Belle
Boyd was
born in Martinsburg, Virginia, on 9th May, 1844. She studied at Mount
Washington Female College in Baltimore
between 1856 and 1860.
When the Union Army occupied Martinsburg
in July, 1861, she shot and killed a soldier who was trying to enter
her house. Boyd was tried and acquitted after her defence lawyer argued
that it was a case of justifiable homicide.
Boyd was a strong supporter of the Confederate
Army and during the early stages of the American
Civil War took details of enemy troop movements to Thomas
Stonewall Jackson. She also supplied information to John
S. Mosby and his Partisan Rangers.
Boyd's activities became known to the Union
Army and in 1862, Edwin Stanton,
Secretary of War, gave orders for her arrest. Boyd was eventually
detained by Lafayette Baker, head of
the National Detective Police (NDP), an undercover, anti-subversive,
spy organization. Baker was accused of conducting a brutal interrogation
and despite this inhuman treatment Boyd refused to confess and was
finally released in 1863.
In 1864 President Jefferson Davis sent
Boyd on a mission to England. Her ship was intercepted by a Union
vessel but after using her charm on an officer named Hardinge, she
was able to escape. Hardinge was court-martialed and discharged from
the navy. He then followed Boyd to England and the couple married
in 1864.
After the war Boyd wrote a book, Belle
Boyd in Camp and Prison
(1865) about her experiences during the American
Civil War. Boyd later worked as an actress
in England and the United States. Boyd also toured American giving
dramatic talks about her war adventures. Belle Boyd was on one of
these tours when she died in Kibourne, Wisconsin, on 11th June, 1900.
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