Rose Greenhow: A Short Biography

Rose O’Neal Greenhow (1814 – 1864) was a Maryland born Washington socialite, Confederate spy, and author of a political prison memoir. She is the most well known Southern Catholic woman who put a pro-Confederate argument into print.


She was born on a small plantation in Montgomery County (some sources say Port Tobacco), Maryland, the third of five daughters of John O’Neale, a Catholic planter of Irish descent, and Eliza Henrietta Hamilton. Her father died when she was a child (accounts say he was killed by an enslaved man) and the plantation was later sold. Rose and a sister were taken in by their aunt Maria Ann Hill, who ran a Washington boarding house for politicians and lawyers. There she grew up among senators and officials.


She had little formal schooling. Senator John C. Calhoun became a mentor. She later said her “first crude ideas on State and Federal matters received consistency and shape” from him.


She was proud of being a Southerner and a slaveholder’s daughter. In 1835 she married Robert Greenhow, a Virginia born physician, lawyer, and linguist in the State Department. They had four daughters and the family lived in Washington, then Mexico City as well as San Francisco. Robert died in 1854 after a fall.


Widowed, Rose returned to Washington, bought a house near the White House, and rebuilt her salon. She was close to James Buchanan and stayed in Union society after secession while remaining an open Southern partisan. In 1861 Confederate captain Thomas Jordan recruited her to run a spy network in Washington. Using dinner-table talk, coded messages, and a cipher, she sent Union troop movements to General Beauregard before First Bull Run (Manassas).


Jefferson Davis later credited her information with helping the Confederate victory. Allan Pinkerton’s agents arrested her in August 1861. She was held under house arrest, then in the Old Capitol Prison with her young daughter “Little Rose.” She kept sending intelligence from confinement. In 1862 she was banished south, received as a heroine in Richmond, and rewarded by Davis.


In 1863 she sailed to Europe as an unofficial Confederate agent, seeking recognition and funds in Britain and France. In London she published “My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington”, part prison narrative, part attack on Lincoln’s government.


On August 19th 1864 she left Europe on the blockade runner Condor, carrying dispatches and a large sum in gold for the Confederacy. Off Wilmington, North Carolina, the ship ran aground under fire. Rose insisted on going ashore in a small boat. It capsized. Weighted with gold sewn into her clothing, she drowned on October 1st 1864.


A copy of her book, with a note for her daughter, was found with her. She received a military funeral at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Wilmington and was buried in Oakdale Cemetery under a Confederate flag. A later memorial called her “A Bearer of Dispatches to the Confederate Government.”


She was charming, ambitious, and unapologetic about slavery and secession. Union officials thought her dangerous; Confederates treated her as a patriot.