Gen. Turner Ashby: Extraordinary Horseman b

 Young, attractive Belle Boyd was a Confederate spy. Belle was born in Martinsburg, Virginia (Martinsburg is now part of West Virginia) and was only seventeen when the Civil War started. She had a knack for listening in on the conversations of Union officers who patronized her father's Front Royal hotel. Her familiarity with the countryside of the Shenandoah Valley provided the Confederates with valuable information in the spring of 1862.

Young Belle was an enthusiastic Confederate. The year before her spying activity began, Belle shot to death an intoxicated Yankee soldier who was attempting to raise the Stars and Stripes over her Martinsburg home. She was arrested and put on trial for murder. Belle's defense was justifiable homicide and she was acquitted, free to go on her way.

Belle Boyd provided General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson and General Ashby Turner with important information during Stonewall's Shenandoah Valley Campaign, that helped with the capture of Front Royal, Virginia on May 23, 1862. Belle warned the Confederates they should move fast so they could cross bridges before Yankee soldiers destroyed them.

In appreciation for her information and spy service regarding Union troop movement during the Valley Campaign, Stonewall Jackson gave Belle Boyd the rank of captain and made her an honorary member of his staff as an aide-de-camp. Jackson wrote to the young https://shenandoahvalley.org/

 (the "La Belle Rebelle" as a French war correspondent called her); "I thank you, for myself and for the army, for the immense service that you have rendered your country today." Boyd was a brave young lady, she served Colonel John S. Mosby and his guerrillas as a scout and courier. Once while on a mission, Yankees shot bullet holes through her skirt.

Belle's lover gave her away as a spy. On July 29, 1862 she was arrested on order of United States Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. She spent a month in Old Capital Prison in Washington before being released in a prisoner exchange.

Belle was arrested for a third time in June, 1863 and remained in jail until being released the following December. She had contracted typhoid, so she sailed to Europe to improve her health and also to deliver some letters for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Belle then returned from Europe on a blockade runner, but this ship was captured by a Union warship.

With her capture, things may have been looking grim for the young, attractive Confederate spy La Belle Rebelle. Maybe she would be imprisoned, or even executed, but her luck had not run out. Union Captain Samuel Hardinge was put in command of Belle's blockade runner, his duty being to take the ship to the North.