Streaming the War: Elizabeth Van Lew, the Richmond Underground, and Amazon Prime’s The Grey House

Union spymaster Elizabeth Van Lew (1818-1900), circa 1865. Portrayed by actress Daisy Head in The Grey House, she risked everything she had for the Union. Photo courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation.

 

Amazon Prime Video’s recent Civil War drama series The Gray House presents a fictionalized account of Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew and her Richmond Underground espionage network. The ensemble cast features leading actors Daisy Head as Van Lew, Mary-Louise Parker as her mother Eliza, Amethyst Davis and Christopher McDonald respectively as historical spies Mary Richards and Thomas McNiven, and standout performances from Hannah James and Paul Anderson as the fictional characters Clara, a local prostitute, and villainous Constable Stokely Reeves. James also appeared in the PBS series Mercy Street (2016), which likewise told a complex story set in Civil War-era Alexandria, Virginia featuring multi-dimensional characters. However, unlike Mercy Street, HBO’s The Good Lord Bird (2019) and Steven Spielberg’s epic Lincoln (2012), the producers of The Gray House chose instead to film the episode series in Romania. This artistic license reflects the inauthenticity of the series, despite its efforts to remain faithful to the actual history.[1]

While The Gray House borrows heavily from the historical record, it takes the usual filmmakers’ liberties with the facts to an extreme degree. Although many of the stories told in the show are based on at least a kernel of truth, the series relies extensively on problematic historical source material that often obscures the complexities of the real history at hand. Still, the show cannot be easily dismissed since it presents a variety of realistic historical stories about Van Lew and her network in an entertaining if fanciful format.

Long forgotten, smeared, and erased from history by her contemporaries and writers of the Lost Cause, Elizabeth Van Lew and the Richmond Underground are now being reconsidered by historians in the twenty-first century. Late nineteenth- century myths abound about Van Lew. Created by vindictive former Confederates as a means of producing the popular narrative of a united South with well-defined gender roles and expectations for its elite women, Southern Unionists such as Van Lew were considered rare and dangerous outcasts. The misconception that Van Lew cultivated a ‘Crazy Bet’ persona for her espionage efforts afforded Lost Cause and later mythmakers the ability to portray her as a committed Yankee in a plausible and easy to understand—and hate—narrative.2

Recent historians are more sympathetic to her complex Southern unionism. Elizabeth R. Varon’s biography Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy examines Van Lew’s social status among Richmond’s antebellum elite, and then follows her journey to abolitionism as well as her later career as a Union spy, woman’s suffragist and political appointee during the Reconstruction era. Varon presents Van Lew as a complex figure who was both a socially connected reformer and slave-owning Union loyalist who made numerous sacrifices for the cause in which she believed. In her 2025 biography of Van Lew, Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster Gerri Willis also focuses on Van Lew’s activities during the war, writing a fast-paced narrative that begins by describing the antebellum southern world in which Van Lew lived and worked and ends by discussing how she has been misremembered in the myths of the Lost Cause. Similar to The Gray House, Willis’ narrative format highlights the action, risks, and tension involved in spycraft.

The Van Lew Mansion in Richmond, Virginia was a stately residence for the wealthy Van Lew family, and a frequent setting in The Gray House. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Adams-Van Lew House Historical Marker. After the Van Lew mansion was raised in 1911 by vindictive former Confederates, the city of Richmond built an elementary school on it. More recent public historians have taken an interest in commemorating Van Lew and the Richmond Underground, as this historic marker indicates. Photo by author.

 

Postwar Lost Cause apologists presented the narrative of a united south populated by wealthy, kind-hearted slaveowners and loyal slaves as a means of understanding and contextualizing Confederate defeat. Elite women were portrayed as genteel, passive supporters of the Southern cause and the real history of Elizabeth Van Lew and other southern unionists stood in stark contrast to this idealistic image. To distance themselves from these exceptions to their narrative, southern historians erased the histories of the Richmond Underground by recasting the image of Van Lew and her network. Van Lew, they argued, cultivated the persona of an insane woman as a cover to gain access to Union prisoners at Libby prison and elsewhere in the city. No historical primary evidence survives that supports this claim. In reality, Van Lew was shrewd and knew how to use bribes, guile, and flattery to gain the trust of Confederate officials, often throwing lavish parties for local acquaintances.[4]

Nineteenth and twentieth century historians frequently questioned the relevance of many of the missions Van Lew and her network undertook during the war. One story suggests that Van Lew delivered flowers through the lines to Union General Ulysses S. Grant every morning as a gift. This story is highly unlikely. While Van Lew served in the Grant administration as the postmaster for Richmond after the war, the two did not meet until Van Lew invited General Grant to tea at her mansion after Union forces captured the city. Lost Cause historians created this myth to isolate Van Lew and her contemporaries from other Richmond residents in the postwar era. [5] 

One of the main problems with The Gray House as a means of teaching history is that it relies heavily on historical accounts that are difficult to verify. Shortly before his death in 1904, a Richmond baker named Thomas McNiven claimed to have been an agent in Van Lew’s network. In 1952, his daughter gave the only written account of her father’s espionage efforts entirely from oral memory. Fragmented and lacking documentation, this account is one of the main sources from which The Gray House draws.[6] McNiven claimed to have known Van Lew well, yet she never mentioned him by name in her diary or published papers, despite having done so for Lohmann and other agents. Van Lew does refer in her diary to an individual known as ‘Quaker,’ but she never names this person directly, nor does this person appear in the extensive records of the Union army’s Bureau of Military Intelligence, with which Van Lew worked closely during the final year of the war. McNiven’s daughter, however, claims that her father was the agent known as ‘Quaker.’[7]

For historians, McNiven’s account presents a challenge in telling the true history of southern unionist memory. While many of his claims are demonstrably false—such as that he observed the burial of Union Col. Ulric Dahlgren’s body in Richmond’s Oakwood Cemetery and was involved in its covert recovery soon thereafter—other claims present at least a kernel of truth. McNiven writes of a local prostitute named Clara who worked as an agent at the Exchange Hotel in Shockoe Bottom and had frequent contact with a high-ranking Confederate official he refers to as ‘Big Belly.’ The Gray House suggests this may have been Confederate Secretary of War Judah Benjamin.[8] The Exchange Hotel was indeed a popular establishment during the war. It had a mixed reputation. While the hotel was frequented by elite Confederates, much of the city’s slave market and related businesses were concentrated in the Shockoe district, and the Exchange Hotel is known to have occasionally hosted slave auctions. Given Van Lew’s occasional use of the code name ‘Babcock,’ it is conceivable that this individual may have been him. [9]

The Gray House relies extensively on fictional characters to the exclusion of historical figures such as the verifiable agents in Van Lew’s network, many of whom made valuable contributions to the Union war effort. In 1861, an agent of detective Allan Pinkerton’s agency, gathered extensive data on Richmond’s defenses, troop deployments, and ordinance capabilities.[10] After Confederate authorities conducted a sweep of the city’s known and suspected unionists, Webster was arrested and hanged in April 1862. His contributions are portrayed in The Gray House as having been the decisive factor that influenced Van Lew’s decision to engage in espionage. Still, the series excludes other known agents such as the German grocer and restauranteur F.W.E. Lohmann, who was captured in February 1865 and subjected to torture in the notorious Libby Prison, and local farmer Wiliam Rowley, who allowed the Van Lews to use his land in nearby Henrico County as a drop zone. While Rowley was compensated by the Federal Government for his service after the war, the Van Lews were not.[11]

Still, there is much that the series gets right. The major plot points in its narrative are based in historical fact. One such example is Van Lew’s abolitionism and relationship to the enslaved. Prior to the war, Elizabeth and her family freed their slaves, many of whom subsequently worked for the Van Lews as paid servants. One such woman was Mary Jane Richards, sometimes known as ‘Mary Bowser.’ The Van Lews had paid for Richards to be educated in Philadelphia, and during the war she served as a double agent and spy for the Richmond Underground, and later as an educator after the war. Played in The Gray House by actress Amethyst Davis, Richards was sent by Van Lew to work undercover in the Confederate White House as Varina Davis’s personal servant. The series shows that her espionage efforts were a major intelligence coup by the Richmond Underground that were ignored by Union high command initially but later proved vital to Northern victory.[12]

Elizabeth Van Lew headstone. After Elizabeth Van Lew died in 1900, wealthy relatives of Union veterans donated a boulder from Massachusetts. The epitaph on her grave in Richmond’s Shockoe Cemetery reads “She risked everything that is dear to man — friends — fortune — comfort — health — life itself—that slavery might be abolished and the Union preserved. This boulder from the Capitol Hill in Boston is a tribute from Massachusetts friends.” Photo by author.

 

Historical fiction can be a useful tool for historians. The AMC series Turn: Washington’s Spies (2014) for example covered a similar story and was well-regarded by historians for its historical accuracy while also being commercially successful.  Hollywood can do much to generate public interest in historical subjects. Flaws aside, viewers are more likely to become interested in the story of Elizabeth Van Lew and the Richmond Underground after watching The Gray House than if they had not watched it. Some viewers may seek additional information or purchase books for further reading. The challenge for historians is to educate the public to think critically about historical evidence, to accept nothing at face value, and be judicious with source material to better determine the truth and understand the real history. [13]

 

[1] Richard Roeper, “The Gray House,” review of The Gray House, directed by Roland Joffe, Amazon Prime Video, RogerEbert.com, February 24^th, 2026, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-gray-house-tv-review-2026; Maggie Lovitt, “The Gray House Review: Kevin Costner’s Gripping 8-Part Prime Video Miniseries is a Must-See War Drama,” review of The Gray House, dir. by Roland Joffe, Amazon Prime Video, Collider, February 24^th, 2026. https://collider.com/the-gray-house-2026-review-prime-video/

[2] Elizabeth R. Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, Oxford University Press, 2003. 257; Gerri Willis, Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster, Harper Collins, 2025. 236; Virginia Lohmann Nodhturft, F.W.E. Lohmann: Elizabeth Van Lew’s Civil War Spy, Outskirts Publishing, 2019. 7; “Working Out Her Destiny: Notable Virginia Women: Elizabeth Van Lew (1818-1900),” Women’s History in Virginia, 1600-2004, Library of Virginia, accessed June 11^th, 2026. https://old.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/destiny/notable/vanlew.htm

[3] Varon, Spy 158; Willis, Spymaster, 226.

[4] Willis, Spymaster, 235; Nodhturft, Spy,7

[5] “Miss Van Lew Has Passed Away: The Death Yesterday of This Distinguished Old Lady-Sketch of Her Career-Her Sympathies Were with the North During the War-Other Deaths,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 26^th, 1900, Richmond, Virginia, https://www.newspapers.com/image/79913899/?match=1&terms=elizabeth%20van%20lew; Nodhturft, Spy, 218; Van Lew’s support for abolitionism and unionism is believed to be the result of her education, her high social status, her love of reading, and her lack of interest in marriage and the accompanying loss of property rights to potential husbands. When her father John Van Lew died in 1843, bequeathed $10,000 to each of his children. Historian Elizabeth R. Varon notes that John Van Lew’s will stipulated that Elizabeth and her sister’s inheritances should “’be free and exempt from the control or use of any husband.’” See Varon, Spy, 21.

[6] “Recollections Told by His Daughter,” Civil War Richmond, accessed April 18, 2026. mdgorman.com/Other_Sites/mcniven_recollections.htm

[7] Civil War Richmond, “Recollections;” Van Lew, Elizabeth. “A Yankee Spy in Richmond: The Civil War Diary of ‘Crazy Bet’ Van Lew,” edited by David D. Ryan, 55; Varon, Elizabeth R. Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, Oxford University Press, 2003, 277n9

[8] Civil War Richmond, “Recollections;” “Nothin’ Like the Fourth of July,” episode one of the Amazon Prime Video series The Gray House

[9] “Exchange Hotel,” Civil War Richmond, accessed April 19, 2026 http://civilwarrichmond.com/other-sites/hotels/exchange-hotel; When Colonel Dahlgren was killed in March 1864 during an aborted raid on Richmond, Confederate soldiers and civilians desecrated his body before burying it in an unmarked grave. Agents of the Richmond Underground including F.W.E. Lohmann located the site of the burial and recovered Dahlgren’s body for temporary reburial in a safe location outside the city.

[10] “Hanging of a Spy,” Richmond Whig, April 30^th, 1862, https://www.newspapers.com/image/901009459/?match=1&clipping_id=199320209; “The Execution To Day,” Richmond Dispatch, April 20^th, 1862, https://www.newspapers.com/image/87273073/?match=1&terms=timothy%20webster; Varon, Spy, 75.

[11] See Willis, Spymaster, 235; Varon, Spy, 204; Neither Van Lew or her agents received payment for wartime espionage. In 1866 F.W.E. Lohmann and Charles M. Carter petitioned the War Department and received the endorsement of General Grant but Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton denied them

[12] Varon, Spy, 157.

[13]Michael Schelhammer, “AMC’s Turn: Everything Historians Need to Know,” review of Turn: Washington’s Spies, AMC Studios, Journal of the American Revolution, April 1^st, 2014, https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/04/amc-turn-everything-historians-need-to-know/