Dangerous Liaison

At the home of twenty-four-year-old Quaker schoolteacher Rebecca Wright, Civil War intrigue unfolded on September 16, 1864, when Thomas Laws, an enslaved man from neighboring Clarke County, arrived carrying in his mouth a message on tissue paper wrapped in tin foil from Union Gen. Phil Sheridan, who had been told that Wright was loyal to the United States and asked if she could provide information on the Confederate Army. Wright informed Sheridan that a Confederate division and an artillery battalion were leaving the Shenandoah Valley. Both Wright and Laws risked harsh punishment, perhaps even death, if discovered, but three days later their espionage helped lead to Union victory at the Third Battle of Winchester. After the battle, Sheridan visited Wright to thank her and ask how he could repay her, and she requested that he keep her role secret. He kept that promise until Wright's anonymity eroded in February 1867, when her sister Hannah told a Baltimore Sun journalist boarding at the Wright home that Sheridan had given Rebecca a note of thanks and gifts in gratitude for the great service she rendered the Union cause. Because valley residents still harbored anger about the conflict, the revelation forced Wright to leave Winchester. Sheridan and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant then secured her an appointment as a U.S. Treasure Department clerk in Washington D.C., where she served until her death in May 1914. Thomas Laws largely kept secret his intelligence gathering for Sheridan; he died on April 16, 1896, and was buried at Milton Valley Cemetery in Berryville, about 12 miles east of Winchester.

Winchester, Virginia · United States