Belle Boyd In Camp And Prison

“Whatever I heard I regularly and carefully committed to paper, and whenever an opportunity offered I sent my secret despatch by a trusty messenger to General J. E. B. Stuart, or some brave officer in command of the Confederate troops.”

With her residence behind the lines of the Union army Belle Boyd became acquainted with many of their officers which “enabled [her] to gain much important information as to the position and designs of the enemy.”

From eavesdropping to acting as a courier between Generals Beauregard, Jackson and others, Boyd quickly became the eyes and ears of the Confederacy behind enemy lines.

She became one of the most important Confederate spies of the civil war, ably assisting Stonewall Jackson in his offensive against Front Royal in 1862.

This is her fascinating account, written in her own words, of that period where she sacrificed everything, even going to prison a number of times, to aid the cause of the South.

Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison is a fascinating memoir from the American Civil War. It provides an insight into the espionage activities of ordinary citizens who were willing to go to great lengths in order to assist those who were fighting.


Isabella Maria Boyd, more commonly known as Belle Boyd, died of a heart attack in 1900. Her memoir which covers the entirety of her life assisting the Confederacy as a spy, her time in Union prisons and some of her life after she had left the Civil War was first published in 1865.