Pauline Cushman 1833�1893
Union Spy

In 1862, Pauline Cushman was a struggling actress employed in a Louisville playhouse. In a play that required her character to give a toast, she was dared on one occasion to toast Jefferson Davis. She agreed, but gained the permission of the federal provost marshal first.

Perceived now as a self-proclaimed Southern sympathizer, Cushman was expelled from the theater. In 1863, a new opportunity presented itself, the chance to spy for the Union. In lace and petticoats, she became a camp follower of the Confederate army in Kentucky and Tennessee. Her allure and beauty aided her in obtaining information that would be of value to the federal army. Yet the frustrated actress soon proved to be wanting in spying as well.

She aroused suspicions and was finally caught with secret papers. General Bragg had her tried, and a military court sentenced her to hang, whereupon her health broke and her sentence was delayed. Yet military operations intervened. Bragg moved his army and left Cushman behind.

Rescued by Yankees at Shelbyville, Tennessee, she traveled north to much acclaim. President Lincoln made her an honorary major, and wearing her new uniform, she lectured about her clandestine adventures behind rebel lines.

After the war, Cushman's fame mostly ebbed. She tried acting again and married for the second and third times. Her last marriage ended in separation. For an illness, she began taking opium and died of an intentional overdose at sixty. Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic paid tribute by burying her with military honors in their cemetery in San Francisco.

Civil War Women
Women Civil War Soldiers
Womens Sufferage
Civil War Music History
Colored Troop Pictures
Civil War Exhibits
Civil War Timeline
State Battle Maps

American Civil War Book Titles
Sanctified Trial: The Diary of Eliza Rhea Anderson Fain, a Confederate Woman in East Tennessee The Diary of Eliza Rhea Anderson Fain	Kindle Available Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War When Confederate men marched off to battle, southern women struggled with the new responsibilities of directing farms and plantations, providing for families, and supervising increasingly restive slaves	A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House The Siege of Knoxville (November 1863) is covered and Sutherland's footnotes make for good history	Kindle Available Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life: A Biography Travel with Tubman along the treacherous route of the Underground Railroad. Hear of her friendships with Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and other abolitionists.
A Confederate Girl's Diary Sarah Morgan Dawson Sarah Morgan Dawson lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at the outbreak of the American Civil War. In March 1862, she began to record her thoughts about the war in a diary	Women in the Civil War The Civil War wrought cataclysmic changes in the lives of American Women on both sides of the conflict. Women in the Civil War demonstrates their enterprise, fortitude, and fierceness. In this revealing social history	Confederate Scrapbook Copied From A Scrapbook Kept By A Young Girl During And Immediately After The War Lizzie Cary Danie l	Kindle Available My Story of the War : a Woman's Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army

Civil War History Documentary DVD Movie Titles

Sources:
U.S. Library of Congress
U.S. National Park Service
Smithsonian Institution

Pauline Cushman 1833�1893 Union Spy

Pauline Cushman 1833�1893
Union Spy