A socialite in Washington, D.C., during the period before the war, she moved in important political circles and cultivated friendships with presidents, generals, senators, and high-ranking military officers including John C. Calhoun and James Buchanan.

In early 1861, she was given control of a pro-Southern spy network in Washington, D.C., by her handler, Thomas Jordan, then a captain in the Confederate Army.

She was credited by Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, with ensuring the South's victory at the First Battle of Bull Run in late July 1861.

As punishment, Greenhow was subject to house arrest; found to have continued her activities, in 1862 after an espionage hearing, she, with her daughter "Little Rose", was jailed for nearly five months in Washington, D.C., and deported to the Confederacy.

When the other boat was driven to the ground, her lifeboat flipped, because she was weighed down by $2,000 worth of gold sewn into her underclothes and hung around her neck and she drowned.

She was born in 1813 as Maria Rosetta O'Neale on a small plantation in Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington, D.C.[1][3] (Note: The biographical note on Greenhow at the National Archives and Records Administration, which holds a collection of her papers, says that O'Neal was born in 1817 in Port Tobacco, Maryland, but it is unclear what the documentation is for this.

[9] They were the parents of two children, son William (died 1874) and daughter Lee, who later took the name Mary and was the wife of Louis Eugene Marié.

[12] Robert's work with the State Department prompted the family to move with him to Mexico City in 1850 and then to San Francisco, California.

[4] A short time later, their oldest child Florence married Seymour Treadwell Moore, a West Point graduate, career army officer, and Mexican War veteran.

[16] Assisting in her conspiracy were pro-Confederate members of Congress, Union officers, courier Betty Duvall, and her dentist, Aaron Van Camp, as well as his son who was also a Confederate soldier, Eugene B.

(He was breveted a brigadier general in May 1865 for his services and achieved a rank of lieutenant colonel after the war in his army career.)

[citation needed] Allan Pinkerton was made head of the recently formed Secret Service and one of his first orders was to watch Greenhow, because of her wide circle of contacts on both sides of the sectional split.

While searching her house, Pinkerton and his men found extensive intelligence materials left from evidence she tried to burn, including scraps of coded messages, copies of what amounted to eight reports to Jordan over a month's time, and maps of Washington fortifications and notes on military movements.

She considered him her prize source, and claimed he gave her data on the "number of heavy guns and other artillery in the Washington defenses," but he likely knew far more from his work on the Military Affairs Committee.

So many political prisoners were detained that a two-man commission was set up to review their cases at what were called espionage hearings.

After they were escorted to Fortress Monroe at Hampton Roads, she and her daughter went on to Richmond, Virginia, where Greenhow was hailed by Southerners as a heroine.

Greenhow ran the blockade and, from 1863 to 1864, traveled through France and Britain on a diplomatic mission building support for the Confederacy with the aristocrats.

"[1] Two months after arriving in London, Greenhow wrote her memoir, titled My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington.

On October 1, 1864, the Condor ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina, while being pursued by the Union gunboat USS Niphon.

When Greenhow's body was recovered from the water near Wilmington, searchers found a small notebook[31] and a copy of her book Imprisonment hidden on her.

She was honored with a military funeral at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Wilmington, North Carolina,[4] and the Ladies Memorial Association, in 1888, marked her grave in Oakdale Cemetery with a cross that read "Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow.