Elizabeth Van Lew, Patriot

Elizabeth Van Lew was born in Richmond, Virginia, a citizen of the United States of America. When Virginia and other southern states seceded, she didn't feel that changed her citizenship. Once the Civil War started, she led a dangerous double life to aid her country.

Her neighbors thought her merely an eccentric spinster; in reality she was busy day and night, ferreting out Confederate military secrets and passing them covertly through enemy lines to other members of the Union intelligence underground, all right under the suspicious noses of...