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The Union and Confederacy were literally divided by ideology alone. The north and south employed SIGINT gathering techniques and used it to their advantage. Both sides bugged/monitored telegraph lines to obtain information, and to employ counter intelligence operations. Part of the Unions counter-intelligence operation focused on the southern ideology of how African Americans were viewed. The Union commanders quickly learned how to utilize the ignorant ideology of the confederate army to its advantage, keying in on the notion that slaves, coachmen, laundresses, servants, and blacks, in general, were uneducated and did not possess any literary skills. Confederate generals and officers would routinely disregard blacks among their presence, which in turn provided a perfect atmosphere for espionage. It has been quoted that General Robert E. Lee himself concluded, “the chief source of information to the enemy (Union forces) is through our negroes.” (Rose, Black Dispatches, …show more content…
Upon Mr. John Van Lew’s death, Mary Elizabeth Bowser and other slaves were freed; by the wife and Daughter of Mr. Van Lew. Shortly after gaining her freedom, Elizabeth Van Lew sent Mary Elizabeth Bowser to be educated in Philadelphia so that she may take part in a larger covert spy operation against the confederates. Upon her completion of education, Mrs. Bowser obtained part time work to serving the Davis family, the family of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Once gaining full time employment at the Confederate White House in Richmond, Mary Elizabeth Bowser using the name of “Ellen Bond” (Sizer, 2013) While working she posed as slow thinking and illiterate but she “had a photographic mind. Everything she saw on the rebel president’s desk, she could repeat word for word. Unlike most colored, she could read and write.” (Henry Louis Gates, 2004) The intelligence that Bowser obtained was delivered to “Thomas McNiven,” (Varon, 2003) a Federal spy case agent who made bakery deliveries to the Confederate White