James Pinkerton Mississippi

Slaves, freedmen spied on South during Civil War

Confederate officers thought nothing of leaving important documents where Scobell could see them, or discussing troop movements in front of him. Whom would he tell? Scobell was only the butler, or the deckhand on a rebel sympathizer's steamboat, or the field hand belting out Negro spirituals in a powerful baritone.

In reality, Scobell was not a slave at all.

He was a spy sent by the Union army, one of a few black operatives who quietly gathered information in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with Confederate spy-catchers and slave masters who could kill them on the spot. These unsung Civil War heroes were often successful, to the chagrin of Confederate leaders who never thought their disregard for blacks living among them would become a major tactical weakness.

"The chief source of information to the enemy," Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, said in May 1863, "is through our negroes."

Little is known about the black men and women who served as Union intelligence officers, other than the fact that some were former slaves or servants who escaped from their masters and others were Northerners who volunteered to pose as slaves to spy on the Confederacy. There are scant references to their contributions in historical records, mainly because Union spymasters destroyed documents to shield them from Confederate soldiers and sympathizers during the war and vengeful whites afterward.

"These kinds of spies and operatives come up over and over again, many of them unnamed and rarely do they receive glory," said Hari Jones, curator of the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, who lectures on the Civil War's African American spies.

Jones and other experts are hoping the 150th anniversary of the Civil War will include some measure of remembrance for these officers, some of whom are included in exhibits at the African American Civil War Museum's new facility, which will hold its grand opening on July 16-18.

Allan Pinkerton, head of the Union Intelligence Service at the onset of the Civil War, detailed his recruitment of black spies in his autobiography, including a couple of successful missions by Scobell and the extraction of valuable papers from a Union defector. Scobell in particular, Pinkerton said, was a "cool-headed, vigilant detective" who easily duped the Confederates around him by assuming "the character of the light-hearted, happy darkey.

Serious Medicine Strategy: Here come the WHO-crats. World Health ...

It's great to eat right and be healthy, but those who wish to eat wrong still have rights--and they will fight to preserve them.   As we shall see, new rules on what you can eat--that is to say, new rules on personal freedom--are coming.   And the Obama administration appears to be an eager participant into the next round of a restrictive rule-writing process.    Post reporter Will England sets it up:  The World Health Organization focused for decades on infectious diseases, but now it’s putting non-communicable diseases near the top of its agenda. The fight against heart disease, diabetes, stroke, lung cancer and chronic respiratory disease may not seem as heroic as the struggle against smallpox or H1N1, but chronic illnesses account for 63 percent of deaths worldwide — 70 percent in the United States and 90 percent in Russia. OK, so far, so good.  The Serious Medicine argument is that health insurance, for example, is a lot less important to people than health itself.  It’s medical science we need, much more than healthcare finance.    And so just as we eliminated many killer infectious diseases in the last century, it would be a humanitarian achievement if we could eliminate many killer chronic diseases in the next century.   But as the Post article makes clear, the WHO vision of better health for the future is driven more by politics than by science.   That is, the leaders of his new health push will be bureaucratic regulators, not disease-eradicators.   We also need medical science more than we need governmental red tape, however well-meaning that red-tape might seem to be.   Indeed, as we keep reading the Post article, a disturbing pattern starts to appear.  We see much discussion--and real action--leading toward government regulation of human behavior, and little or nothing about the transformative or curative science.  It would be useful, for example, if leaders were focusing on better treatments and cures for diabetes or chronic respiratory disease.  And while of course such scientific research is occurring, it does not appear that such scientific research is anywhere close to the top of WHO’s international agenda.   Instead, we see what appears to be nanny-statism--not only at the national level, but also at the international level.

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