Richmond, Virginia, late summer, 1865.

Union forces occupy the once-proud capitol of a defeated Confederacy. It rained all night, turning dirt roads into slick mud. Warming sunshine finally chased off the few scudding clouds overhead, promising a hot and humid afternoon. By three o'clock that promise had been kept, hardening the street's ruts and hoof-marked holes.

An elderly Richmond lady surveyed the street from a raised wooden sidewalk. Lacking another option, she stepped out and started across. An unexpected tumble sent her sprawling. Suddenly a blue-sleeved hand took her arm and eased her up. Seeing the Union officer made her withdraw instinctively, but he held fast. Taking her arm, he helped her cross, waving back the horse and wagon traffic. Safely on the distant sidewalk, he carefully brushed her off and made sure she wasn't hurt. "Thank you very much, young man," she said, in a syrupy-sweet southern drawl. "You're so kind. If there's a cool spot in hell, I hope you get it."

But for her age, the lady could have been my great-grandmother. Clara Howard, wife of a Confederate officer in the Fourth Virginia Cavalry, was a land-bound blockade runner. For years, her crinolines had secreted pistols, medicines, military documents and bandages as she sweet-talked her way across Union lines. Senior Union officers had learned her name and knew what she was doing, but they couldn't catch her. The rank and file troops just accepted whatever name she gave them and let her pass. Besides, this lady was obviously pregnant in 1862. That ruse worked well for two years, until she truly was, some eighteen months later. But the Union Army still pursued the lady who often slipped away.

With a babe in arms, she did the best she could, hiding medicines inside her son's diapers, and bandages beneath the usual baggage infancy requires. Even as the noose tightened, she traveled back and forth helping the Confederacy fight for a cause it couldn't win. The knot pulled snug with an officer's knock at the door of a Baltimore hotel room.

"Are you Clara Randolph Howard?" he asked.

"Yes, I am," came her tired reply.

"You're under arrest, Mrs. Howard. Here is the order. This soldier will stand guard at your door."

The arrest order was as follows:

"April 25, 1864. I am directed by the General Commanding to send you to the Old Capitol Prison at Washington. You will be permitted to take a sufficient amount of apparel for your personal comfort and an officer will call for you between eight and nine o'clock tomorrow morning." It was signed by John Woolly, Lt. Colonel and Provost Marshall.

A troublesome Confederate spy and smulggler had been captured at last. The arresting officer's paperwork details the charges, her many escapes from near-arrest, and adds some insights of his own:

"Her husband is a Howard and comes from one of the most violent and determined families against the Government in that city (Baltimore). Immediately upon the breaking out of the War, she and her husband went South, she and all her secesh friends boasting that she had secreted her husband's sword and pistols, etc., etc., under her crinolines and landed safely in Dixie, where ‘they would do good service.' Her husband has been ever since, and still is, in the Southern Army."

On June 27, 1964, Clara wrote this letter from prison: "My Dear Mother, I find it quite trying to begin to write when I have so small a space. Here I am without a hearing or trial or anything or any assurance of such a piece of justice. It is, I suppose, put off until Richmond is taken."

Time has browned her censored letters from prison, but the fight clearly remains. She writes of the prisoners being given a tiny stub of a candle each day, but hoarding them until word arrives of a Confederate victory, then all are lit at once in celebration. "Dixie," "The Bonnie Blue Flag," and other songs of the South are sung until the irritated guards finally silence the unruly crowd.

Continuing the letter to her mother, Clara describes a very unusual visit made by her cousin.

"Anne came on for a day and made good use of her time. She went to see Brooke Wirewell Turner Foster Stanton and wound up with an interview with Abraham himself, introduced by Mr. Blow, the Republican member from Missouri. His presidentship was about to retire but gave a few moments to the young lady whom he invited to sit beside him on a sofa. She says his manner, though unpolished, was kind and pleasant. His shirtfront was torn and his collar frayed out — more shame for Mrs. Abraham! She made the request for my liberation as short as possible, saying no charges could be brought."

Though President Lincoln explained that he knew of her case and understood the charges to be "quite serious," he could take such action only "if Mr. Henry Winter Davis would write a letter requesting that it should be done."

Apparently the letter was finally written, and on August 19, 1864, Clara Howard and her young son were sent to Saint Louis, Missouri. Her husband, Colonel William Key Howard, was captured "in the cavalry fighting around Front Royal (Virginia) and was temporarily put into the Old Capitol Prison to await shipment to Elmira as a POW." It is our family's understanding that he arrived in Washington just days after his wife and son were put on a train and escorted to Saint Louis.

His Parole of Honor, vowing "not to take part in hostilities against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged…" was signed on April 21, 1865. Some years later, the couple was reunited and moved to Fredricksburg, Virginia, where they bought the battle-damaged home called Kenmore, which had been the home of George Washington's sister and General Fielding Lewis of Revolutionary War fame. When he was eighteen, the little boy who went to prison with his mother restored the home's ornate plaster ceilings to their earlier beauty. Complicating the task was the heavy body cast he wore to correct a spinal disfigurement caused by his having fallen out of bed as a child.