Women of the Civil War: Rose O' Neal Greenhow papers at Duke University

Women of the Civil War: Rose O' Neal Greenhow papers at Duke University

Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a leader in Washington society, a passionate secessionist, and one of the most renowned spies in the Civil War. Among her accomplishments was the secret message she sent to General Pierre G.T. Beauregard which ultimately caused him to win the battle of Bull Run. She spied so successfully for the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis credited her with winning the battle of Manassas.

The collection is mostly correspondence with Rose Greenhow related to her activities on behalf of the Confederate States of America. The bulk of the collection consists of letters, 1863-1864, from Greenhow to Alexander Robinson Boteler (1815-1892) reporting on the July 1863 bombardment of Charleston, S.C., interviews with Confederate officers, and her mission to Europe, including meetings with Napoleon III, Cardinal Wiseman, and Thomas Carlyle. Also included is an 1860 letter to Francis P. Corbin introducing Bishop Kip. In this on-line collection, several items contained in other Duke University collections have been added. These include a lengthy (though incomplete) letter to Jefferson Davis and several newspaper clippings about Greenhow's imprisonment in 1861 and death in 1864.

“The digitized version of the Rose O'Neal Greenhow Papers was developed as a project of The Digital Scriptorium of the Duke University Special Collections Library in collaboration with the Duke University Libraries Women's Studies Bibliographer.” As a part of the series of digitization projects called “Civil War Women,” The Digital Scriptorium selected all of the papers from this historical figure they could find, including documents from other collections at Duke. I would say that all of the papers related to Rose O’Neal Greenhow were included in this exhibition.

The metadata for each item includes a date, author, and place created, in addition to addressee in the case of letters. Each is accompanied by a short explanatory paragraph, and most include provenance information, such as M.J. Solomon Scrapbook, Rose Greenhow Papers, etc. Metadata for the collection as a whole is also pretty good, and mentions the names of the digitizers, a scope and content note, and the provenance of the papers. It also includes links to the Special Collections Library home page, and links to related collections at the library.

“These papers were scanned with a Sharp JX-330 color flatbed scanner with Adobe Photoshop on a PowerMacintosh 9500/120. The "double size" images are 24-bit 150dpi JPEGs and the "full size" ones are 72dpi GIFs.” The scans of the objects are of decent quality, and small size. At their largest “double size,” the images become a fraction of their original size at a mere 350 x 550 pixels. The images can be magnified, but only by one degree, which doesn’t much affect the poor legibility. Thankfully the digitizers included a transcription of each page with the images.

The small size of the images, and the fact that the transcriptions are admittedly “guesswork” would make any serious researcher want to visit the papers personally. Laymen who are interested in the female figures in the Civil War may be interested in the site for enrichment purposes.