(Commentary by by Elizabeth Varon, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History) "Ever since the Lee unveiling," Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond, Virginia wrote to a Massachusetts friend in 1891, "I have felt that this was no place for me." This was a remarkable and revealing confession. Van Lew had long been at odds with the majority of her fellow white Richmonders: while they supported the Confederacy, she had stayed loyal to the Union and played a heroic role during the Civil War as the head of an interracial Federal espionage network in the rebel capital.