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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
On June 22, 1863, Pauline Cushman was imprisoned by Confederate forces in Tennessee and sentenced to death for espionage. Over the previous four months, Cushman helped uncover and spoil plans of Southern sympathizers in Union territory and collected valuable information about Confederate forces. She was fortuitously rescued by Union forces before her sentence could be carried out.
Born in New Orleans, Harriet Wood grew up in Michigan dreaming of being an actress. In 1851, the 18-year-old fled Michigan and changed her name to Pauline Cushman. Over the next decade, she moved various times, married, and had two children. In 1862, after her husband died of dysentery, Cushman left her children with family and moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to resume acting.
In March 1863, during a performance, Cushman was challenged to toast the South. Pro-Union in a Union state, she reported the dare to the local provost marshal, who convinced her to follow-through. According to Cushman, he insisted, “Your country will benefit from it, as you will discover later.” After convincing her audience she was a Confederate sympathizer, she lost her job and was ostensibly arrested. Instead, the Union commander in Kentucky encouraged her to spy for him.
Initially, Cushman remained in Louisville, frequenting the locations of known Southern sympathizers and noting their activities. She adopted various male disguises and drew suspected rebels into conversation. She tracked down the hideouts of guerilla factions, discovered their methods of transmitting information, spoiled an attempt to poison recuperating Union soldiers quartered at her boarding house, and facilitated the arrest of a Southern lady smuggling stolen medicines and documents into Confederate territory.
Just a couple months into her spying activities, Cushman was hired to perform in Nashville, Tennessee. Upon arriving, a member of Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland recruited her to visit several Confederate camps allegedly looking for her brother. As Rosecrans prepared to move against General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee near Tullahoma, he needed firm intelligence on Bragg’s strength and dispositions. Pauline Cushman was cautioned to memorize everything she saw and not to collect any documents that could compromise her if detained. Union officials then made a show of ejecting her from Union territory for spouting Southern sentiment.
Over the next few weeks, Cushman used her cover story to travel to several Confederate camps to gather information on military plans, supplies, and fortifications. Disregarding her handler’s advice, she appropriated drawings of camps on which she sketched the positions of guns and then hid them in her boots. Attempting to regain the Union lines, however, she ran into a suspicious Confederate scout who, upon discovering the documents in her boots, escorted her to the headquarters of Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Although she escaped once, she was recaptured and arrived at Forrest’s camp on June 22. A military court quickly found her guilty of spying and sentenced her to death. Feigning illness, Cushman was moved to a physician’s home in Shelbyville. Fortunately, Rosecrans’ forces arrived in Shelbyville on June 27. Rescued, Cushman related everything she had learned before being whisked back to Nashville.
After the war, Cushman was granted the honorary rank of major and, referring to herself as “Miss Major Pauline Cushman,” she performed in venues across the United States. By the early 1890s, debilitated by arthritis and other ailments, she settled in San Francisco. On Dec. 1, 1893, she died of a self-administered lethal dose of opium.
| Date Taken: | 06.21.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 06.21.2022 10:53 |
| Story ID: | 423420 |
| Location: | FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 297 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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