Holy Unknown

By Cody Andrus John Scobell was born around 1821 in Virginia, where slavery governed labor, movement, and law. As an African American born into enslavement, his early life unfolded under constant surveillance and restriction. Little documentation survives from his childhood, but the conditions themselves shaped what he would later rely on: careful observation and the ability to remain unnoticed. At some point before the Civil War, Scobell escaped slavery and made his way north. By the late 1850s, he was living in Washington, D.C., working quietly as a civilian. The capital was crowded with soldiers, politicians, and informants, a place where rumor traveled faster than orders and accurate information was hard to come by. When the Civil War began, Union officials faced a serious intelligence problem. Reliable information from inside the Confederacy was scarce, and conventional agents were easily detected. Private intelligence networks began to fill the gap. Among them was the Pinkerto...