Charlotte "Lottie" Clark (Moon) (Confederate spy)

Lottie was a lecturer and under the nom-de-plume "Charles M. Clay," wrote several books. During the Civil War she gave "splendid service" as a Southern spy, and with her sister, Virginia, disguised herself as an Irish washerwoman and often penetrated the Federal lines. She was caught and held, but never put on trial, and the charges were dropped. Later she went to England as a correspondent for one of the New York dailies. While abroad she was presented to the French Court during the time of Louis Napoleon.

In October, 1862, Lottie attended a meeting of espionage agents in Toronto, Canada for the gathering of information. Lottie then returned to the States. Meaning to get to the Confederacy, she presented herself in Washington, D.C., at the Office of the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. She told the Secretary that she was an English noble-woman, that her name was the Lady Hull, who had come all the way from Britain to take baths in the warm waters of Virginia, only to find there was a war on. How could she possibly get to the other side of the front lines to get into those warm waters to treat her ailing joints, to get relief from the rheumatism and the arthritis which so badly crippled her? The Secretary, totally persuaded that Lottie was what she presented herself to be, felt compassion. He told Lottie that it just so happened that President Lincoln himself was going the next day to inspect the troops in the front lines, just to the east of Richmond. She could ride in the President's personal carriage with Abraham Lincoln, down to the lines. He would even give her a note to assure safe passage through the lines and on to the warm springs of Virginia for treatment.

The next day, there was Oxford's Lottie Moon seated next to the President of the United States, riding in the latter's personal carriage, and across from her the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. As the carriage rumbled on through the hills of northern Virginia, Lady Hull, exhausted from her long trip over to this new world, fell asleep, or so it seemed. As she dozed on, with audible sounds of slumber periodically escaping from her lips, the President and the Secretary of War began to become less and less discreet in their comments about what needed to be done in the war in the next few weeks. Before long they were divulging the most confidential information, and there was Lottie Moon absorbing it all as she feigned slumber. They arrived at the front lines, and Lottie, with the note, passed on through to see Jefferson Davis himself. She delivered to the South the important information, which for months thereafter cost the North dearly in terms of actions that were anticipated by Confederate troops even before they occurred, resulting in defeat after defeat for Northern troops. It was because of this that Stanton and Lincoln finally agreed that they'd been duped--that Lady Hull had been in fact a Confederate agent, and they came to know that she was Lottie Moon. Secretary Stanton himself put a price of $10,000 on her head, dead or alive.

When Lottie Moon was growing up she had a score or more of suitors. She really wanted to marry James Clark, a fellow Virginian and Miami graduate who had gone into a career in law and [who] was somewhat older than the rest. She finally agreed to marry a younger man closer to her age, Lieutenant Ambrose Burnside of Liberty, Indiana. Lieutenant Burnside and Lottie set the date for the wedding, June 21, 1848. This was some years before the war. On that day, before a full assemblage in the church, when the minister asked Ambrose if he would take Lottie to be his wife, he nodded and said he would. [The minister] turned to Lottie and asked if she would take Ambrose to be her husband. She looked at the tall young lieutenant beside her, shook her head defiantly side to side, and said "No, Sir-eee Bob, I won't!" There at the alter she had changed her mind. She really wanted James Clark, not Ambrose Burnside.

In 1863, 15 years after Lottie had married James Clark, Lottie Moon Clark was engaged in espionage against the North. In April 1863, she made her way to Cincinnati hoping to cross the river into Kentucky, disguised now as an Irish scrubwoman. She was bound, she said, for Lexington, to visit her boy who had been injured in combat and needed a mother's love. A young private, standing his first watch, said he did not have authority to let her through. She asked who did, and he said, "The general." Said Lottie, "Take me to the general." The private did. They went up the stairs to an office on the second floor. They knocked on the door, and a voice called out, "Come in." In they walked to behold, seated behind the desk in general's stars, Ambrose E. Burnside. He was now in command of the defense of southern Ohio, southeastern Indiana, and northern Kentucky. She could be Lady Hull, using words in the best English, and no interruption. But now, as an Irish scrubwoman, the Irish dialect left her as she tried to tell the general why she needed a pass to see her wounded son in the hospital in Lexington. After several false starts General Burnside recognized who he was confronting. He said, "Lottie, I know who you are." Despite her protestations he insisted he knew who she was, and finally she agreed. Yes, she was Lottie. The general could have had her shot or hung, but there was still a spark. He agreed instead to place her under house arrest at the Burnet house in Cincinnati if she would forgo any further espionage service for the South in the remainder of the war. She agreed, and she lived out the war in Cincinnati under house arrest. We still have, across the street from this campus, the Lottie Moon House, attesting that one of the South's three foremost spies of the Civil War called Oxford home.

http://what-when-how.com/women-and-war/moon-lottie-18-29-1895-and-m...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Charlotte_Moon