In May 1863, Antonia was sent back to the Confederacy via Fortress Monroe, at Hampton Roads, with a shipment of other female prisoners. Among them were at least two alleged "notorious prostitutes," who were sent back when the Confederate exchange officer complained that on landing at City Point below Richmond they had "descended to a depth of infamy that I hardly thought could be reached by the sex."
After making her way home to Fairfax, Antonia was arrested again because of continuing suspicions and returned to the Old Capitol. Unlike Greenhow and Boyd, she did not brag in prison about her services to the Confederacy. Outside, friends on both sides of the lines were trying to prove her innocent. Jeb Stuart wrote to John Mosby asking for exculpatory evidence, "so that I can insist upon her unconditional release."
A portrait of Antonia Ford Willard by O.H. Willard of Philadelphia.
(Courtesy Library of Congress, American Treasures Collection)
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In August, Stuart's aide, the Virginia novelist John Esten Cooke, wrote sarcastically in Richmond's Southern Illustrated News about Antonia's honorary commission from Stuart. He recalled the mood in camp when he introduced Stuart to Antonia -- "O gay vanished hours that come back with the sight of that document! . . . Who could ever have imagined that . . . this mere billet doux . . . would in these days become the ground of a grave accusation against the maiden who smiled as she received it! It was only a jest . . . I do assure you, only meant to produce a good-humored laughter from a young lady." The Yankees "can't catch our partisans," Cooke wrote, "but they arrest our young ladies. They cannot crush the men, and they make war on the women of the South! O 'nation of shopkeepers,' how thoroughly you are acting out your real character!" (Half a century later, Mosby also would deny that Antonia had been involved in his raid on Fairfax Court House. The allegation that she helped him was "a pure fable," he said. "Antonia was as innocent as Abraham Lincoln.")
Meanwhile, Union Maj. Willard was exerting all his influence to free the woman for whom he had fallen so completely. Eventually he prevailed on Maj. Gen. Samuel Heintzelman to release her, but only after she apparently took the oath of loyalty to the Union on September 16, 1863. One wonders whether she literally did so, since the officer who witnessed and signed the document was Joseph Willard himself. Two days later, Heintzelman ordered that Antonia be permitted to go home, "there to remain subject to orders from these Head Quarters -- excepting under instructions from Head Quarters Department of Washington she will in no wise be molested or interfered with by any military authority."
Joseph conducted Antonia home to Fairfax, as he had escorted her to prison after her first arrest. Her gratitude to him quickened their romance; he became so ardent that before the end of the year, she was fending off his pleas to join in a "private marriage." Because Joseph was still a Union officer, a public wedding with a suspected spy was out of the question. On a stormy winter night, Antonia sat at her window and wrote, "Major, you know I love you, but . . . [my] parents and relatives would be mortified to death; acquaintances would disown me; it would be illegal, and above all it would be wrong . . . I would make you 'the luckiest man in the world' if I could without compromising myself . . . You ask for my 'heart and hand.' The heart is yours already. When your hand is free and you can claim mine before the world, then that also is yours."
She ended that letter by gently scolding him for not coming to Fairfax lately. Soon she would be warning him not to risk riding out to see her because he might be caught on the road by her friend Mosby.
As Joseph slept alone that winter, he must not have been able to think of anything but how to bring his beloved Antonia to his side. She had told him, "Remember, Major, the obstacle is with you, not me." That obstacle was the uniform he wore; she would not marry him as long as he was a Union officer. After months of struggle between his heart and his duty, his heart prevailed. In February 1864, he rode out to Fairfax Court House and told Antonia he had made up his mind to resign his commission. She inquired about a marriage license, but no one there could issue one, and she would not even consider being wed without one. Warning him not to risk riding Little River Turnpike again, she said she would come to Washington. But her father objected to the idea of her going to Joseph, and insisted that he come to get her.
Amid these negotiations over who would travel where, the Fords got a false report that Antonia's brother Charles had been killed in action with Stuart's horse artillery, a development that did not make her father any warmer toward his Yankee prospective son-in-law. (A few months later, on May 31, 1864, 1st Lt. Charles E. Ford, of McGregor's battery, Stuart's horse artillery, was killed near Ashland.) But Antonia wrote that a neighbor had spoken of the major fondly, that "None of them consider you an enemy."
Joseph apparently reminded her that although he was shedding his uniform, he was not shedding his loyalty to the government. "My dear Major," she assured him, "no one has ever accused you of being anything but the most decided unionist . . . but I love you none the less for it. With all my heart do I believe in one union -- do you know what it is?"
This teasing courtship was almost over. Joseph's resignation was effective March 1. Nine days later, he risked the ride to Fairfax, and the next day Mr. and Mrs. Ford, Antonia and Joseph set out up the pike to Washington. Just as Antonia had feared, one of Mosby's riders stepped out of the bushes and halted them. "Who goes there?" he asked.
"Ford of Fairfax," said her father, "taking my daughter to Washington to see a doctor." He did not explain who else was in the back of the carriage, and the sentry let them pass.
Later that day, at the Metropolitan Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley pronounced Joseph and Antonia husband and wife. They departed on a wedding trip to Philadelphia, where the groom sent a polite note to his new mother-in-law, to which the bride appended a longer postscript suggestively describing their wedding night. She did not go to the hotel dining room for supper, she said, but had tea sent up "and fooled over that until it was ridiculous, but the Major went ahead to undress as if I was a statue." He later told her "he was so free on purpose because he was determined to break down all restraint and put me at my ease by being so himself. He succeeded much better than I supposed could be the case . . . I do not promise to drink any more champagne . . . "
Both groom and bride were concerned over how their North-South merger impressed others. Joseph apparently had asked an esteemed Washingtonian, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, how the marriage would play in social circles. "I shall 'not think less' of you for marrying a poor but intelligent and more than all a respectable Virginian," the old gentleman assured him. Antonia told her mother-in-law, "I do very much wish to know what the people say of me," but she had not lost any of her mischievousness. When a friend asked why she had married a Yankee, Antonia answered, "I knew I could not revenge myself on the nation, but was fully capable of tormenting one Yankee to death, so took the Major."
Ernest B. "Pat" Furgurson is a former Washington bureau chief and columnist for the Baltimore Sun. This article is adapted from Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War, being published this week by Alfred A. Knopf.
