You're Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in

Washington DC. I'm Mark Stout historian of the museum. I'm a PhD author and historian who served for 13 years as an analyst in the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Every month, the museum brings you interesting talks with authors,

scholars, and practitioners who has something to do with the world of

intelligence and espionage. This year we're in the Sesquist Centennial Year of the start of the Civil War.

150 years ago the Civil War started America in many ways America's most devastating and perhaps even

important war, and as with most wars, Intelligence played its role and we have a

guest and expert in this topic to talk with us today

about the role of intelligence during the Civil War particularly on the Union

side. We're very fortunate to have Professor William Fice of Buena Vista University in Iowa.

Professor Fice is an expert in Civil War Intelligence and in fact is the author of the 2002

book, really fabulous book that I can recommend to you, Grant's Secret Service. is the And Professor Fice has also for many years now been an editor at North and South magazine.

So Bill Fice, welcome to the International Spy Museum.

Thank you for having me.

So we are very used to military commanders these days having all sorts of

intelligence tools at their disposal.

They have UAVs, they have signals, intercepts, they have all kinds of fancy sensors, and they're displaying

this on electronic maps with flashing lights and all of that sort of thing.

Presumably 150 years ago in the Civil War, things were rather different. How did commanders get

intelligence in the 1860s? Well I think commanders would have loved to have had all the

gadgets that they had today although I imagine some of them would be like

with the sources they did have they wouldn't have known what to do with them

...