"How I Became a Confederate Spy."
The True Story of Belle Boyd
Maria Isabella "Belle" Boyd was born on May 9, 1844, in Martinsburg, Virginia (now part of Western Virginia) and was a Confederate spy in the War of Northern Aggression. She operated from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, and provided valuable information to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson.
Boyd's espionage career began by chance. According to her 1866 account, a band of federal soldiers heard that she had Confederate flags in her room on July 4, 1861, and they came to investigate. They hung a Union flag outside her home. Then one of the men cursed at her mother, which enraged Boyd. She pulled out a pistol and shot the man, who died some hours later. A board of inquiry exonerated her of murder.
She was best known as Belle but also known as the Cleopatra of the Secession or Siren of the Shenandoah, and much later as the Confederate Mata Hari.