The Debatable Land. (After Karamales)
Sharpe wasted little time in assembling a talented staff and threw himself into his new challenge. Colonel Gates visited him shortly after his appointment and commented in his diary, “He does not seem so anxious to consolidate as he was…”
He obviously was impressing those around him. On March 14 his brigade commander, Col. Paul Revere, requested his return to the command of his regiment. “This regiment having been recently organized and needing all the attention of its field officers for drilling and disciplining it, in order that it may keep pace with the other regiments of the Brigade, and be effective for the field, is my reason for making this request.” Hooker turned him down flat. Sharpe was staying where he was.1
Indicative of the novel nature of Sharpe’s new duties was that there was no standard army term for the organization he was to set up. His office was initially called the Secret Service, a name already used and discredited by Pinkerton and McClellan. That was quickly dropped as several other titles were tried:
| 5 March | S. S. Department |
| 11 March | Bureau of Scout Information |
| 15 March | Bureau of Secesh [Secessionist] Information |
| 15 March | Bureau of Information |
Each was quickly discarded until the Bureau of Information was adopted on March 22 and used through May. Eventually, several months later, the term Bureau of Military Information (BMI) would become fixed with a letterhead and all. That title was certainly less of a giveaway to inquisitive Confederates than the Secret Service. Yet most of Sharpe’s official correspondence simply states it is from the Office of the Provost Marshal General, another form of cover.
Sharpe quickly appreciated Babcock’s talents and experience. Finding such a man at hand must have been an immense relief, and Sharpe made him his chief assistant despite his civilian status. Later Babcock would be referred to with the honorary rank of captain. Sharpe was fortunate to have Babcock conduct the order-of-battle analysis. He was a man of precision and order, as indicated by his dapper attire as well as the beauty and clarity of his handwriting. His surviving order-of-battle charts and maps were drawn with a fine pen with such exactness as to be almost confused with the printed word. The man simply exuded ability, and for Sharpe, he had the added quality of manifestly being a gentleman.
In addition to Babcock, there remained only two scouts from McClellan’s and Burnside’s commands. Both Patrick and Sharpe were distrustful of professional detectives and preferred men that had actually been proven in the field. Although Babcock was priceless, it was clear to Sharpe that he needed more analytical and administrative support.
In his travel to Fortress Monroe, the headquarters of Maj. Gen. John A. Dix, commanding the Department of Virginia, he had met 1st Lieut. Frederick L Manning. He was a company officer with the 148th New York and had joined up in Geneva, also in response to Lincoln’s call for 300,000 more men that had given birth to Sharpe’s own 120th New York. Sharpe had been impressed with the young man. Sharpe wrote a draft letter to Dix which Hooker signed on March 17:
You will oblige me if you will allow 1st Lieut. Fred. L. Manning, 148th N. Y. Vols, to report to me for temporary duty as a Short hand writer. His service in that capacity will be of great value to me for a few weeks. He shall be returned to your command as soon as possible—If you can spare this Officer, I will make an application to the Adjutant General for his temporary detail to my Head Quarters.
Dix approved, and the wheels of administration delivered Manning to Sharpe three weeks later on orders dated April 8. His stay would be anything but temporary, and it would be the road to success for the able young lieutenant.2
As his team and its workload grew, Sharpe realized the need for another senior assistant in addition to Babcock, and he needed a more experienced officer than Manning. On April 22 he requested the detail to his bureau of 27-year-old Captain John McEntee. In his requested he stated, “… as the reason for preferring this request, that the interests of the service demand the labors of an additional officer in this department, and that from my long acquaintance with Captain McEntee I believe him to be well fitted therefore.” McEntee was a neighbor from Kingston and was serving in that repository of old friends, the 20th NYSM, where he was commanding Company A. His brother, 20-year-old Captain Charles H. McEntee, had commanded H Company in Sharpe’s own 120th New York but had died of “brain fever” on December 21, 1862, one of the many sickness had carried away in the winter after Fredericksburg. Sharpe saw something more than the reliable hometown friend. Although good-natured and punctilious where honor was concerned, McEntee was no stranger to danger. Even before the war, he bore the scar on his left breast of a gunshot wound. Sharpe came to trust him to work independently in the field to organize and monitor the work of scouts, write reports, and, when necessary, to establish what were essentially “branch offices” in other commands.
McEntee was a tall, gaunt, dark-complexioned man who in later years would remind his neighbors of Lincoln. By all accounts, “he was not an outstanding personality, but rather a reserved type; industrious, extremely patriotic and scrupulously mindful of carrying out his duties to his country, or as a private citizen, giving his services unstintingly for the betterment of life in his community.”3 Sharpe made McEntee his second deputy after Babcock, and these three men and Manning would be the brains at the center of the BMI.
Hooker’s new broom also brought in talent on the army staff that would later be of much assistance to the BMI. One such officer was Lieut. Paul A. Oliver, whom Butterfield pulled out of the 12th New York Infantry to be an aide. Butterfield had been impressed with his performance in battle during the Peninsular Campaign and had written glowingly of his conduct in the Seven Days battles. Oliver had been born at sea in 1831, the son of a sea captain, and educated in Altoona, Germany. He settled in Fort Hamilton, New York, and went in the shipping business, then later in the cotton trade with his brother in New York and New Orleans. During the 1856 yellow fever epidemic, he organized and led the relief society, cared for the sick, and prevented the disease from spreading to Brooklyn. Much more would be heard of him in the future.4
Sharpe’s pressing need was for scouts, and he immediately began a search for experienced and willing men. The army already used a significant number of scouts attached to most commands at brigade, division, and corps. The Grand Reserve Division reported on February 2 that it maintained 10–30 scouts at any one time.5 Over the next several months Sharpe assembled a group of very able men. It did not take him long to tap “Hooker’s Horse Marines” for talent. On February 25 he arranged for the transfer of three of the cavalrymen from 3rd Indiana Cavalry, including Sergeant Milton W. Cline, Daniel Cole, and Daniel Plew.
At the same time, Butterfield canvassed the corps commanders and army headquarters in Washington for qualified recruits for the scouts. Major General John Sedgwick nominated a cavalryman from New York, D. G. Otto. He had done well as a scout for Brigadier General Pleasonton and had the value of having taught school in the South for a number of years. Two Ohioans, Sgt. Mordecai P. Hunnicutt, of the 73rd Ohio Infantry, who had been a detective, and Pvt. Henry Dodd, 1st Regiment, Ohio Light Artillery, who had been a scout, were recruited by Sharpe in March and April. Major General Heintzelman, who commanded the defenses of Washington, turned over his best scout, a German immigrant with the anglicized name of Ernest Yager [Ernst Jaeger]. Yager had been scouting since March of the previous year and was very familiar with the area west of Manassas.6
Three more New York cavalrymen, the brothers Edward A. (Augustus) Carney and Philip Carney, and a cousin, Anson B. Carney, were added. The latter was a 21-year-old, bold fighting man with a ruthless streak. Anson and Edward had served in Sharpe’s Company B in the old 20th NYSM back during their three months’ service in 1861, then reenlisted with the regiment in September when it was reorganized for three years’ service. In October they transferred to the 5th U.S. Cavalry, in which Phil Carney was already serving. On April 19, Edward and Anson Carney were detailed to work for Sharpe, who undoubtedly remembered their abilities from their association with the 20th NYSM—hometown men he knew and could rely on. There was something about Anson especially, with his dark complexion, black hair, and gray eyes, that marked him as one of the “Black Irish,” and a dangerous man. Perhaps that is what Sharpe wanted because that is what he would get.7 Phil Carney would be detailed to work for Sharpe in July, shortly after Gettysburg.
The canvas of the army for experienced scouts also brought in Martin E. Hogan of H Company, 1st Indiana Cavalry, in June. He was one of those rare Union cavalrymen, like Cline, who supplied his own horse and equipment. A young Irish immigrant, Hogan had joined in the first rush of patriotic recruiting in July 1861 and spent most of 1862 as a scout for Maj. Gen. Franz Siegel, and was on one occasion captured and luckily paroled and exchanged. Hogan was another unconventionally bold personality, the bane of the regular army mind. In December 1862 the provost marshal office in Washington ordered his arrest for passing himself off as a commissary officer in Baltimore. He wiggled out of that and landed in Sharpe’s lap. Hogan found a friend in Anson Carney, and the two of them would often pair up on scouting expeditions.8
Late in 1863 Sharpe would acquire the services of another talented scout, William J. Lee, a 26-year-old, black-haired, hazel-eyed cabinet maker from Orange County, Virginia. Sharpe would later attest that Lee “reckoned among the most effective and faithful men.” Before joining the BMI Lee had worked for Burnside as a scout and later for the provost marshal general of the army. In that capacity, as a native Virginian, he had operated undercover in the headquarters of the Confederate provost marshal general, Maj. Gen. John H. Winder, as well as posing as a sutler at the headquarters of Robert E. Lee himself. He was arrested and tried as a spy but acquitted in the spring of 1862.9
Milton Cline was the real treasure among this very talented group, and Sharpe would eventually make him his chief of scouts. His German-born parents had anglicized the name from Klein to Cline. They settled in upstate New York in the Lake Champlain region where he was born. He had already been toughened by the life of a sailor aboard the whaler S.S. South Carolina, during which Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton had acquired on his left arm a tattoo of a wild pirate woman and, on his right, a crucifix. After that he had moved to Indiana and settled down to the life of a farmer when the war called him.10
Like most of the rest of Company G, 3rd Indiana Cavalry, Cline had enlisted from Switzerland County, Indiana, on August 22, 1861. Uniquely among Union cavalrymen, the men of the 3rd Indiana, including Cline, owned their own horses. He would ride one to death for Hooker and see another killed in action at Gettysburg. This short, blond, gray-eyed man was 38, three years older than Sharpe himself, but he had the everyman quality that would allow him to blend in unobtrusively anywhere, so much so that this son of New York would be able repeatedly to pass himself off as a soldier of Dixie. As the old expression went, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, so utterly calm was he in the midst of the enemy pulling off one masterpiece impersonation after another. Calm stealth was not all of Cline’s talents. When called for, he was the bold fighting man who was always able to get the drop on an opponent. By all rights, he should be considered one of the patron saints of U.S. Army reconnaissance and special operations.11
Not far behind him in ability was the 32-year-old New Yorker, Judson Knight, a veteran of the Mexican War, though his only duty had been with the garrison of Ft. Columbia on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. When the Civil War started he enlisted in the 2nd New Jersey Infantry. Sandy-haired, with hazel eyes and a fair complexion badly marked from smallpox caught on Governor’s Island, Knight was a powerful man at 6 feet and a quarter inch and 200 pounds. From July to December, 1861, he had been detailed for “special service” as a scout for Brig. Gen. Phillip Kearny. For months he worked on filling in the details for the maps made for Maj. Gen. Irving McDowell, the commander of the army that would be beaten at Bull Run. He served ably under Kearny in the Peninsular Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run, where the gallant general was killed. Year’s end saw him in a prolonged illness at the end of which some incident in December resulted in his being reduced from sergeant to private. On December 31, 1862, he was given a medical discharge. Shortly thereafter he was working for Lafayette Baker’s Secret Service in Fairfax County, Virginia. Baker did a background check on him that reported he was of “excellent character” and was highly recommended.
His service with Baker would be brief, because as soon as he heard that Sharpe was recruiting for scouts, he applied. Sharpe would later write of him, “When he came to headquarters he brought high testimonials of his services with the late General Phil. Kearny. He was immediately engaged by me to serve with us.” He would come to enjoy, according to Sharpe, an “enviable reputation as a man to whom a bold enterprise could be entrusted without endangering the confidence of his superior officers.” Unlike most of the rest of the scouts, Knight was a civilian employee. Today, he would be called a contractor. Yet he would eventually succeed Cline as Chief of Scouts.12,13
The scouts were as diverse a group as ever, assembled by physical type, age, and occupation. Most were very young—in their early 20s; however, the two men who would become chiefs of scouts, Cline and Knight, were in their 30s, more mature and experienced, as was Hunnicutt. Their occupations ranged from clerk to boatman to plasterer. What unified them was an independence of character, a cool boldness, a taste for danger, and a good dash of the actor, for they spent much time passing themselves off as Confederates or Southern civilians, with remarkable success. Sharpe was to prove a shrewd judge of these qualities, and his careful selection of just the right men would be vital to the success of his mission. (See Appendix B for a list of members of the BMI.)
Chaplain L. P. Roe of the Harris Light (20th NY) Cavalry, from which some of the scouts came, described how Sharpe handled them. “Scouts taken from the Union army were generally reliable men, and they were tried before they were admitted into the secret service. If they proved good scouts they were promoted and paid from two dollars to five dollars per day, and sometimes $500 for an excursion.” The men Sharpe assembled for his scouts were a bold band. “These men differed in character, some being remarkable for locality and others for unlimited brass. Their plan was generally to cheat and deceive as long as they could, and when discovered they would endeavor to fight their way out of their difficulties.”14
More than a month and a half after accepting his position, Sharpe finally received his orders on March 30, appointing him as deputy provost marshal. Very much a constant in the army across the centuries is that one must wait for orders to catch up with them. With unintended prescience, the clerk who prepared the order followed Sharpe’s name with that of Capt. Ulric Dahlgren’s appointment as an aide-de-camp to Hooker. They would be linked not by an administrative accident but by great events in the not too distant future.15
It is interesting to note that with the exception of Babcock, the BMI and the provost marshal general’s organization was made up almost entirely of New York men to include Patrick, Sharpe, McEntee, Manning, Davenport, and the chiefs of scouts, Cline and Knight. Much of this was based on the web of prewar associations and the comfort level of dealing with others from the Empire State. Patrick, for instance, always preferred New York regiments for the provost guard when he could get them, which accounted for his affection for the 20th NYSM.
Remarkably, the BMI permanent staff was to remain modest in size. Sharpe would never have more than 70 men on his full-time payroll at any one time. The total number of men who served in the BMI was only slightly more than 200. The BMI staff even had its own mess, with three employees designated as “colored.” (See Appendix C: Strength of the BMI 1863–65.) Two of them appear in a photograph of the scouts at Brandy Station in 1864. The BMI had its own encampment as well within the area of the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.
Sharpe’s first priority was to make sure his staff would be paid. The commissioned officers were being paid by the army paymaster. Babcock was already paid by the War Department’s Secret Service Fund. For a while the same fund was used to pay everyone else in the BMI. Eventually a separate army payroll was set up by Patrick’s quartermaster that would pay all subsequent civilian and enlisted military members of the BMI through the normal paymaster.
With a few exceptions, such as Babcock’s princely $7.50 a day, the standard rate was $.50 to $2.00 a day, a rate that would hold through the Gettysburg Campaign. Thereafter, the most effective scouts could be paid as much as $4.00 a day. Many of the men hired were civilians who would be considered contractors today. The soldiers among the scouts apparently continued to receive their normal soldier’s pay in addition to the special pay. The specific rate for each man depended upon both experience and proven ability. The upper and lower rates worked out to monthly totals of $15.00 to $120.00 a month, a considerable improvement over the private’s $8.00 and later $13.00 a month. The rate of $4.00 a day was roughly equivalent to the pay of a first lieutenant ($115.50 a month) and was awarded to very few men. Most of the scouts were paid at $2.00 to $3.00 a day. Other support personnel such as teamsters and cooks were paid at the rate of $.50 to $1.00 a day.16
In a letter to the Inspector General a few months after the end of the war, Sharpe wrote:
Scouts in the army, employed by me, were paid according to the services they rendered. No contract was made with them, but their names were placed on a roll, with a remuneration attached, for which it was intended to recommend them at the end of each month; and this was known to themselves and to each other. The right was at all times claimed and used to drop names from the roll & to advance or lessen the compensation for general services, while for special and striking services, special remunerations were made, on recommendations, by order of the Commanding General.
No contract was ever made with a scout. A soldier employed as such [if dismissed] was ordered to H. Q. and a civilian could leave whenever dissatisfied. No agreement was ever made to furnish scouts with rations or commutation herefor, but rations were furnished scouts while actually with the army … Leaders of parties of scouts were always paid more than others.17
In addition, bonuses for particularly difficult missions were offered, as in the instance in May 1864 when Ulysses S. Grant offered Judson Knight $300 for a special mission. Sharpe ensured that new scouts, civilian and military, would not be paid until they had successfully completed a first mission. By May the BMI monthly salary payroll had reached $1,697.00, an indication of the relatively few scouts and agents Sharpe was using. When he made his first monthly report in March, he was sure to remind Hooker that, “the number of persons employed and the expenditures are very inconsiderable.”18 (See Appendix D: Expenditures of the BMI.)
Probably second only to creating the BMI was Hooker’s gift of an almost complete free hand to Sharpe. He did not hesitate to use the broadest initiative to organize and run the BMI and coordinate with other sources and organizations, even those outside the Army of the Potomac. He freely used Hooker’s authority to deal with the officials in Washington and with other army commands on his own initiative. His actions were invariably well judged and successful, and, amazingly, he seemed to have made few if any enemies in a very touchy age.19
Sharpe had four intelligence collection means under his direct control: scouts; agents; interrogation of prisoners, deserters, and refugees; and document exploitation. He quickly established a division of labor among himself and his two deputies. Babcock concentrated on interrogations and working out Lee’s order-of-battle. In fact, both McEntee and Manning became adept at this skill which proved a crucial capability when Sharpe had to send his deputies off on detached duty or special missions. McEntee’s other duties included organizing and directing scouting missions at the front. He did not accompany the scouts as it was not considered appropriate duty for an officer in either army. Both Babcock and he also became trusted report writers. Almost all of the BMI’s reports were written in the hands of Sharpe, Babcock, McEntee, and Manning. If there were any enlisted clerks, it is not apparent from the writing of reports, at least until the last year of the war, when a few unidentifiable hands become evident.
Sharpe himself supervised the collection of documents, which included primarily letters and Southern newspapers. The importance of newspapers as conveyers of important information for both armies should not be underestimated. Both armies eagerly sought each other’s publications. Then as now, much of the press assumed national security should take care of itself. One of Hooker’s first acts, probably on Sharpe’s advice, was to cut off the regular exchange of newspapers on the picket lines and during the meetings of flag-of-truce parties. Hooker rightly concluded that there was more useful military information in Northern than Southern newspapers. It was not a fair trade as had been assumed. Hooker was not interested in a fair trade anyway; he sought clear advantage. He concluded that his new intelligence organization would more than compensate for the cut-offof Southern newspapers. He also had another source for Southern newspapers; his scouts and agents frequently acquired copies.20
Sharpe also personally supervised the overall operations of his scouts and the running of agents in Confederate territory within the Army of the Potomac’s area of responsibility. That territory was likened to the “Debatable Land” of constant strife on the old borders of England and Scotland, in which bands of soldiers fought, plundered, and harried their enemies, a land under no one’s complete control. As one Southern writer noted, “Our ‘Debatable land’ was, in fact, all that fine and beautiful country between the Potomac and the [Rappahannock] river, over which the opposing armies of the North and South alternately advanced and retired.”21 Sharpe’s scouts were the chief means by which information obtained by agents was transmitted back to the BMI.
The Debatable Land. (After Karamales)
The scouts were the most active part of Sharpe’s collection effort. This account by a Southern veteran of the Confederate scout applied equally to his Northern counterpart:
The scout proper is “commanding in the field,” with no one near to give him orders. He goes and comes at will, having that about him which all pickets obey. He is “on detached service”; and having procured certain information, reports to the officer who has sent him, without intermediate ceremony. Operating within the enemy’s lines at all times, he depends for success and safety on the quickness of his eye and hand—and his reliance on these is great. He is silent in his movements, low-toned in his speech, abstemious in his habits, and as untiring on the track of the enemy as the Cuban blood-hound on the trail of the fugitive. He rarely sleeps in houses, preferring the woods; and always slumbers with “one eye open,” on the look out for the enemy.22
These daring men, both military and civilian, would penetrate into Confederate territory in a variety of disguises, depending on the mission, to include Confederate uniforms, civilian clothes, and even their own blue uniforms. Invariably Confederate uniforms proved the most useful, as a number of the scouts were able to penetrate the enemy army and linger within it long enough to bring back detailed reports. The danger involved in scouting, especially in Confederate uniform or civilian clothes, was very real. Scout James Hensal, a veteran of at least seven missions behind the lines, worked on the principle that “if I got through it would bee [sic] a merical [sic].” Another scout recounted that “the army scout, occupying as he does a position outside of the general military system, literally takes his life into his own hands [because] he may expect no quarter.”23
Fords Between the Northern Rappahannock & Rapidan Rivers in the Debatable Land.
An example of the daring-do of scouting was the case of Private D. G. Otto, Sharpe’s first casualty. On March 10 another scout reported his capture. Otto had come upon two of the enemy’s Black Horse Cavalry and captured them. He paroled them, but as he was mounting one of their superior horses, two others arrived and captured him. He was carried off across the Rappahannock to be questioned by Maj. Gen. J.E.B. (Jeb) Stuart and Lee themselves, where a tight lip apparently saved him. They wanted “to know if we were sending off troops from here,” Otto related, but then added that he “gave them no satisfaction.” Sent off to the Castle Thunder prisoner-of-war camp in Richmond, he was exchanged. The officer whose unit had captured him, despite having signed his parole, had recommended he not be released, but the Confederate general who administered the Richmond prisons ruled that no evidence could be found that he was a spy.24
However much the 20th NYSM came to revere Brigadier General Patrick, he was actively disliked by the scouts. Patrick’s strictness worked well with line troops but was counterproductive among the type of men Sharpe had selected for just those qualities that would drive a disciplinarian to distraction. Sharpe consciously picked men that were quick-witted, independent-minded loners and individualists who boldly acted on their own initiative. Attendant with these qualities came a certain amount of affection for strong drink and the talent to forage well on the enemy’s property, both pet peeves of Patrick.25
Despite the high quality and the often superb accomplishments of his scouts, Sharpe would come to feel that only in the last year of the war were they able to operate on “an equal footing” with their Confederate counterparts. In particular, he would identify the Black Horse Cavalry and the Prince William Cavalry (Companies H and A, 4th Virginia Cavalry) among other scouting commands as the most formidable scouts in the Army of Northern Virginia.26
Scouts were Sharpe’s direct links with his agents, the other primary HUMINT or human intelligence source in the “Debatable Land.” Agents included a surprising number of locally recruited loyal Virginians, and the scouts that were their contacts who conveyed the information they had acquired to the BMI. The locally recruited civilians were often transplanted Northerners, British immigrants, former noncommissioned officers of the old regular army, and a strong native Unionist element which had profoundly disagreed with Virginia’s secession. These agents were resident in the areas occupied by Lee’s army. Judson Knight offered a glimpse into the ability of the scouts to operate successfully in hostile territory:
First, it will be understood that in no part of Virginia where the scouts of the Army of the Potomac principally were employed could you travel many miles without finding Union men and women. Sometimes they were natives of the State; not infrequently they were born in some of the Northern States, while quite a number of foreign birth, principally Englishmen, were found who rendered faithful and efficient service. Where we found one of these Union people, if there was another within 30 miles, he or she, as the case might be, were sure to know them; and it made no differences as regarded their social positions, they fully trusted each other. Such being the case, it will readily be seen that if the scouts could reach a Union family living within the enemy’s lines, their danger of captivity or death was reduced to a minimum.27
In later years Sharpe would comment that the types of men and women who served as agents came from a variety of backgrounds. “Many of them had been non-commissioned officers of the Army before the war, and it was curious that while hundreds of Army officers had turned traitors, not a single non-commissioned officer or private could be found who would desert the old flag.”28
It was through this Unionist network that Sharpe recruited his most important agents, as one contact led to another and then an entire network. The beginnings were already at hand when Sharpe took over. They came as undeserved gifts to Burnside as he was planning his attack at Fredericksburg. Both were Virginians—Ebenezer McGee was working for the army on the railroad, and Jackson Harding came from the area just west of Fredericksburg. Harding lived on the north side of the Rappahannock between two of the up-river fords. McGee lived about 5 miles south of the Rapidan in the area known as the Wilderness and had found work with the army to avoid Confederate military service but would return home surreptitiously to visit his family. In early December 1862 he returned from a visit with information on the Confederate forces guarding U.S. Ford obtained by a Unionist, Isaac Silver. McGee returned through the pickets and passed on to army headquarters where he offered to show scouts back over the river and introduce them to Silver as well as other Unionists willing to help the army. “When he offered to go back and take some of the Headquarters scouts with him and teach them the route, and introduce them to his own people and Mr. Sylvia [sic—Silver], it is needless to say his offer was joyfully accepted, and a party was sent out with him.”29
The route he showed them was arduous, as Knight’s description graphically shows, but would prove a perfect conduit into the “Debatable Land” for the next two years.
The place where he [McGee] had crossed the river was below the United States Dam and Ford. The two families [McGee and Sylvia—sic Silver] lived about four or five miles south of the Rapidan, in that portion of the State known as the Wilderness. Coming down to the edge of the river from the south was ravine, which commenced about half a mile from the river, and gradually grew steeper and narrower as it approached the river, until at the river’s edge the sides of the ravine were very precipitous and at least 100 feet high. At some time in the past, not many years previous to the war, a wind-storm had thrown nearly all the trees down, and they now lay across the ravine, some broken in two, so that one had to crawl under them; in a few places you stand upright. The place was considered utterly impassable, and no attempt was made to have any pickets in the ravine, they always being stationed on the top of each side. The boys went through and came out a half mile inside the lines of the enemy.
A small run emptying into the river on the north side through a thick fringe of bushes made a capital hiding-place for a boat, which was filled with stones and then sunk until again wanted. A small party of scouts were always left hid in the woods to take care of the horses and bring the men back across the river when they returned. This crossing was used for two years.30
Sharpe found McGee and quickly employed him to reactivate this route and put it into regular and productive use, especially to establish contact with Isaac Silver. This 52-year-old farmer was a native of New Jersey, and his wife was a Scottish immigrant, 27 years younger than he. His farm, 3 miles east of the crossroads of Chancellorsville and 7 miles west of Fredericksburg, was ideally located on the left wing of Lee’s army. Sharpe would give him the cover name “The Old Man” in all his correspondence. McGee would be his primary contact. Silver had the added utility of having business interests in Orange County which would justify frequent travel there, where Lee would keep his headquarters for a year covering 1863–64. Silver would remain an important asset for the rest of the war. His first report was brought in on March 13 and immediately established his value.31
Route of BMI Scouts into the Debatable Land Along the Rappahannock River, 1863–64. (After Jespersen)
At this time Sharpe was unable to enlist agents in Richmond itself and had to depend on a careful analysis of Southern newspapers, obtained through the lines, for reporting from the Confederate capital. He also found it necessary before the upcoming campaign to request tens of thousands of dollars in Confederate currency to disperse to both scouts and agents to support operations.
Enemy personnel became another vital source of information. Sharpe established a systematic interrogation protocol to be used with refugees, escaped slaves, and especially from enemy deserters and prisoners. Each man from the latter groups was asked at a minimum to identify his regiment, brigade, division, and corps; when and where he entered the lines; location of his corps and when it arrived on the front; how he was captured or why he deserted; and other questions depending upon the kind of information needed.32
The BMI quickly devised protocols for determining the trustworthiness of informants using the following assessments: “The truth of the general story told by the prisoners and deserters; the circumstances of their capture; the location in which their commands were raised; the corroborative statement of other prisoners from the same commands … [and] their conduct and declarations at the time of coming in or capture compared with their present state of mind.”33
Sharpe also actively encouraged desertion as a prime source of intelligence by the promise of integration into the civilian life of the North in exchange for full and accurate cooperation. The act of desertion had already severed basic loyalties, making cooperation far easier than for a prisoner taken in battle. Sharpe explained to Maj. Gen. John H. Martindale, the commander of the military garrison of Washington, that this method was very efficient in obtaining the truth from deserters, “the state of our information [being] such as to form a standard of credibility by which these men were gauged, while each was adding to the general sum.”34
Sharpe’s innovation led to a wider Union program to encourage desertion with the rewards of travel, settlement, and employment in the North. It was eventually to lead to the War Department policy of February 18, 1864:
Whenever refugees from within the rebel lines, or deserters from the rebel armies present themselves at U.S. camps or military posts they will be immediately examined by the provost-marshal with a view to determine their character and their motive in giving themselves up. If it appears that they are honest in their intention of forever deserting the rebel cause, care will be taken to explain to them that they will not be forced to serve in the U.S. Army against the rebels, nor be kept in confinement. The President’s proclamation of December 8, 1863, will be read to them, and if they so desire the oath therein prescribed will be administered to them. They will then be questioned as to whether they desire employment from the United States; and if so, such arrangements as may be expedient will be made by the several army commanders of employing them on Government works within their commands. Those who come to the Army of the Potomac will be forwarded to the Military Governor of the District of Columbia, at Washington, with reports in their cases, that employment may be given them if desired; or, if not, they may be sent as far north as Philadelphia.35
By April of the following year, Sharpe’s interrogation program was so effective, among both prisoners and deserters, that Lee issued a concerned circular reminding his troops that should they be taken prisoner, they should not divulge useful information to the enemy:
I hope that few of the soldiers of this army will find it necessary at any time in the coming campaign to surrender themselves prisoners of war. We cannot spare brave men to fill Federal prisons. Should, however, any be so unfortunate as to fall through unavoidable necessity into the hands of the enemy, it is important they should preserve entire silence with regard to everything connected with the army, the positions, movements, organizations, or probable strength of any portion of it. I wish the commanding officers of regiments and companies to instruct their men, should they be captured, under any circumstances not to disclose the brigade, division, or corps to which they belong, but to give simply, their names, company, and regiment, and not to speak of military matters even among their associates in misfortune. Proper prudence on the part of all will be of great assistance in preserving that secrecy so essential to success.36
Another source of information that alarmed Lee was the steady flow of contrabands or escaped slaves that filtered through the lines. Frederick Douglass, the great champion of black emancipation, had identified in 1862 the contribution black Americans were already making to their country: “The true history of this war will show that the loyal army found no friends at the South so faithful, active, and daring in their efforts to sustain the government as the Negroes. Negroes have repeatedly threaded their way through the lines of the rebels exposing themselves to bullets to convey important information to the loyal army of the Potomac.”37
Lee was just as aware of the problem and wrote in late May, 1863, “The chief source of information to the enemy is through our Negroes.” Colonel Sharpe would have certainly agreed. Contrabands were uniquely placed to provide vital information to the Union. The Army of Northern Virginia could not have peeled a potato without its black slave contingent, which formed a vital part of its combat service support. A British Army visitor in 1863 would observe that each Confederate regiment was trailed by 20–30 black body servants.
Lee went on to say, “They are easily deceived by proper caution.”38 Here Sharpe would have vehemently disagreed with Lee. Contrabands were not only one of his most important sources of information but of reliable information. Blacks were a ubiquitous fact of life in Lee’s army and an observant one. Confederate officers tended to discuss the most vital details of operations around their black body servants as if they were not there, so much were they a fixture of their lives. Not even a month after Lee made his statement, a contraband would provide Colonel Sharpe with the vital information that would put the Army of the Potomac in motion to a place called Gettysburg.
In addition to the four collection methods directly under his control (interrogation, agents, scouting, and document exploitation), Sharpe eagerly integrated results of other means of collection within the Army of the Potomac to include reports from cavalry reconnaissance, Balloon Corps aerial observation, Signal Corps observation stations and flag-signal interception. Sharpe was fast off the mark. For example, within two weeks he was already receiving the reports of the Balloon Corps.39 The mass of raw intelligence had reached such a volume that a commander could no longer successfully deal with it personally as had George Washington and his successors. Hooker’s great contribution was to realize that he needed a professional staff to integrate the growing number of collection means, to diligently work through this mass of detail, and finally to analyze what it all meant. The mix of correct principles of source integration and analysis, organization, and talented personnel created what we now call all-source intelligence. What Sharpe created fits exactly the U.S. Army’s current definition of all-source intelligence: “the intelligence products, organizations, and activities that incorporates all sources of information, in the production of intelligence.” It also required a commander who believed in intelligence and would do everything in his power to make it work. Hooker had made intelligence history. His all-source intelligence operation was decades ahead of its time.40
The Signal Corps’ contribution to this newly integrated whole is a good example of the possibilities for intelligence gathering by integrating the rich harvest of signal intercepts. Sharpe also made good use of the U.S. Military Telegraph (USMT) to speed the dissemination of intelligence within the various commands of the Army of the Potomac and army as a whole. Military telegraphs became collection sources as both sides tapped into each other’s lines. Both sides responded with ciphers. Ultimately, the Union won the cipher war by breaking Confederate systems and maintaining the security of their own. “By 1864 the task of enciphering and deciphering dispatches became so crucial that Ulysses S. Grant never traveled without his cipher clerk.”41
Early in April a captured Confederate signal officer revealed that the Union’s signal code, its flag alphabet, had been broken. The Rebels were reading the army’s signals. The army’s chief of signals, Colonel Albert Myers, promptly issued the army’s first signal cipher that the Confederates were never to break. However, the opportunity to deceive the enemy through the transmission of false information would be lost with the new cipher. It was Sharpe, now coordinating all sources of information, who informed the chief of staff of this problem. Butterfield came up with the solution so that the army could have its cake and eat it too. He suggested that messages be sent in the clear but without the formality of an official message, to simulate the common unofficial chatter among signalmen. The watching Confederates then would not suspect the clear messages among the new unreadable ciphered messages. Lee took the bait almost immediately. Union signalmen were able to read the deception message being retransmitted by Confederate signalmen under Lee’s signature.42
If there was an area where integration of these collection means did not function as well as it could it was with cavalry reconnaissance. The cavalry looked upon its traditional intelligence collection as a jealous prerogative and all too often saw the BMI not as a partner but as a competitor.
Up to this point, Lee’s intelligence operation had been clearly superior in the efficiency of its elements and the talents of its personnel. During the Mexican War he had gained, through personnel experience, a keen appreciation for the intelligence value of reconnaissance. However effective, Lee’s effort was that of the old style, in which the commanding general himself was the coordinator and ultimate analyst of intelligence, although he detailed some duties to key staff officers. Lee’s staff was so small that these officers usually were overworked so that their contribution to intelligence operations can only have been peripheral. Lee himself, it seems, personally conducted many interrogations, as shown in the case of the lucky Private Otto. He took a great interest in Stuart’s scouts who reported often directly to him. Most of their reporting correspondence is in fact addressed to him.
A factor that may have prevented Lee from developing a dedicated all-source organization was his strong desire to limit the size of his staff as an example to the rest of the army. Instead, his already existing staff appears to have handled much of what the BMI staff was doing but of necessity only on a part-time and far less detailed basis. Aides-de-camp Majors Charles Marshall and Charles S. Venable appear to have handled intelligence matters, the latter particularly engaged in handling “correspondence with scouts and agents behind enemy lines.” Then as now, staffs have a way of growing if not ruthlessly pruned back, but Lee appears to have actually harmed the ability of his army to function in a number of ways—not only intelligence, but in logistics and administration—by his extreme reluctance to increase his staff. He would frequently burden himself with minutia handled by staff officers in the Union armies.43
Although Lee had no dedicated all-source staff like the BMI, what he did have was the brilliant reconnaissance efforts of Jeb Stuart’s Cavalry Division, to whom he assigned the collection of tactical intelligence. In the words of one of the most daring scouts, Thomas Nelson Conrad, “Stuart’s scouts performed duties of three kinds: observing the Federal Army in camp, so as to be able to anticipate a movement; hanging upon the flank of the army when in motion, reporting line of march and numbers of corps, et., and crossing the lines into Washington and beyond, bearing dispatches, interviewing certain parties and securing information.”44
The Confederate scout had an unnerving ability to infiltrate Union camps even to general headquarters, as Conrad describes:
[The scout] was generally in position to observe what was going on at all hours of the day and night, and I have known some of our scouts to hang for several days around the headquarters of a Federal general to ascertain their next movement on that military chess board… No detective ever shadowed a supposed criminal with greater vigilance than scouts did the Federal officers, and in but few instances were they deceived or misled.45
These men of keen observation and cool daring who served as scouts and agents included, in addition to Conrad, the famous John Singleton Mosby and his partisan rangers, and Lieutenants Channing Smith and Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow. Mosby was the ultimate scout who traced the enemy lines and guided Stuart’s cavalry in its famous ride around McClellan’s army in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. He was later to raise the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion, which would become the most famous partisan ranger organization of the Civil War and a bleeding wound in the side of Union logistics in Northern Virginia. Conrad, a lay preacher in civilian life, was so familiar with Washington that he was able to set up a spy ring that included War Department clerks, one of whom provided Lee with the Union order-of-battle, key to victory in the Peninsula.46 “All through the Peninsula campaign our officers knew just what forces McClellan had, down to the exact number of pieces of artillery, and the pirated tabular statement was a factor at last in the bloody contests, which ended with Gaine’s Mill and Malvern Hill.”47
The daring Lieutenant Benjamin Stringfellow slipped into Washington in early 1863 as a result of Lee’s instructions to Stuart to strengthen his sources of information in anticipation of another invasion of the North. Stringfellow was also able to recruit a ring within the clerks of the War Department, an organization badly in need of operations security (OPSEC). These agents reportedly were in close proximity to the chief of staff of the U.S. Army himself, Major-General Halleck. Conrad also had his sources in the War Department, as well as in Baker’s Secret Service. It is no wonder that, to Lee, Stuart was to embody the intelligence operation of the Army of Northern Virginia. Stuart’s absence, therefore, on the first two days at Gettysburg was to prove devastating.
Lee also had as a source a spy network, called the Secret Line. It was controlled by the Confederate Signal and Secret Service Bureau in Richmond. In this office, the Confederacy had a national-level intelligence operation, something the Union would never have. There were enough complaints about the Secret Line, however, that by late 1862 Conrad was given the mission of setting up another, independent operation which would report to Lee. The commander of the Army of Northern Virginia was often involved directly with such covert operations and wanted no amateurs in these matters. “[R] eports from citizens however intelligent and honest cannot be relied on” because of the tendency to inflate enemy strength and misinterpret facts. He wanted men experienced in scouting and espionage, “men accustomed to see things as they are, & not liable to excitement or exaggeration.”48
It being a civil war, there was not unanimity of loyalty on either side. Both sides actively recruited willing agents in each other’s territory. There was one major difference. Southerners working for the North were Unionists, still loyal to the old flag. They were—with a few exceptions during the siege of Petersburg, when Elizabeth Van Lew recruited a few Confederate War Department clerks—private citizens. The slave population was uniformly helpful in the South as the free black population was loyal in the North. Northerners working for the Confederacy were Southern sympathizers, vehemently anti-black and anti-abolition, or antiwar such as the Copperheads. They also included a number of government officials with access to important official information on the conduct of the war. This explains the often high degree of accuracy of the intelligence Lee was receiving at the strategic and operational levels of war.
At Lee’s headquarters he was assisted in intelligence collection by his provost guard which, in addition to its military police duties and guarding his camp, processed prisoners and deserters and maintained contact with prisoner facilities in Richmond. It would also conduct interrogations and prepare reports. Although Lee’s scouts and spy network were superb, all-source analysis of the painstaking type of order-of-battle preparation that Sharpe would initiate does not seem to have been done.
The Confederate Signal Corps was another intelligence source for Lee. Southern officers, such as Edward Porter Alexander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet chief of artillery, had been participants in field tests before the war and helped set up the Confederate Signal Corps in the fall and winter of 1861–62 with far more alacrity and aggressiveness than their Union counterparts. A general order in May 1862 formally established the corps. Confederate signal parties had shown themselves to be fearless and aggressive. They demonstrated considerable initiative and had done well at Second Manassas (Bull Run) and in the Antietam Campaign.
Like their Union counterparts, signalmen in gray did not await the assignment of duties, they sought out opportunities for service. Mounted like cavalry, they headed for the best elevations to support communications and afford observation. Field glasses and telescopes (usually 30-power) extended their range. Lightly armed, they tended to depend on guard details to protect their stations, or simply took their chances and risked capture … If their signal capability (a flag by day, torches by night) was not needed, they were available as couriers or messengers.49
By early 1863 the Confederates were losing their edge as the Union devoted more resources to systematize and professionalize the service. Lee’s subordinate corps and many division commanders had signal officers attached to their headquarters, but Lee himself had no chief signal officer on his staff to control and organize signal assets to support his decision-making. It was not Confederate army policy to deny Lee such an asset, for the Army of Tennessee had a signal officer on its staff. It was an example of young, innovative officers introducing new means of war that an older Lee, a product of a different age, could not fully exploit. Nevertheless, as traditional as Lee’s concepts were, they were employed by men of great talent not working at cross-purposes.50
Even before Sharpe took the job, Hooker had made it clear to Patrick that he considered intelligence a priority, and the provost started to take more interest in the opportunities that naturally came his way. Within less than a week of Hooker’s assumption of command, Babcock suddenly found himself with work to do as an interrogator; prisoners from eight different Confederate regiments and batteries began to line up in front of his tent. A few days later, Patrick himself made a discovery on a Confederate pass issued to local Southern women whom he gallantly let through the lines. It carried the names of Lee, Longstreet, and McLaws, the signatures of the chain of command—army, corps, and division commanders. The whereabouts of Longstreet had been in doubt, and Patrick would write in his diary on February 8, “So Longstreet is here.”51
In the meantime, Hooker gave Sharpe a coordination assignment to the headquarters of Maj. Gen. John A. Dix at Fort Monroe, while he was still considering the job offer. Sharpe was actively thinking beyond the acceptance of the mission on this trip. While at Fort Monroe, he talked over an idea with a friend and fellow-lawyer from Kingston, Col. Daniel T. Van Buren. Sharpe proposed sending over scouts in the guise of deserters engaged in smuggling to the South.
It was Sharpe’s acceptance of the position that provided the critical mass to the uncoordinated attempts by Babcock and Patrick to give Hooker the intelligence he wanted. Patrick was far too busy with his provost marshal duties to devote the time that it required. Babcock was a civilian and too young to be taken seriously throughout the army. Sharpe brought authority and a powerful directing energy to the position that he had now come to see as rich in opportunity. It is no wonder that he would write his uncle that he was “one of the hardest working men in the army.” Sharpe was a firm leader, but he had the great talent of identifying other talented men and letting them do their job with minimum guidance. As highly intelligent as he was, he never feared the intelligence of others as a threat but only as a resource to be given full rein. In Babcock he found the ideal subordinate, and they developed a warm professional and personal relationship that would be remembered until their deaths at the dawn of the next century. Sharpe made full use of the younger man’s experience in Confederate order-of-battle and interrogation.
Sharpe would join Babcock in interrogation; there were enough subjects to go around at times, and he found that a lawyer’s training in cross-examination made him an exceptional interrogator himself. But he left Babcock in overall charge of the order-of-battle and interrogation effort. Sharpe did not simply manage the work of subordinates; his staff was small, and he could not afford merely to guide and receive their work. He was, in effect, the BMI’s senior analyst as well. He drew all the evidence presented by his staff and synthesized it to answer the great question of intelligence that every commander needs answered: “What does this mean?”
Sharpe was so fast off the block in putting the BMI together that he must have been the delighted recipient of the accumulated experience and ideas Babcock had been desperately trying to implement, without which, it is safe to say, Sharpe would never have succeeded; it would have taken much longer to produce the superlative intelligence operation that he did. And Sharpe would have been the first to say so. Along with Babcock’s positive experience under Pinkerton, there was the equally useful negative experience under Burnside. Like the Duke of Wellington, who spoke of the disastrous British campaign in Holland in 1794–95, he could have said, “I learnt what one ought not to do, and that is always something.”52
But it was just not Babcock that provided the vital support to Sharpe’s eventual success. It was the coming together in time and harmony of a number of men, in the rare synergy of the creative moment upon which history pivots. Hooker, the transformational man, recognized that the time for change had come. Babcock provided the know-how and hard skills as a foundation for the structure. Patrick was the gruff old mother hen and backstop for the operation, ready to step in and shield it through its growing pains. And Sharpe was his renaissance man, able to combine all the techniques of this new art into something different and fitting for the organizational wars of the burgeoning industrial age. He was the keystone without which Hooker’s support and Babcock’s experience would not have held together any coherent or effective effort.
But we should not forget another unsung agent of Sharpe’s success, the much-abused master of coordination, Hooker’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield. No matter where the reports originated—whether from the uncooperative cavalry jealously guarding their ancient role, the eager to cooperate balloonists, or the team players in the Signal Corps, Butterfield made sure they circulated among all the players.
Examination of the BMI’s correspondence gives an insight into how Sharpe ran his department. First, Sharpe clearly was not a stickler for form or elegance of correspondence. The reports he wrote himself and those written by subordinates, either dictated by him or written on their own, show a wide variation in form—headings, abbreviations, salutations, punctuation, capitalization, and signature blocks. Sometimes they used a provost marshal general letterhead paper, and as often they did not. It would have driven a Colonel Blimp crazy, but Sharpe obviously did not care as long as the information was well written in a clear and logical form, and quickly forwarded up the chain of command. Second, Sharpe was not afraid to trust his subordinates, delegate authority, and encourage initiative. He allowed both Babcock and McEntee, and Manning on occasion, to sign his name when necessary—no more sure sign of a secure personality and an enormous statement of trust in a military context.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the BMI under Sharpe was its vigorous ability to learn and to learn as a team. James Morice, in his highly insightful article, concludes that the men of the BMI “had a sense of ‘shared vision’ built around ‘a set of principles and guiding practices’ that enabled them to demonstrate remarkable individual initiative; and the relatively relaxed and non-hierarchical environment Sharpe fostered allowed for a productive if unself-conscious form of ‘team learning’.” Sharpe was also lucky in not having a traditional model to follow. He was free to adapt his organization to the realities of the war as he saw it. He was fortunate to be able to attract unconventional subordinates who could not only function in an environment of ambiguity but function brilliantly and with intelligent initiative. He was triply lucky in that Hooker allowed him the widest latitude in doing his job.53
Sharpe’s department was a very hard-working one. In World War II General MacArthur was told by a visiting dignitary that he was working his staff to death. He responded, “Well, could they die a nobler death?”54 Whereas most of the rest of the army experienced war as long periods of boredom punctuated by a few savage battles leavened with picket duty, Sharpe’s men were almost continuously busy, even when the armies went into winter quarters. BMI reports show that there were scouts out on almost a continuous basis, though not all of them all the time. Nevertheless, their exposure to the risk of capture, wounds or death was much greater. On many occasions scouts engaged in shoot-outs with enemy scouts and suffered wounds and captures in return. Cline and Anson Carney were particularly noted for their willingness to get the drop on enemy scouts or fight it out when necessary. Sharpe’s scouts brought in not only information but prisoners and their horses and equipment as well. They were a bold and intelligent bunch. The less glamorous work in the BMI headquarters went on day-in and day-out, and dates on the reports show that they worked early and late. Boredom was rarely a problem. Although Sharpe wrote many of his reports himself, he found the need of assistance, other than Babcock and McEntee, in the actual preparation of the summary reports. A number of different hands are evident in the writing of these reports, each of which showed an idiosyncrasy in report format that Sharpe did not mind. The most prolific assistant was Manning, whose neat but leftward leaning letters must have been as irritating then as now, but whose analytical writing style was clear and concise. Another insight into Sharpe’s leadership of his department is found in the very rare use of the first person singular. He consistently wrote “we” and “our” when referring to the efforts of his department. Wherever possible he gave full credit to his subordinates and never seemed to blow his own horn, at least not in his official correspondence. While being a hard opponent of secession, he never used vituperative terms to describe the enemy, limiting his words to “Confederates,” “rebels,” or simply, “the enemy.” He never referred to Robert E. Lee without placing the honorific “General” before his name.
The analytical arm of the BMI was as busy keeping track and making sense of what the scouts discovered as interpreting the other types of information that Sharpe funneled into their arms. Sharpe ensured that a summary report of daily findings was provided to the army commander. Included in such reports were deeper analyses of issues of long-term interest, such as the state of morale, subsistence, and reinforcement in the Army of Northern Virginia. As the war dragged on, Sharpe developed a talent for what is today called Pol-Mil (Political-Military Intelligence) as well as strategic intelligence. Some of these reports are models of rigorous intellectual effort that would stand up in any age. They certainly do not betray the lowest common denominator of analysis found today in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s committee-produced National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs).55 None of the reports that Sharpe would write or those written by his subordinates were anything but frank in their assessments.