Stephen E. Towne. Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War

Stephen E. Towne’s new book, Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War: Exposing Confederate Conspiracies in America’s Heartland, argues that Union military authorities in several midwestern states during the Civil War devoted extensive time and resources to infiltrating and suppressing antiwar groups that were working actively to undermine the northern war effort. Towne, an archivist and historian, has done extensive research in the National Archives, as well as in local archives, in order to shine a welcome light on a previously little-known, still imperfectly understood set of events. The book is dense with detail and evidence but generally accessibly written. The endnotes are a veritable treasure trove of citations and thoughtful reflection on the often fascinating and previously obscure sources. Towne provides considerable evidence that Union military commanders in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and neighboring states, with the assistance of Republican state officials, but minimal coordination or oversight from the overburdened federal authorities in Washington, conducted extensive surveillance operations on American citizens suspected of disloyalty. Missouri, where actual Confederate regular and guerrilla forces periodically marauded, had particularly dire security problems, as Towne also details. Military investigations in these states allegedly discovered extensive networks of opponents of the war, often connected to the Democratic Party, who endeavored to help citizens avoid the draft, encourage and abet desertion, disrupt elections, and even potentially free Confederate prisoners of war en masse. Government-paid detectives, like the notorious Lafayette C. Baker, played significant, though little publicized, roles in these intelligence-gathering activities.

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