She must have a disguise in which she could go about the city and its environs without fear of detection, and she must also gain more valuable and accurate information from headquarters of the Confederacy. This she resolved, and then set to work to achieve her end. At once she wrote to a negro girl, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, who had been one of the Van Lews' slaves, but who had been freed and sent North to be educated, inviting her to visit the stately mansion where she had grown up, and the invitation was eagerly accepted. On her arrival in Richmond, she was closeted a long time with her one-time mistress, to whom she owed her liberty, and when the interview ended the girl's eyes were shining, and she wore an air of fixed resolve only equaled by that of Betty Van Lew.
A waitress was needed in the White House of the Southern Confederacy. Three days after Mary Bowser arrived at the Van Lews', she had applied for the position and become a member of Jefferson Davis's household. Another link had been forged in the long chain of details by which the Spy worked her will and gained her ends.
Despite the suspicion and ill-will felt in Richmond for the Van Lews, more than one Confederate officer and public official continued to call there throughout the war, to be entertained by them. The fare was meager in comparison to the old lavish entertaining, but the conversation was brilliant and diverting, and so cleverly did Betty lead it that "many a young officer unwittingly revealed much important information of which he never realized the value, but which was of great use to 'Crazy Bet' when combined with what she already knew.
"And when night fell over the city Betty would steal out in her disguise of a farm-hand, in the buckskin leggins, one-piece skirt and waist of cotton, and the huge calico sunbonnet, going about her secret business, a little lonely, unnoticed figure, and in a thousand unsuspected, simple ways she executed her plans and found out such things as she needed to know to aid the Federal authorities."
History was in the making in those stirring days of 1862, when, having failed to take Richmond, General McClellan had returned North by sea, when the Confederates under General Lee prepared to invade the North, but were turned back after the great battle of Antietam. Thrilling days they were to live through, and to the urge and constant demand for service every man and woman of North and South instantly responded. But none of the women gave such daring service as did Elizabeth Van Lew. Known as a dauntless advocate of abolition and of the Union, suspected of a traitor's disloyalty to the South, but with that stain on her reputation as a Southerner unproved from the commencement of the war until its close, her life was in continual danger. She wrote a year later, "I was an enthusiast who never counted it dear if I could have served the Union--not that I wished to die." For four long years she awoke morning after morning to a new day of suspense and threatening danger, to nights of tension and of horrible fear. "No soldier but had his days and weeks of absolute safety. For her there was not one hour; betrayal, friends' blunders, the carelessness of others; all these she had to dread." All these she accepted for the sake of a cause which she believed to be right and just.