerce soldiers into sharing information; </em>flirting with or disappearing in closets with Union soldiers and generals to get the lowdown on the military. “In diaries in the South, nobody admitted to anything more than flirting”, which ties as well to the last answer about women being rarely questioned.
