Week of October 13: A Female Civil War Spy in Richmond

It looked like a regular custard dish. Just a nice dessert to give to a friend. But it contained a compartment for secret messages -- a very nice feature for someone smuggling secret information from the heart of the Confederacy into the hands of Union military leaders. That dish belonged to Elizabeth Van Lew, born to a prominent family in Richmond. Her actions during the Civil War left her socially shunned, but later inducted into the U.S. Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.