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George Henry Sharpe, head of the Bureau of Military Intelligence, through the systematic assembly and analysis of data from multiple sources, provided Union commanders their "eyes," as well as a substantial edge, in the last two years of the Civil War.

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Transcript

Lead: For 400 years, service men and women have fought to carve out and defend freedom and the civilization we know as America. This series on A Moment in Time is dedicated to the memory of those warriors whose devotion gave, in the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, "the last full measure."

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: George Henry Sharpe, head of the Bureau of Military Intelligence, through the systematic assembly and analysis of data from multiple sources, provided Union commanders their "eyes," as well as a substantial edge, in the last two years of the Civil War.

Sharpe was a lawyer and approached his work with aggressive precision. Not content to base his conclusions on a single source, he gathered information from many and insisted that his subordinates rate the credibility of the sources, as the data began flowing with increasing volume to his headquarters. His men questioned Confederate prisoners, deserters and escaped slaves (called “contraband”); Sharpe sent disguised spies into Confederate units, pored over southern newspapers, greedily analyzed reports from spy balloons, and intercepted Confederate messages sent by signal flags. He ran a spy ring led by Elizabeth Van Lew in the Rebel capital and was curious about minor details, such as railroad timetables and the price of flour in Richmond.

The first major coup delivered by Sharpe’s unit was prior to and on the field at Gettysburg. In early June 1863, the BMI warned that Lee was moving north through the Shenandoah Valley into Maryland and Pennsylvania, so General Hooker shadowed Lee’s advance from the eastern side of the Blue Ridge and delivered the Union Army to his successor George C. Meade on the high ground at Gettysburg. After two days of inconclusive assault, both armies were near exhaustion. Sharpe’s men interviewed thousands of Confederate prisoners and accurately determined that Lee had only 15,000 semi-fresh troops to commit on the third day. Meade decided to stand, and the disastrous Pickett’s Charge crushed Confederate ambitions and forced Lee’s retreat.

From that point until Appomattox, George Henry Sharpe’s intelligence operation, with a couple of egregious exceptions, nailed down the disposition of the Rebel forces in the East. In the words of William Feis, this removed from Lee his “last remaining weapon, strategic mobility.”

Not until the establishment of the CIA in 1947 did U.S. military and civilian leaders enjoy the same level of competent comprehensive assembly and analysis of data as had been received from Sharpe’s Bureau of Military Intelligence in the Union’s darkest days of the Civil War.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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