Voices of the Past

Clara Judd: Unstoppable Civil War Spy

In 1862 and 1863, the Federal Army had its hands full. In Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and elsewhere, Rebel women were wreaking havoc inside the Union lines. They were carrying messages, spying, cutting telegraph wires, assisting with blowing up bridges, and occasionally even fighting with the guerillas/bushwhackers.

But what was a soldier to do? Women had been considered to be outside of war. The laws and military code in 1862 weren’t designed to deal with enemy civilians, especially not the female variety.

Clara Judd, a widow and mother of eight children, was one such woman. A Northern who’d moved to Tennessee prior to the war, Clara inspired Union generals Rosecrans and Reynolds to demand laws that would permit the arrest and punishment of noncombatants, especially women.

Clara spied for Confederate General John Hunt Morgan supplying him with Union troop numbers and locations, costing the lives of Federal soldiers. In addition, she acted as a smuggler. At the time of her December 1862 arrest, she had two suitcases filled with medicine and plans that she intended to send south to Atlanta.  She had trusted the wrong man.

A Union counterespionage officer, Delos Blythe, feigned romantic interest and gained Clara’s confidence. Pretending to be a paroled Southern soldier, he gave her a buggy ride to Nashville. He became suspicious of her and warned the Union authorities, but told them to approve her requests for travel passes to visit her son in Louisville, KY. Blythe traveled with her on the train as her escort and observed her efforts to gain information on Union troops. Along the way, she ended up confessing everything to him and asking for his help.

When they returned to Tennessee, he secretly asked the Union authorities to arrest both of them. Clara, who had fallen in love with him by this time, asked the authorities to release Blythe, telling them that he was innocent.

It was not her first arrest, and it would not be her last, but General Rosecrans was determined to put a stop to the revolving legal door that allowed women to be released almost as soon as they’d been caught. He believed Clara to be “a spy of the worst description,” and the provost judge agreed, stating, that “the only adequate punishment was death” for Judd’s treasonous activities. However, neither man believed that such a judgment would be carried out against a woman.

Union officials came to recognize that enemy women were a threat. Major General Halleck set military law expert Francis Lieber to work. Terms like “War Rebel” and “Military Treason” were developed to fit women like Clara who fought with their wits and who heretofore had managed to slip out of custody with claims of “Who? Little ol’ me? I couldn’t possibly have any interest in politics. I’m a woman.” The new code recognized that enemy civilians, including women, were a force to be reckoned with.

However, despite having helped inspire the new military code with punishments as severe as execution, Clara was not vanquished. Sentenced to prison in Alton, IL and ordered to be held until the end of the war or until she had a full trial, she was released in August 1863, due to poor health. By November 1863, she was caught spying again and arrested. A pattern that would repeat. The code developed to contain her and those like her eventually became international law, but Clara was uncontainable.   

Sources:

Hart, Sandra Melville. “Civil War Women: Clara Judd, Confederate Spy.” Historic Nibbles. 2019

McCurry, Stephanie. Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American War. Belknap Press, 2019.