|Espionage during the Civil War|
In the fall of 1861, Union officials began grappling with the problem—one that would persist throughout the war—of what to do with "fashionable women spies." This Confederate cartoon from the October 12, 1861 edition of Harper's Weekly offers some suggestions.
Some male spies smuggled messages or quinine in an acorn-shaped brass contraption and hid it in the place least likely to be searched: their rectums.
Confederate spy Rose Greenhow hid dispatches inside a small black silk purse, which she then buried inside the elaborate hairdo of a teenaged courier. Below: a piece of Rose's silk purse and a fragment of an encrypted message.