Peedee Boyd

It should be noted for starters that Peedee Boyd is one of the many obscure puns in the game which revolve around teas. Just why the original authors found tea to be so universally hilarious is unclear.

P.D. Boyd was the proprietor of a fairly well known West Coast firm of tea importers, known for its "Red Wagon." Peedee was a river in South Carolina (though apparently the GMs believed it was in Florida), the name of which apparently drastically amused Walker, sending him into "paroxysms of laughter from which we feared...or in Henrietta's case hoped...he would not recover." Therefore to name a Confederate "Peedee Boyd" was to them great sport, though it is unclear that even at runtime anyone else found it particularly amusing.

The character of course also reflects King and Bucher's obsession with the American Civil War, and dovetails into the Submarine plot centering on Captain Nemo II, which is arguably one of a few valid reasons for including the character.

Henrietta was fixated on the absolute concept that Boyd and Nemo II (Harold Duggan, or Duggard, depending on who was writing the name) must be wed.

The majority of the character was cribbed whole cloth from Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison , New York, Bielock and Company, 1866. King starts out revising the person, then gives up about halfway through. This sort of thing was considered "character reference" at the time, and if done well could be useful.

Note how King demolishes Bucher's Goethian fantasy from Duggard in two lines..."You met at a dance, where you played a party game." Of the two men, Bucher emerges as the most romantic, an odd case. He also does not follow the timeline in Duggard's sheet - though Peedee is married in 1864, it is not to "Albert." However perhaps the confusion is excusable, though it seems unlikely Duggan wouldn't have heard the full story. However he might well not have known Hardinge was dead or ill when he sailed on his last voyage.

A few lines at the end constitute plot.

Henrietta foresaw a joyous reunion in which the two Confederates would gallantly wed, and then fail gloriously, perhaps seeking exile together.

Peedee Boyd

You play the role of spy as if the war were a lighthearted game of charades. And you live as if you were fashioning your days into the plot of a romantic story. During your lifetime you could have read about herself in at least two historical novels, although neither did justice to your dashing exploits.

Before the War you were engaged to be married to Harold Duggan. But he was wounded in battle, then volunteered to go to England to build a blockade runner. He called once in Wilmington, but then was killed when his blockade runner Peedee was sunken off Brest by the Federal Frigate Iroquois. You met at a dance, where you played a party game.

You became an espionage agent when you were seventeen, and served the Confederacy throughout the war, in Dixie, the North, and England as well. You matched the boldness of any man, galloping headlong into the dark with cipher messages, or creeping into rooms to eavesdrop on Union Army conferences. On at least one occasion (when you could persuade none of the men to do it for you), you daringly entered battle lines to carry back important information.

But above all you are overwhelmingly feminine, and make good use of your womanly appeal. Unlike others who impersonated the inconspicuous female and made themselves up as a drab housewife or dowdy traveler, you play your own personality to the hilt, with a dramatic air and sweeping gestures, wearing rich reds and greens and feathers in your hat. You look at men through her long lashes, assuring them that you have no intentions hostile to the North, while you steal whatever secrets were at hand and filch others practically from their pockets. You possess at least one additional asset--perhaps the best pair of legs in the Confederacy. Even a lady must get in and out of a carriage or with a flurry of petticoats dismount from a home; at such times you show a pretty confusion, and very fine ankles.

Your actions are apparently puzzling to your opponents, for at times you are described as cunning, at others naive. Always an individualist, you spy "by ear," after your own special fashion. What you think, you generally say.

You love the South passionately, but you don't think of yourself as a spy. You only want to help your people. Arguably, you could have been legally convicted and shot at sunrise on the basis of the evidence against you. Yet you have critics among Southerners themselves. You travel alone, to the horror of more conventional women. You find that you converse easily with nearly anyone you meet, and unlike many a woman of your class, you are not particularly self-conscious.

By visiting camps, calling on generals and colonels in their tents, and accepting carriage rides in the warm afternoons, you shock your more conservative friends. You even dance and flirt with Northerners as well as Southerners. When you bother to defend yourself, you point out that it is necessary for you to be on good terms with both sides. Sure, there is no doubt that you like the boys in blue as well as those in gray. You perform your duty to the South and have a nice time, too.

Also, you can always rely on a hidden weapon--male gallantry. When Federal commanders discover that you have given information to the South that might wreck their plans, you look sad, speak half gaily, half pathetically, and Northern chivalry would prove as strong as Southern; they release you. Before you reach twenty-one you will have been imprisoned twice, "reported" nearly thirty times, and arrested six or seven. In one romantic feat you will persuade your Northern captor to marry you and switch sides. In Piccadilly, English crowds hail you as if you were a Sir Walter Scott heroine. French newspapers termed you "La Belle Rebelle," a title that amuses you.

Your birthplace was the Georgetown, South Carolina, which is in a region that produced almost half the rice grown in the United States.

You once told a Chicago interviewer that you came of a "well known family of Virginia," having ties among the best in the state." The Boyds trace themselves back to an ancient Scottish clan; they have highly placed kin in New Orleans and parts of Kentucky, and a family connection with George Randolph, later Confederate Secretary of War. Although it is unfortunate, your branch of the Boyds has done less well than others. Your father runs a store and manages a rice farm.

To your English admirers you describe an idyllic childhood in a "pretty two-storied house," its walls "hidden by roses and honeysuckle." Idyllic it was, for you were a reckless tomboy who climbed trees, raced through the woods on a nettlesome mount, and dominated brothers, sisters, and cousins. Some say that your mild-mannered mother never disciplined you. When you made a visit to Tennessee relatives you encountered a stricter home regime and, to your surprise, liked it, although it was the first time in your life you ever had to conform to family rules. You did not conform for long; you preferred to be ''on the go.

Despite their lack of money, your family gave you a good education. After some preliminary schooling, you were sent at the age of twelve to the Mount Washington Female College at Baltimore. A minister was head of the college, but despite his influence you remained "on the go." At sixteen your training was ''supposed to he completed," and your family and friends arranged debuts in Charleston and Washington. Cousins made certain that you met the proper hostesses and received invitations to the best affairs.

Secretary of War Floyd, soon to join the Confederacy, was one in whose drawing rooms. You are happy to say you became a favorite. The waltzes and cotillions, the bright conversations with uniformed officers, judges, and senators were a heady experience. The season was that of late 1860, however, and more and more often you heard the echoes of clashes over slavery's extension. Then came secession.

With Sumter's fall you headed home for Georgetown, "enthusiastic in my love for my country, the South." There you discovered that your forty-four-year-old father had volunteered for military service. Sedentary, highly unmilitary, Ben Boyd nevertheless insisted on taking his part in the war. Offered "that grade in the army to which his social position entitled him," he had instead enlisted as a private. Beside younger and more hardy men, Ben was to suffer greatly in the war; but Belle you could only react with hearty approval, contributing to town funds for his regiment, and joining other Confederate causes as they sprang up.

To nobody's surprise, you soon found these employments too tame and monotonous to satisfy your temperament. When your father went to the camp in Charleston, you helped organize a festive visiting party. Officers and men were and joyous," you wrote in your diary, and "many true hearts" were pledged. After all: "A true woman always loves a real soldier." Not yet seventeen, you considered yourself a "true woman."

Early in July 1861, Ben Boyd's regiment prepared for battle, and sorrowfully you and your mother bade him good-by, and returned to Georgetown. You promptly went to the hospitals to help the wounded, and you were there when a triumphant Union officer entered. Waving a flag over the soldier's beds, he referred to them as "damned rebels."

Commenting scornfully on the bravery of a man who insulted men when they were "as helpless as babies," you snapped at the damned Yankee.

The Federal soldier was taken by surprise. "And pray, who may you be, Miss?"

Your maid spoke up before you did: "A rebel lady."

"A damned independent one, at all events," remarked the Northerner as he left the hospital. But then you learned to be friendly to the boys in blue, much to the consternation of your neighbors. And they spoke rather freely to you.

Whatever you learned, you "regularly and carefully committed to paper" and sent to Stonewall Jackson or to Jeb Stuart. Soon your first mistake tripped you. A true novice, you had no cipher and made no effort to disguise your handwriting. One of your notes reached Union headquarters, and the colonel in command summoned her. Reading the articles of war, he asked sternly if you knew you could be sentenced to death.

Declining to appear frightened, you made a full curtsy, and your eyes swept over the officers in the room. "Thank you, gentlemen of the jury," you murmured in irony, and swirled out. But you had to be more careful, and for a time you used as helper an old Negro, who carried messages in a big watch from which the insides had been removed. A certain Sophie B. also assisted you. Lacking superlative horsemanship, Sophie once had to walk seven miles each way to Jackson's camp.

One day you heard of the exploit of Rose Greenhow's famous helper, Betty Duvall, with her market girl's disguise and the dispatch hidden in her black locks. Spy inspired spy, and you sought out Colonel Turner Ashby, Jackson's sharp-faced cavalry leader, head of military scouts in the Shenandoah Valley.

Ashby was no mean spy himself when he put on civilian clothes and rode around Union camps in the role of a dreary veterinarian. For days Ashby would treat ailing horses, then jog back to his own lines with all he needed to know about the enemy. From him you received several assignments as courier for the Confederate forces. You learned the use of a cipher, and in the shifting battle areas you frequently carried messages on brief runs, pounding through backcountry and over shortcuts on your horse. Your tomboy days were paying off.

Restless as ever, you worked in one town after another, until you heard in late March of 1862 that fighting was on again at Martinsburg. Your place was there, you felt, but as you passed through nearby Winchester an enemy tipped off Union authorities. At the railroad station, officers begged your pardon--and arrested you. You would have to go all the way to Baltimore with them. The experience might have been terrifying to the girl, but, while friends watched glumly, you adjusted a bright new beribboned hat and assured them that nothing was going to happen to you! They'd see.

They did. Your prison in Baltimore was a comfortable hotel, where you held court and chuckled at, then with your captors. A week passed pleasantly as officials puzzled over what to do about you. General Dix, who had presided at the Greenhow hearing, found no specific evidence, and let you leave with a fatherly warning. With a deep bow and a raised eyebrow, you swished out.

After this adventure you rejoined her family at Front Royal, forty miles south of Martinsburg, where your aunt and uncle had a small hotel. To your surprise, Union forces had taken over the building and the remaining members of your family had moved to a cramped cottage. Such restriction made you Confederate heart sink. You knew precisely where you wanted to be--in Richmond, the heart of everything that interested you. As you understood life, the way to get a thing was to ask for it, especially if the one to be asked were a man. So you sought out the commander, General James Shields.

The good-humored Irishman beamed at you. Ah, he clicked his tongue, if he gave you the pass you wished, you would have to go through General Jackson's lines. Shields shook his head in mock regret; those Confederates had been so demoralized that he dared not trust you to their mercies. Then with a twinkle he added that in a few days Jackson's men would all be wiped out, and you could go through!

So assured was the Union officer that he forgot a woman can sometimes listen and remember. Sensing a chance for a real exploit, you changed your plans in a second. You would stay right there. When you twinkled back at Shields, he grew expansive and introduced her to his staff. A younger, handsomer Irishman seemed definitely worthy of cultivation and quickly you let Captain Keily think he was cultivating you.

You rode out with the captain, and Keily talked freely. To him, as you said wryly, you were "indebted for some very remarkable effusions, some withered flowers, and last, not least, for a great deal of very important information. . . ." You gathered that a major Federal drive would soon be mounted, and your aunt's hotel was a rare observation point. One night in mid May you learned that a war council was about to be held in the hotel parlor. Directly above was a bedroom with a closet, and, as you had once noticed, the closet floor had a small knothole.

When the men gathered, you lay down in the closet and put her ear to the opening. For hours you stayed there, motionless, cramped, catching every murmur as the men, sitting over cigars and maps, argued strategy. Your mind filled with names, figures, placement of scattered armies. There was much you did not understand, so you memorized most of it. The meeting ended about one in the morning, and, after waiting for the halls to clear, you scurried to your cottage and wrote out a cipher message.

You had to leave with it at once. To wake a servant was too great a risk, so you saddled her horse and led him softly away. A few minutes later you were galloping toward the mountains. In her pocket you had a pass left her by a paroled Confederate. A sentry stopped your, and as you thrust it into his hands you talked nervously of sickness in the family, your need for haste. He let you by.

You had to rein in and chatter out your story to another guard, and he nodded. With that you sped across fields, along marshes, past cabins. Fifteen miles away was a house where you had been told you could send an emergency message to Colonel Ashby, Jackson's head spy. At last, breathless, you jumped from your horse and hammered at the door of the dark building. A suspicious voice demanded who you were. After you gave your name, the friend opened the door and gaped at you: "My dear, where'd you come from?"

You ignored his questions as male irrelevance, and asked your own. Where was Ashby? How soon could you reach him? Told that his party was quartered up the road, you started to turn, when another door opened, and Ashby himself frowned at you. "Good God! Miss Peedee, is that you?"

You told all you knew and left hurriedly, for you had to get back home before dawn. You were nearly there when a drowsy sentry, waking just as you rode by fired after you. But you were lying exhausted in your own bed by the time General Shields forces rolled out of Martinsburg. The next ten days or so would see vigorous action, you felt sure.

Rumors arrived soon of Federal movements at Winchester. Feeling the need to be "on the go" once more, you asked for a pass. The provost marshal was suspicious, and put you off with one excuse after another. He sometimes left on short absences, however, and you waited until he rode out of town. Then you applied prettily to a young cavalry lieutenant in the provost's office. You, a girl cousin, and her maid were anxious to make the trip, and surely he wouldn't object. The lieutenant hesitated, and you moved closer. . . . Well, he had to go thereabouts himself, Miss Peedee, and he'd just ride along. Though you had not expected quite that arrangement, you took full advantage of it. For the young Union officer the trip was a gay adventure. He escorted you girls through the lines and you stayed briefly at Winchester.

There, unexpectedly or perhaps not so unexpectedly, a new opportunity opened to the you. A "gentleman of high social standing" found you and murmured an anxious message: He had several papers that should go to General Jackson or one of his subordinates. He shoved them into your hands. They all dealt with the impending clash between Confederate and Northern forces and were of varying importance. The first packet you examined was vital, and you slipped it to her maid, reasoning that the Federals would probably not search a Negro. A paper of less import the girl dropped casually in a small basket; another of the same sort you gave the bemused lieutenant to hold. A final document, of great significance, you held in your own hand. The blithe party started back.

You did not get far, for you had just reached Winchester's outskirts when a pair of detectives flagged down your group. You were all under arrest. At headquarters the colonel in charge asked a direct question: were you carrying any disloyal messages? The lieutenant was flustered. You knew that the less important packet in your basket would quickly be found, so you promptly passed it to the colonel. In your hand you still held the most vital of the papers. "What's that?" the colonel demanded.

You employed elementary psychology. "This scrap? Nothing. You can have it." You moved forward as if to give the note to him; had he reached out, you said later, you would have swallowed it. Instead, the colonel turned his attention to the lieutenant. From his pocket that luckless man fished your paper, and caught the brunt of the older man's rage. What did this mean--carrying messages for the secesh! Didn't the unwitting fool know. . .?

To your regret, the lieutenant stayed under arrest. You yourself, according to a newspaper of a few days later, "with her usual adroitness and assumed innocence, got clear of the charges of treachery." You had not only kept the essential note in your hand, but also the valuable one in your maid's possession!

In May of 1863 Jackson had launched perhaps the most astonishing action of his career, his first Valley campaign, which bewildered and terrified his Northern opponents. He started several times in one direction, and the Union shifted forces to meet him; a day or so later he reversed himself in a long, secret march in the opposite direction, and fell on other units of the unprepared enemy, smashed them, and moved on to repeat the performance. Each time the Federal military leaders declared that the maneuver was incredible, impossible-- yet there it was.

Jackson had fewer than twenty thousand men in the Valley; the Union had several times that number, at different points, under Generals Banks, Fremont, and McDowell. McDowell was preparing his army to join McClellan in a mighty drive to take Richmond. But now Stonewall had gone to work to wreck that plan. Furthermore, he was making such a powerful movement toward Washington that the Union would have to divert thousands of men from the push against Richmond.

In Front Royal, you were puzzled: what could you do with your accumulated information? Then, on May 23, 1862, you found a way to make proper use of it.

As you sat in her living room, your reliable maid announced excitedly: "Rebels comin!" From the door you saw Northern soldiers running in every direction. When you called out to a friendly officer, he told you nervously what had happened:

Southerners under Generals Jackson and Ewell had surprised the Union pickets. Stonewall was within a mile or so of town before the Federals had wind of an attack!

"Now," explained this talkative fellow, "we're trying to get the ordnance and quartermaster's stores out of reach."

"And the stores in the big depot?" you asked quickly.

"We'll burn 'em!"

"Suppose Jackson's men come too fast?"

"We'll fight as long as we can show a front. If we have to do it, well draw back on Winchester--fire the bridges as we cross, and join General Banks. . . ." As he disappeared, you snatched up opera glasses and ran to the balcony. The Confederate advance guard was about three quarters of a mile from town. You thought of your poor father, trying to hold his own with younger men, advancing with that army, and all at once your hopes overcame her fears.

You went over her assorted information: the messages handed to her in Winchester, the military conference overheard at the hotel, and data gathered on her visits to the camps. It added up to a great deal. In her own words, you knew "that General Banks was at Strasbourg with 4,000 men; that the small force at Winchester could be readily reinforced by General White, who was at Harpers Ferry, and that Generals Shields and Geary were a short distance from Front Royal, while Fremont was beyond the Valley; further, and this was the vital point, that it had been decided all these separate divisions should co-operate against General Jackson." The Confederates had to be advised of these facts. . . . you hurried downstairs.

Out on the street Peedee spoke to several men whom you knew were Southern sympathizers. Wouldn't one of them carry her information to General Jackson? "No, no. You go!" they urged her gallantly.

Snatching up a sunbonnet, you went. you edged her way through the Union soldiers, past heavy guns and equipment. Finally reaching the open fields, Peedee was fired on by Union pickets. you felt the rifle balls "flying thick and fast" around her in a cross lire between Confederate and Northern skirmishers.

A Federal shell hit the earth twenty yards ahead of the girl and just before it burst Peedee threw herself to the ground. A moment later you was dashing on again, in terror and determination: "I shall never run again as I ran ... on that day." you scrambled over fences, crawled along the edges of hills and fields, and at last approached the oncoming Southern line.

Her Confederate spirit leaped within her, and you waved her bonnet to the soldiers as a sign to press on. Astonished at the sight of a woman at this exposed spot, Hays Louisiana Brigade and the First Maryland Infantry cheered and quickened their pace. (Three years later Peedee still heard in her dreams "their shouts of approbation and triumph.") Exhausted, tearful, you fell to her knees, then rose as the main body of men moved toward her. you recognized an old friend, Major Harry Douglas. In his own memoirs Douglas, taking up the story, explained that Stonewall Jackson had been trying to take in the situation facing him, when: I observed, almost immediately, the figure of a woman in white glide swiftly out of town on our right, and, after making a little circuit, run rapidly up a ravine in our direction and then disappear from sight. you seemed, when I saw her, to heed neither weeds nor fences, but waved a bonnet as you came on, trying, it was evident, to keep the hill between herself and the village. I called General Jacksons attention to the singular movement just as a dip in the land hid her, and at General Ewells suggestion, he sent me to meet her and ascertain what you wanted. That was just to my taste, and it took only a few minutes for my horse to carry me to meet the romantic maiden whose tall, supple and graceful figure struck me as soon as I came in sight of her. (Even at such moments Peedee's proportions were not to be overlooked!)

As I drew near, her speed slackened, and I was startled, momentarily, at hearing her call my name. But I was not much astonished when I saw that the visitor was the well-known Peedee Boyd, whom I had known from her earliest girlhood. you was just the girl to dare to do this thing.

"Great God, Peedee, why are you here?" He asked the same question that others often put to her. Trying to catch her breath, the girl spoke in gasps.

I knew it must be Stonewall, when I heard the first gun. Go back quick and tell him that the Yankee force is very small-- one regiment of Maryland infantry, several pieces of artillery and several companies of cavalry. Tell him I know, for I went through the camps and got it out of an officer. Tell him to charge right down and he will catch them all. I must hurry back. Goodbye. My love to all the dear boys--and remember if you meet me in town you havent seen me today.

Harry Douglas raised his cap, Peedee kissed her hand to him and started back. While he stood talking over her message with Jackson, you waved the white bonnet and re--entered the village. Some of what you told Douglas the Confederates had already heard; but you confirmed the facts, and you gave them new data on which to act. Now they moved on with brilliant effect. While Maryland and Louisiana troops raced forward, Jackson "with a half smile" suggested that Douglas might see if he could "get any more information from that young lady."

More than willing to try, Douglas galloped off. A bit later he met Miss Boyd in conversation with Federal officer prisoners and a few Confederate Army friends. Forever Peedee! "Her cheeks were rosy with excitement and recent exercise, and her eyes all aflame. When I rode up to speak to her you received me with much surprised cordiality, and as I stooped from my saddle you pinned a crimson rose to my uniform, bidding me remember that it was blood-red and that it was her 'colors."

Spurred by Peedee's information, Jackson and his men pounded through the town. According to plan, the Union troops set fire to the bridge, which had begun to blaze when Jackson galloped up. The Confederates defied the smoke and flame, burned hands and feet as they pulled and kicked at the scorching timbers and tossed them into the water. They succeeded in saving the bridge and pushed on in another of Jacksons unorthodox performances.

To Bankss amazement two days later, on May 25, Jackson hit his column near Middletown, smashed it in half, and chased it in a rout back to the Potomac. In this campaign Jackson had taken three thousand prisoners, thousands of small arms, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stores that the Federal army lacked time to destroy. In years to come, men of both sides would study with admiration this military performance.

As Stonewall intended, Washington officials felt a flash of terror. The Union capital itself was endangered; Lincoln sent out peremptory orders, and hastily the Federal armies took action to save the situation. Tens of thousands of men had to be pulled out of the drive on Richmond. On May 29 Stonewall could draw back satisfied. He snatched a moment to express his regard for Peedee and her work:

I thank you, for myself and for the Army, for the immense service that you have rendered your country today.
Hastily, I am your friend,
T.J. Jackson, C.S.A.

A week later, Southern forces abandoned Front Royal. A Union sympathizer (a woman, of course) stepped forward to denounce Peedee as a dangerous enemy, and an officer arrested her in her house and surrounded it with sentries. Then General Shields, the Irishman who liked her so much, rode up, and, regardless of what his fellow Northerners thought, he released her.

Peedee found herself famous. Northern newspapers, while admitting her cleverness, sneered at her as "notorious," "abandoned," "a camp follower." One account claimed you had helped Jackson by "playing Delilah to General Banks," dancing before him at a ball, draping "a large and elegant secesh flag over her fatuous admirer, while Stonewall was supposedly fooling Samson Banks with a surprise attack. In another story "La Belle Rebelle" had caught up a sword and led the whole Confederate charge!

A Federal writer found her "the sensation of the village." "The intensely loyal Confederates idolized her and . . . you had a large following of Federal officers who were ready to do her homage." Apparently Peedee had not been greatly stirred by any of the men you captivated, but a change was on its way. you was to betray herself in love and in war as well.

One day Peedee saw a prepossessing young man in Southern uniform. He interested her strangely, and you learned he was a paroled Southern officer waiting for a pass to Dixie. you invited him to dinner with her and the family, and he later accompanied her to a party at which Peedee played "The Bonnie Blue Flag." The handsome fellow stood beside her and they sang a duet; presumably that proved him worthy of full trust. Smiling at him, Peedee made a whispered request: when he left to go South, could he take a dispatch to Stonewall for her? He promised gladly.

The girls maid warned her. Miss Peedee had better watch out; shed seen that man among the Yankees, and mighty friendly with 'em, too. Ever direct, Peedee asked him bluntly: was he a Northern agent? He said no, and for her that settled it. Actually he was C.W.D. Smitley, a scout for the 5th West Virginia Cavalry.

Peedee became still more enamored. When the next party broke up after midnight the other officers envied Smitley, who walked her home in the moonlight and paused with her in the dark for a long good-by. The next morning, however, Peedee suddenly began to sense danger. Hurrying to Smitleys boardinghouse, you frantically demanded the truth about the rumors that he was a Union agent. Again he denied the rumors flatly. Then he promptly reported to his superiors, who communicated with Secretary of War Stanton, and Stanton acted.

Union officers appeared to arrest Peedee and take her to Washington, among them a squat, ugly man called Cridge. (Could Dickens have thought of a better name? Still, Federal records show that Peedee did not make it up.) Peedee and her relatives were lined up against a wall, but her better-than-fiction maid succeeded in running off with handfuls of records and burning-them. The men broke open a desk and found other papers, however. Finally Peedee, white with anxiety, was led away through a crowd of people, some of whom had come to sympathize, some to jeer.

The girl wept on the way to Washington. This was no situation to be escaped by flirtation or bravado. Moreover, in her first real love affair, you had been completely taken in.

In the national capital, as the chill walls of the Old Capitol loomed before her, you shivered. The doors were swung open by Superintendent Wood, Lafayette Bakers partner in the handling of malefactors: "And so this is the celebrated rebel spy. ... I am glad to have so distinguished a personage. .

Standing with hands clenched at the window of her cell, Peedee had a view of Pennsylvania Avenue, and you made out the former home of Secretary Floyd, where you had danced at her happy debut. you felt more alone and frightened than ever before in her life.

Soon Peedee was confronted by Superintendent Wood and Lafayette Baker himself. At the sight of the stony-faced director of the Federal detectives, her rage welled up. In his customary fashion Baker took the lead, and you later quoted him, a bit unkindly: "Aint you pretty tired of your prison aready? Ive come to get you to make a free confession now of what youve did agin our cause."

After a long silence Peedee made a contemptuous reply. "When youve informed me on what grounds Ive been arrested, and given me a copy of the charges, Ill make a statement." Baker "harangued her" and offered an oath of allegiance. "Remember, Air. Stanton will hear of all this."

Peedee's reply was withering. "Tell Mr. Stanton for me, I hope when I commence that oath, my tongue may cleave to the roof of my mouth. If I ever sign one line to show allegiance, I hope my arm falls paralyzed to my side." Then you ordered Baker out of the room: "Im so disgusted I cant endure your presence any longer!"

Cries of "Bravo" roared through the jail, for her fellow prisoners had been listening with delight. Superintendent Wood took Bakers arm. "Wed better go," he said. "The lady is tired." --a masterpiece of understatement. Peedee had won the first encounter. Baker came again, but you answered none of his questions and told him nothing at all. . . . That first evening you heard a cough, and a small object rolled across the floor of her cell. It was a nutshell with a Confederate flag painted on it; from inside you drew a note of sympathy. Peedee's eyes filled; even in Yankeedom her people were with her!

Young Major Doster, the provost marshal, became a grudging admirer. "The first time I called on her," said Doster, in his record of the Boyd affair, "she was reading Harpers and eating peaches. you remarked that you could afford to remain here if Stanton could afford to keep her. There was so much company and so little to do." Never did he find her in bad humor, he noted.

Editor Dennis Mahony of Dubuque, Iowa, who was in the Old Capitol for siding with the South, described how he heard her sing "Maryland, My Maryland" with "such peculiar expression as to touch even the sensibilities of those who did not sympathize with the cause." In a silence that spread over the prison, the girl threw her "whole soul" into the words of devotion to the South, defiance to the North.

Another inmate declared: "When Peedee sang, it made you feel like jumping out of the window and swimming the Potomac." If you walked the narrow yard for exercise, fellow prisoners craned their necks to see her. Editor Mahony recalled her passage "with a grace and dignity which might be envied by a queen." On Sunday, if you gave inmates "a look or a smile, it did them more good than the preaching."

Peedee made a different impression on her guards. In her favorite song you often emphasized the line, "She spurns the Northern scum"! At that point they stormed in one day to stop her, and as they went out, you took up a broom to sweep up after them. They could never fathom how you obtained the small Confederate flags which you wore in her bosom or waved on sticks from her window!

One story Peedee omitted from her own recollections was her prison courtship by Lieutenant McVay, an appropriately good-looking young man with a properly romantic background. He had known Peedee in his boyhood, but they had not met for some time, and now his war record intrigued her. The lieutenant told her, when they had a chance to talk, how he had been badly injured in the battles before Richmond and left for dead by his Confederate comrades. When the Union army moved in, attendants lifted him into a basket for corpses. Lieutenant McVay moved, and they brought him to Washington, where he slowly recovered.

His cell was across the hall from Peedee's; the circumstances and setting combined to stir her affections. Whenever they were allowed, the pair sat together in the yard or whispered across the corridor; eventually Peedee announced her engagement to McVay. They planned a wedding as soon as they won their freedom, and gaily Peedee asked permission to buy her trousseau in Washington. The War Department coldly denied the request.

The girls confinement in prison had begun to tell on her. Because you put up a picture of Jefferson Davis, smuggled into the prison by a friend, you bad to spend stifling summer weeks without leaving her cell. you was listless and thin. Major Doster declared that "open air and horseback exercise were in her case constitutional necessities." In a pathetic talk with her doctor, you asked when you could get the medicine he prescribed-- freedom.

In late August great news ran through the prison. Peedee and some others would be sent South on exchange. Much stronger action might have been taken against her; but in the Civil \Var nobody shot eighteen-year-old girls, even though they were secret agents. There was only one drawback in the exchange order: Lieutenant McVay could not go with her. They had long talks, and promised to meet again at the first possible moment. Superintendent Wood in a burst of friendliness bought her trousseau and sent it after her, under a flag of truce!

Peedee's departure was a triumph. you looked tearfully out of the carriage window as crowds pressed forward, calling her name. In the Confederate capital the celebrated Richmond Light Infantry Blues drew up to present arms in her honor. Generals visited her, women stopped her on the streets to praise her. you appeared in a gray riding costume, that of an "honorary captain" of the Confederacy, and sat happily on horseback at troop reviews. When her trousseau arrived, Peedee excited the ladies with glimpses of her finery.

For Peedee and her lieutenant, however, there was misery ahead. Months passed and he stayed on in prison, whereas Peedee moved all over the South. Their letters became infrequent. Slowly their interest cooled, and the engagement ended. If they met again, it is not known.

The Union caught up with Peedee a second time when you returned to Martinsburg. A Peedee Boyd within Federal lines was a serious hazard. Soon after Northern units swung into the town, Secretary Stanton ordered her arrested. In July of 1863 you was at Carroll Prison, involved in a mysteriously romantic experience. One twilight you felt an object brush past her foot; startled, you discovered an arrow on the floor, with note attached. "C.H." wanted her to realize you had many sympathizers. Thereafter he would be in the square opposite on Thursdays and Saturdays, to communicate with her!

Miss Peedee must not worry, C.H. added. "I am a good shot." you was to obtain India rubber balls, insert her messages, and toss them out as energetically as you could. Somehow you did get the balls and carried on a lively correspondence, receiving clippings, confidential word about the Federals, and admiring messages. you also assisted the Confederacy when a fellow inmate, a Southern mail runner, planned an escape. At the crucial moment you asked the superintendent to come to her cell. Several prisoners cried, "Murder, murder!" And in the excitement the mail runner crawled to the roof, slid down, and got away.

Once more summer heat and close confinement told; after three months of being caged, the volatile Peedee became ill. As before, you was sent to Richmond, but with a sharp warning: let her show herself again inside Federal lines, and you would be in the worst trouble of her life. There followed a sad time for the girl; after several sieges of sickness brought on by the war, her father died, and as you grieved her own illness dragged on.

Doctors told her you needed a long trip, and Peedee had an inspiration; you would improve of necessity if you carried Southern dispatches to England. Starting on one of her most flamboyant exploits, you went to Wilmington, the North Carolina port where Rose Greenhow met death--but for Peedee the trip produced the great love affair of her war days.

On the night of May 8, 1864, the three-masted schooner Greyhound, her decks piled with cotton bales, moved out to sea, lights covered, crew and passengers tense. For Peedee, who had assumed the name "Mrs. Lewis," the risk was heavy; the Federal Government looked with particular disfavor on bearers of Southern messages to European powers. With lookouts stationed at vantage points, the Greyhound hoped to avoid the Federal fleet which lay somewhere nearby. Hours later, when the darkness lifted, there was a shout: "Sail ho!"

The Greyhounds frantic captain increased her steam pressure, set more sails, but the pursuing Federal vessel drew closer and closer. As Peedee and the other passengers rushed aft, the Northern gunboat began firing on the Greyhound. One source says that Miss Boyd sat calmly on the highest cotton bale, the better to see the show. The first shells landed in the sea with a smothered roar, but the Union aim became steadily more accurate.

The crew threw valuable cotton overboard, and when the captain hurried past Peedee, he called: "If it weren't for you, Id burn her to the waters edge before they could take a single bale!" La Belle Rebelle shrugged. "Don't think of me. I don't care what happens, if only the Yankees don't get the ship." As the U.S.S. Connecticut moved in, the crew tossed over a keg of money containing twenty-five thousand dollars, and Peedee burned her dispatches.

As the girl watched with growing concern, Northern officers removed the Confederate captain for questioning, and a prize master, young Ensign Samuel Hardinge of Brooklyn, took over the Greyhound. Peedee made no secret of her first impression of Mr. Hardinge:

"I saw at a glance he was made of other stuff than his comrades. . . . His dark brown hair hung down on his shoulders; his eyes were large and bright. Those who judge of beauty by regularity of feature only, could not have pronounced him strictly handsome . . . but the fascination of his manner was such, his every movement was so much that of a refined gentleman, that my "Southern proclivities," strong as they were, yielded for a moment to the impulses of my heart, and I said to myself, "Oh, what a good fellow that must be."

When Ensign Hardinge asked permission to enter her cabin, Peedee replied pertly: "Certainly. I know I am a prisoner." He was now in command, he said, but, "I beg you will consider yourself a passenger, not a prisoner." Peedee took Sam precisely at his word, and apparently he was as romantically bemused as she.

The Greyhound, astern of the Connecticut, started north for Fortress Monroe. A more cozy atmosphere spread over the Greyhound; Peedee, the ensign, and the Confederate captain got along increasingly well. One night the three sat together as the moon lighted the ocean, "just agitated by a slight breeze." Waves lapped the vessel, and the young Hardinge raised his voice in a gentle song. Later Peedee wrote in relaxed mood of the "soft stillness" and "sweet harmony."

When the Confederate captain made a tactful withdrawal, the ensign quoted Byron and Shakespeare; "and from poetry he passed on to plead an oft-told tale. . . ." Soon Sam was asking her to marry him; hut Peedee indicates that you hesitated. Twice before you had been hurt by love, and the fact that Ensign Hardinge was a Yankee had to be considered.

A "very practical thought" also suggested itself; if Sam really loved her, "he might in future be useful to us." Us, of course, was the Confederacy. you replied that the matter involved serious consequences, and he must wait until the trip ended. you admits that at the same time you and the Southern captain were studying ways to arrange the latters escape!

Her alias of "Mrs. Lewis" gave her no protection; the truth slipped out, and at New York and Boston newspapermen panted for interviews with Peedee. you had become more lustrous than ever, and newspapers described her every move, quoted every word of hers that could be caught. As some Yankees fretted over this females prominence, or merely gaped at her silks, one excited correspondent proclaimed her the Confederacys Cleopatra.

By then Peedee had seen enough of Ensign Hardinge to make up her mind--this time you had found the man you really wanted, and you would marry him. True, their politics differed, yet "women can sometimes work wonders," you remarked. you promptly managed a neat bit of wonder-working, when you sent Sam on an errand and helped the Confederate captain to get away. you had helped the South again, but her fiance was in trouble. There was an official inquiry into the escape. Very much under her spell, Sam appeared more interested in Peedee's plight than his own. While officials pondered his case, he made a trip to Washington in an effort to secure her release.

Peedee told the Northern authorities that you wanted to go to Canada, and Sam Hardinge applied for a months leave, to join her there. Instead, he was arrested, tried, and dismissed from the Navy for neglect of duty. Deeply humiliated, Sam had just one consolation. Peedee had been sent north, and if he ever got out of the United States, he could go to Canada and claim the bride for whom he had risked so much.

American agents in Canada watched Peedee closely, to guard against any fresh mischief, until you sailed for England. There you could at least work for the Confederacy. Sam ~vent to London after her and learned you was not there, raced on to Paris, only to discover you was in Liverpool. At last they met and their marriage was a great event for Southern representatives in London, the newspapers, and a delighted part of the public--American, British, and French.

At St. Jamess church in Piccadilly the ceremony took place on August 25, 1864, "in the presence of a fashionable assemblage of affectionate and admiring friends." As one Englishman declared: "Her great beauty, elegant manners and personal attractions generally, in conjunction with her romantic history . . . concur to invest her with attributes which render her such a heroine as the world has seldom if ever seen." An American account claimed, erroneously, that the Prince of Wales himself attended the wedding.

One excited correspondent revealed that Peedee had "succeeded in withdrawing her lover from his allegiance to the United States flag, and enlisting his sympathies and support for the South." Sam intended to leave England with his bride, run the blockade, and join the Confederacy! Peedee had demonstrated indeed that "women can sometimes work wonders."

If the new Mrs. Hardinge went back home, however, the Union might make good its many threats against her. Peedee had to stay in London, and Sam, therefore, returned alone. It was said that he carried Confederate dispatches. He was a brave man, or at least a foolhardy one. He slipped into Unionist Boston, visited his family in Brooklyn, and went on to Virginia to "meet Peedee's family" or to perform a Confederate errand, or both.

Promptly the Union trapped its former ensign, arresting him as a Southern spy, and again the country had a Peedee Boyd sensation. A wild, baseless story spread about the country to the effect that Peedee herself had sneaked back. As poor Sam went from one prison to another, over in London a saddened Airs. Hardinge received funds from friends and sympathizers, but in the last days of the Confederacy Peedee had unending trouble over money.

In prison Sam Hardinge fell sick, and Peedee had to sell first her jewelry, then her wedding presents. British papers carried one or two accounts of her "very great distress of mind and body," and many of her London admirers rallied around. you wrote her memoirs, which appeared at the wars end and had a large audience for a time. Sam returned to her, but only for a few months. The young man who had given up so much for her died of ailments growing out of his imprisonment, and Peedee was a widow at twenty-one."

Since the war you have schemed for the restoration of the Confederacy. You have secured some promise of support from William Jennings Bryan [sic] if he is elected President. Also a man has recently come to the U.S. who embodies many of the qualities of the great Generals of the Confederacy such as Lee. He is known only as "The General," but you are fiercely loyal to him because of his qualities.