Thomas Nelson Conrad:
The Preacher Spy

In 1861, Thomas Nelson Conrad enlisted as a chaplain in the Confederate army. Assigned as a scout for the 3rd Virginia Cavalry, the 24-year-old Methodist preacher often made use of his chaplain garb when crossing into Union lines.

Once Conrad began operating in Washington, D.C., he established a spy operation in the Van Ness house, a mansion owned by a Confederate sympathizer and located near the White House and government offices. A contact at the War Department aided Conrad’s efforts to acquire information about the composition and movement of Union forces. Conrad also routinely forwarded Northern newspapers that provided accounts of Union Army activities to Confederate military leaders in Richmond.

In 1861, Thomas Nelson Conrad enlisted as a chaplain in the Confederate army. Assigned as a scout for the 3rd Virginia Cavalry, the 24-year-old Methodist preacher often made use of his chaplain garb when crossing into Union lines.

Once Conrad began operating in Washington, D.C., he established a spy operation in the Van Ness house, a mansion owned by a Confederate sympathizer and located near the White House and government offices. A contact at the War Department aided Conrad’s efforts to acquire information about the composition and movement of Union forces. Conrad also routinely forwarded Northern newspapers that provided accounts of Union Army activities to Confederate military leaders in Richmond.

The intelligence Conrad provided proved useful to the South in several major battles of the war. That included documents he furnished to Confederate General Robert E. Lee about Union Army activities during the Seven Days Battle in mid-1862, enabling Lee’s army to outmaneuver the stronger Union forces. Later that year, Conrad learned of Union Army plans to march south through Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Lee was headquartered. It was one of several reports Lee received about the advancing Northern forces, and in the subsequent Battle of Fredericksburg, the Confederates won their most lopsided victory of the war.

Conrad proved an elusive spy and often succeeded in evading arrest or escaping from his captors. Detained in August 1862 on charges of communicating with the enemy and recruiting soldiers for the Confederate Army, Conrad was sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., from where he was later paroled. In late 1863, Lafayette Baker, the head of Union intelligence, moved to arrest the spy but was foiled when Conrad was tipped off by a Southern agent in Baker’s employ. The following year, Conrad was captured a second time and imprisoned in southern Maryland, but after feigning illness, he once again managed to escape.

In the fall of 1864, Conrad concocted a brazen plot to kidnap President Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners in the North. He abandoned his plans after finding the President too well-guarded. Ironically, Conrad was arrested a final time in April 1865 for suspected involvement in the assassination of Lincoln, merely because of his resemblance to John Wilkes Booth. He was later released.

Conrad’s espionage over the course of the war was so valued that Confederate President Jefferson Davis wrote him a personal note stating: “Please accept my thanks for the zealous and patriotic manner in which you have lately served the Confederacy by going within the enemy’s lines.” Conrad survived the war and later became an English professor—and eventually, president—at a college in Blacksburg, Virginia, the predecessor to the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech). He died in 1883.