Slave in Jefferson Davis' home gave Union key secrets
February 20, 2009 | From Barbara Starr and Bill Mears CNNWilliam Jackson, a slave, listenedclosely to Jefferson Davis' conversations andleaked them to the North. William Jacksonwas a slave in the home of Confederatepresident Jefferson Davis during the CivilWar. It turns out he was also a spy for theUnion Army, providing key secrets to theNorth about the Confederacy.Jackson was Davis' house servantand personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plansand movements because Davis saw him as a"piece of furniture" -- not a human,according to Ken Dagler, author of "Black Dispatches," which explores espionage byAmerica's slaves."Because of his role as a menialservant, he simply was ignored," Dagler said. "So Jefferson Davis would holdconversations with military and Confederatecivilian officials in his presence." Dagler haswritten extensively on the issue for theCIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence .In late 1861, Jackson fled acrossenemy lines and was immediately debriefedby Union soldiers. Dagler said Jacksonprovided information about supply routesand military strategy. "In Jackson's case,what he did was ... present some of thecurrent issues that were affecting theConfederacy that you could not read aboutin the local press that was being passed back and forth across local lines. He actually hadsome feel for the issues of supplyproblems," Dagler said.Jackson and other slaves' heroicefforts have been a forgotten legacy of thewar -- lost amid the nation's racially chargedpast and the heaps of information about thewar's historic battles. But historians over thelast few decades have been taking an interestin the sacrifice of African-Americans duringthose war years.Jackson's espionage is mentioned ina letter from a general to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowellrefers to "Jeff Davis' coachman" as thesource of information about Confederatedeployments.Dagler said slaves who served asspies were able to collect incredibly detailedinformation, in large part because of their tradition of oral history. Because Southernlaws prevented blacks from learning how toread and write, he said, the slave spieslistened intently to minute details andmemorized them."What the Union officers found veryquickly with those who crossed the line ...was that if you talked to them, theyremembered a great more in the way of details and specifics than the average person... because again they relied totally on their memory as opposed to any written records,"he said.Jackson wasn't the only spy. Therewere hundreds of them. In some cases, theslaves made it to the North, only to return tothe South to risk being hanged. One Uniongeneral wrote that he counted on black spiesin Tennessee because "no white man had thepluck to do it."
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