In war, wrote Union general Phillip H. Sheridan, information on the enemy figured so prominently in victorious battles and campaigns that it was truly the “great essential of success.”1 During the early days of the Civil War, however, Sheridan’s observation was not self-evident to predominantly civilian-turned-volunteer officers in the Union army whose knowledge of war extended little beyond what they gleaned from reading Sir Edward Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851) or from a quick spin through a borrowed tactical manual. In fact, teaching military neophytes how to go from the march into battle line or how to fire by file took precedence over pursuing that “great essential.” Many soon discovered through experience, however, that tactical proficiency alone could not win battles and campaigns and that efficient intelligence-gathering and skilled analysis could be the difference between victory or defeat. But achieving this proved a tall order unless, of course, one could find a talented officer with the necessary skills and judgment to tackle the challenges of information collection and assessment under fire. For Union generals Joseph Hooker, George G. Meade, and U. S. Grant, however, a 34-year-old balding lawyer from New York was that man.
George Henry Sharpe came from the Hudson Valley in New York and, like many in the North, answered his nation’s call after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. He quickly raised a regiment, the 120th New York Volunteer Infantry, and commanded it during the early days of the war. In 1862, Gen. Joseph Hooker, then head of the Army of the Potomac in Virginia, needed an officer with a keen and discerning mind to create and head his intelligence apparatus later known as the Bureau of Military Information (BMI). He chose Colonel (later General) Sharpe, who remained the BMI chief under Hooker, Meade, and Grant during many of the most important battles and campaigns of the conflict. But in this role Sharpe did far more than merely collect random bits of information and forward them to his bosses. He realized that information was only as reliable as its source and useful only if a commander could quickly make sense of it and use it. With this in mind, Sharpe created a tightly-knit unit staffed with smart and skilled intelligence professionals who collected raw information and then, through careful assessment and analysis, produced camera-ready military intelligence for use in the field.
Under Sharpe’s leadership, the BMI set the standard for efficient and effective intelligence work in the Civil War, becoming an “all source intelligence” unit that systematically gathered raw information from a multitude of sources (spies, scouts, cavalry reconnaissance, balloon ascensions, captured enemy correspondence, signal intercepts, enemy newspapers, and the results of interrogations of local civilians and prisoners of war), subjected it to rigorous corroboration and analysis, and then packaged it in a concise intelligence brief for the Army of the Potomac commander. Of all these sources, however, one of the most valuable was information derived from the interrogation of Confederate prisoners and deserters. Though far less exciting than the daring exploits of spies, the BMI extracted valuable information on the organization—or “order of battle”—of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Determining the identity of a prisoner’s regiment, brigade, and corps—something a captured soldier would certainly know and easily divulge—allowed Sharpe’s principal subordinate and former architect, John C. Babcock, to create an organizational flow chart of Lee’s army that was then used to track its dispositions and movements. The BMI became so proficient at collecting order of battle intelligence that Sharpe once bragged that he had identified “each regiment, brigade, and division” in Lee’s army and, as a result, knew their exact positions and any movements they made. In the midst of the campaign against Richmond in 1864, U. S. Grant confirmed Sharpe’s boast. “Deserters come in every day,” he told the War Department, “enabling us to keep track of every change the enemy makes.”2
During the siege of Richmond and Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865, the BMI reached peak efficiency. The unit employed numerous spies behind Confederate lines, posted scouts along Lee’s logistical connections, established covert lines of communication with Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew and her so-called “Union Underground” in the Confederate capital, and placed BMI branch offices with other commands in Virginia and North Carolina to transmit strategic intelligence to Grant’s City Point headquarters. In addition, after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Sharpe was charged with issuing paroles to the men of the Army of Northern Virginia, which proved challenging because Lee’s army had become quite disorganized during the final months of the siege as ever-shrinking numbers led to numerous unit consolidations and reorganizations that, in turn, muddied their order of battle. As a result, many Confederates lining up for their paroles were confused about the new identities of their regiments and brigades and where they fit in the organizational chart. But the BMI had done its job well. Much to the surprise of puzzled Confederates, Sharpe was able to tell them where they belonged using Babcock’s up-to-date order of battle for the Army of Northern Virginia.
In the final analysis, Sharpe’s BMI was the most sophisticated and efficient intelligence organization during the war but also the first systematic “all source” intelligence organization in U.S. military history to that time. And it all emanated from the lawyerly mind of George H. Sharpe who, despite his incredibly important contributions to Union victory, remains virtually unknown in Civil War history.
After the war, which included Sharpe’s unsuccessful trip to Europe in search of evidence of the Confederate government’s complicity in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the BMI and its chief faded from view even as reminiscences written by other officers and common soldiers poured from the presses detailing their experiences during the “late unpleasantness.” Former scouts and spies like Allan Pinkerton, Lafayette Baker, Belle Boyd, and others also jumped in to this literary war, writing memoirs laced with embellished tall tales that would have made a dime novelist blush. Written more for profit and fame than to render an accurate depiction of intelligence work during the war, these offerings unfortunately obscured more than they revealed. Sharpe and his principal subordinates, however, contributed little to this literary outpouring, which meant that the thrilling adventures stories that so transfixed the public—many with only a nodding acquaintance with the truth—soon became authoritative representations of the intelligence war.
When it came to the activities of the BMI and its operatives, Sharpe maintained a sphynx-like silence after the war, understanding that discretion was not only the better part of valor but also essential for maintaining the anonymity of former scouts and spies still living in the South to protect them from vengeful ex-Confederates. Although Sharpe’s chief scout Judson Knight wrote about his exploits in the pages of the National Tribune, his boss remained quiet, turning down even those who urged him to preserve those hard-won intelligence lessons for future generations. Finally, in 1898, the 70-year-old former spymaster agreed to put pen to paper but his death shortly thereafter settled the issue once and for all. With his passing, the most important figure in the Civil War’s intelligence duel took his secrets to the grave and proved beyond doubt that, as historian Peter Maslowski observed, “spies who wrote memoirs are invariably more famous but were often less important than those who did not.”3
Though Sharpe’s insider’s view was forever lost, the story of the BMI was not. The unit’s history could still be found in dozens of reports and other correspondence found in the volumes of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, in Record Groups 108, 110, and 393 at the National Archives and Records Administration and in the wartime papers of Hooker, Grant, John C. Babcock, and others. Edwin C. Fishel, the dean of Civil War military intelligence studies, brought Sharpe to the forefront in his magisterial The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (1996) but even after this big debut, no historian accepted the challenge of writing a full biography of the spymaster from New York.
Until now, that is. Peter Tsouras, author of over thirty books on military history, has grasped the many threads of Sharpe’s life and spun them together in an exciting and informative biography grounded in primary research at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, and in countless contemporary newspapers now available online for the first time. Having already peeked behind the curtain of the BMI’s operations in his edited work entitled Scouting for Grant and Meade: The Reminiscences of Judson Knight, Chief of Scouts, Army of the Potomac (2013), Tsouras has built upon this strong foundation to produce a first-rate biography of the pre-war life, Civil War career, and postwar activities of a remarkable man and the true father of modern American military intelligence. This is a tale Sharpe never told himself but, thanks to Tsouras’ solid research and gifted prose, we have the next best thing. At long last, Gen. Sharpe has found his biographer, and one truly worthy of his subject.
William B. Feis, Ph.D.
Buena Vista University, Storm Lake, Iowa
May 2018