Between the Lines

Forged discharge papers, secret mail and blockade runners fill Henry Bascom Smith's recollections of Civil War detective work. Writing fifty years after his service, Smith explains that he wants to preserve documents and memoranda before they disappear. His account follows his work as a detective and assistant provost marshal under General Lew Wallace, with episodes around Baltimore, Chesapeake Bay, Philadelphia and New York.

The book combines personal anecdotes with orders, letters and reports. In one investigation, Smith adopts another name and changes his clothes to move among men who repeatedly enlist for bounty payments. A letter and a telegram become tools in the pursuit of a suspected forger. Such details make the memoir useful for readers interested in the daily mechanics of wartime intelligence: how officers gathered information, followed leads and passed instructions. Smith's personal voice sits alongside the formal language of the records he kept.