The shout went up at dusk, just as she had planned. A voice from the road, high and urgent, carrying through the trees: “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming! ” In the Confederate camp, men scrambled.
Officers barked orders. A skirmish line formed, rifles raised, eyes fixed on the dark fringe of woods where the enemy was supposed to appear. In the confusion, no one noticed the woman slip toward the edge of the camp. No one saw her disappear into the shadows.
By the time the alarm was found to be false, Pauline Cushman was already gone, running through the Tennessee night with the evidence of her spying hidden on her body and a price on her head. Her own account of what followed—infiltration, capture, and escape from behind Confederate lines—would become one of the most unexpected stories of the Civil War. “My object in this little work is not to seek mere notoriety,” she later wrote, “but simply to state in homely and truthful language the plain facts of my experience and the secret army service as a federal scout and spy. ”
By the middle of 1863, two brutal years of war had passed with no end in sight.
The death toll was rising, and even in the far north people were beginning to wonder what the fighting was for. The United States still could not bring the war to a close. But this was the year that would change everything. The critical Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg lay on the horizon, and a third conflict—the Tullahoma Campaign—was about to be fought between the Confederate Army of General Braxton Bragg and the United States forces under General William Rosecrans.
This campaign would determine the fate of Tennessee. Middle Tennessee mattered because it provided the rail access and the river access into the heartland of the Confederacy. If you wanted to pierce the heart of the Confederacy, you had to get through the Confederate Army of Middle Tennessee. A major battle was only a matter of time.
Fear and anticipation spread from Tennessee out to neighboring states like Kentucky—a Union state, but also home to many Confederate sympathizers. Kentucky was arguably at the crossroads of the United States, between the North and the South. It was a state where families literally fought each other because of their commitment either to the institution of slavery or to the United States and all it represented. Soldiers and spies on both sides were on the lookout for any possible advantage.
Enter a struggling twenty-nine-year-old actress and recent war widow known by her stage name Pauline Cushman. She moved to Louisville to perform for a local theater. Louisville was technically under Union control, but many of the men of the state served in Confederate regiments. When they were off duty, they would hang out in taverns, intermingling with the locals.
Cushman was a strong supporter of the Union, but in Louisville she became acquainted with a pair of captured rebel officers released on parole. She recognized them as agreeable friends, apart from any political consideration. They had a proposition for her. At first laughingly, then seriously, they asked her to step forward in front of the stage during her next play and offer a toast: “Here’s to Jeff Davis and Southern Confederacy.
May the South always maintain her honor and her rights. ” They were willing to offer her three hundred dollars—some six thousand dollars in today’s money. It was a hard sum to pass up. But being on Union turf, the stunt could cost her her career, even her reputation.
She reported the incident to the head of the local United States military police. To her surprise, he was thrilled. The army was in the process of planning a big forward push, and they were looking for people to send behind enemy lines. This toast could provide Cushman the cover she needed to pose as a Confederate sympathizer.
By agreeing to give the toast in front of an audience loyal to the United States, she made herself incredibly vulnerable. It was now on her to either deliver the performance of a lifetime or return to a life of relative obscurity. “Armed and fortified, I commenced my new role that very evening, feeling satisfied that I could serve my country. ”
Perhaps importantly, the house was packed on the night of the performance.
Both her U. S. Army contact and her rebel acquaintances were in attendance. Cushman played her part, moving through the play with the practiced ease of an actress who had spent years on stage.
Then came the moment. She raised her glass. “To Jefferson Davis and the Southern Confederacy. May the South always have her honor and her rights.
”
The audience gasped. She had done it. She was now seen as a rebel sympathizer, far away from any of her family or old friends. She was the perfect spy.
Her first forays into the world of spycraft came in and around Louisville. Leaning on her new-found reputation, she drank and shot pool with Confederates, sometimes dressing as a man, anything to tease out useful information. Spycraft in this time meant getting physically into the space of the enemy, getting to know them personally. Women were always involved in military conflicts, and they were extremely important for the relaying of information, working as spies, and in some cases even serving in the military in official capacities.
Her next mission took her 175 miles south to Nashville. Nashville was occupied by Union forces, but she was just a few miles from the Confederate lines. There, Cushman made contact with Nashville’s Chief of Army Police, Colonel William Truesdale. “How would you like to take a trip to see General Bragg?
” he asked. “I would welcome the opportunity, Colonel. ”
General Rosecrans was planning a campaign against Bragg, but he wasn’t certain where Bragg was entrenched or where the bulk of his forces were. The Confederate Army had been in retreat, and morale under Bragg—a notoriously temperamental general—was low.
But Rosecrans didn’t yet have enough information to launch his next attack. Cushman was instructed to figure out where the forts were, where the troops were, and report back. Armed with a six-shooter and some emergency medical supplies, she was dropped off a few miles outside of town, far from the prying eyes of enemy scouts. Her instructions were clear.
She was to take on the role of a woman searching for her brother in the Confederate Army. She did have a brother—his name was William. Let this, to all appearances, be the all-absorbing object of her thoughts and affections. Casually, she was to allude to her ill-treatment by the federal officers in Nashville, who had thrust her out of the city, alone and unprotected.
Her cover was a smart one, because divided families were common in the border states. She would hopscotch from one military camp to the next in an effort to ultimately get to General Bragg. Before she left, Truesdale gave her one final, strict order: “Miss Cushman, you cannot, nor will not, make any memorandum or tracings of any kind. Is that clear?
”
“Yes, Colonel. ”
She was in a region of country wild and broken, the road shut in on either side by a dense growth of trees. She was in a kind of no man’s land—beyond the protection of the Union Army, but not quite behind enemy lines. She came to a river crossing where the retreating rebel forces had destroyed a bridge.
Cushman was a fairly skilled rider, but fording the river on her own would be difficult. She stopped at a nearby house owned by Benjamin Milam to ask for directions. Milam looked her over. The river was too high to cross.
“You ain’t going to be able to cross the river till the morning. You look awful hungry. Why don’t you come on inside and get yourself some food? ”
She stayed the night.
Milam and his wife were hospitable, and she played her part. She told them Colonel Truesdale had expelled her from Nashville for expressing her Southern sympathies. “If only they knew my brother,” she said. “They’d be thinking long and hard about how they treated me.
” Her brother, she said, was in Cheatham’s division. William Cushman. Had they heard any news of him? They hadn’t, but they supported those boys.
She was welcome to stay the night. She and Milam spoke into the night, trading stories. She learned that he was a hard-line secessionist—but he played the role of a Union sympathizer to smuggle tea, sugar, coffee, and dry goods into rebel-held territory. “And they don’t even know I’m doing it,” he laughed.
“Union soldiers are dumber than a box of hair. ”
The two of them shared some qualities, both trying to move across the lines and be deceptive in order to do so. The next morning, Milam agreed to have Cushman ride with his partner, J. W.
Baker, to look for Bragg at a rebel encampment in Shelbyville. But he wanted something in return. She agreed to sell him her horse for a hundred dollars in Confederate money, which she would use to cover her costs on the mission. She could purchase it back when she returned.
Milam said he planned to travel in the opposite direction to search for a neighbor’s escaped slaves. Cushman began the arduous journey to the Confederate camp in Shelbyville. When she arrived, she was told that Bragg was not there, and no one could tell her precisely where he had gone. What she found in the Confederate camps was an army suffering through an incredibly wet and muddy spring, with thin food stores but a very robust collection of horses—information that would have been very interesting to General Rosecrans.
But she did not find General Bragg. Frustrated, she looked for an exit out of Shelbyville. Wherever Cushman went, it seemed she put young soldiers under her spell. She enjoyed her work, and Confederates enjoyed working with her.
Even though she was instructed not to draw attention to herself, it happened anyway. She got a little excited when she met a Confederate engineer who was sketching out and designing fortifications on paper. She asked if a man of his station might write her a letter that would make it easier for her to pass from one line to the other in search of William. He agreed.
She sort of forgot or defied her orders. She was only supposed to gather information, which meant simply listening and talking and bringing the information back from memory—not written documents. She had again broken a promise made at the outset of her mission. In her mind, this was a great find, but that was where she probably overstepped.
She now had even more evidence on her that she had been spying. And captured spies did not typically make it home alive. With every day that passed, anticipation along the front lines was building. Union General William Rosecrans was making final preparations to attack Bragg’s weakened army.
With an attack on the horizon, Cushman had just one stop to go before reconnecting with her Union contact in Nashville. She was driven back to Benjamin Milam’s, where she would attempt to retrieve her horse. Mrs. Milam was there, but Benjamin hadn’t returned yet.
She was shown to her old room. The next morning, Cushman announced her intention to return to Nashville. It was quite evident to her that Milam was secretly alarmed at the idea, though he had not yet returned. Her story was that she needed to retrieve her bags, but in truth, she had completed her mission and was eager to deliver her intelligence.
It may be remembered that he had disclosed the secret of his smuggling. Now that she seemed determined to go back, he feared his guilt might be made known to the Union authorities. In an effort to cover his own tracks, Milam slipped out of the house and sent word to the local Rebel scouts about Cushman. “Pauline Cushman, you’re under arrest.
”
“There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. ”
She was accused of crossing Confederate lines without permission. Benjamin Milam had betrayed her without having any evidence against her, but he feared that she would expose him if she was allowed to reach Nashville. Cushman was captured and taken to the head scout, who planned to take her to General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
In this part of her story, she was handed off multiple times and treated, it appeared, with kid gloves. Even as military officials were seeing women do some pretty daring things like espionage, they still harbored some reticence about treating these women like men. They seemed to let their guard down around her, giving her numerous opportunities to eavesdrop. Cushman was on the lookout for someone she could trust.
She asked one of the enslaved people at the camp to do something for her. She pressed a ten-dollar greenback into the man’s hand. “You know where I come from, don’t you? Up north, right?
Here’s a ten-dollar greenback, all for yourself, if you will but go up the road a piece and come back shouting at the top of your lungs that the Yankees are coming. Do it at dusk. ”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.
”
When the Civil War broke out, every person, in different ways, was going to be thrust into a war for their survival. It was never limited to those in uniform. Enslaved people who were not even seen as people were well aware of how to use the system and the societies that oppress them to their advantage. They understood how integral they were to war efforts, but also how they could, even in oppression, help liberate others.
At dusk, the shout went up. “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming! ” In the confusion, Cushman slipped away.
She was back on the run, but without an escort or a written pass, she would need to talk her way through a series of rebel checkpoints. When she came up to be questioned as to how she, a woman, happened to be there at such an hour, whimpering and crying, she had a nice little story. “Please, sir, my mother is very ill. I need to cross.
My father lives down the way and my mother is very ill. ” A good canteen of the real stuff would clinch the argument. Repeating her story and sharing her canteen, she worked her way through checkpoint after checkpoint. Having traveled more than fifty miles, she had just one more to pass through before reaching Union lines.
“Halt. Who goes there? ”
“Please, sir. My father lives down the way and my mother is very ill.
I need to cross. ”
“Give the countersign, ma’am. ”
“Please, sir. I beg of you.
My mother is very ill. I need to go and get supplies to help take care of her. ”
“I’m sorry. I’m under orders, ma’am.
I need the countersign. ”
“Then perhaps some of the Obi joyful? ”
“I never drink, ma’am. ”
She was arrested again, and it soon became clear that her notes and drawings had been discovered.
Her previous missteps had finally caught up with her. She was brought before Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy Confederate general with a well-known violent streak. “Good afternoon. You have certain documents about you.
Should the evidence prove you to be as I suspect, a spy, nothing under heaven is going to save you. I have no time to investigate your case, therefore I’m sending you to General Bragg’s headquarters. ”
“I can assure you, sir, that if I could get a letter to my brother, an officer in the Confederate service—”
“Enough. Prepare yourself for the worst.
For hanging is not pleasant. ”
Two days later, an exhausted Pauline Cushman was brought to General Bragg in Shelbyville. But instead of arriving under cover, she arrived under suspicion. What happened next would determine whether she lived or died.
“Miss Cushman, your reputation precedes you. I hear you’ve been all up and down our defensive line. ”
“Yes, and with good reason. I’ve been searching after my brother, Lieutenant William Cushman.
I haven’t had word from him in months. And some of your men have been kind enough to let me pass so I can seek him out. ”
“William Cushman? Well, I have a theory why you haven’t heard from him.
He does not exist. There is no William Cushman in my army. Who sent you? ”
“Colonel Truesdale.
”
“What for? ”
“He kicked me out of the line in Nashville. ”
“Miss Cushman, I have to inform you that there are serious charges against you. ”
“And if I’m found guilty of them, what will you do with me?
”
“You know the fate of spies. You will be hanged. Colonel, take Miss Cushman back to her quarters. ”
Punishments such as execution of a woman—that was just one step too far in this society.
This was not what you did to a woman. According to her account, Cushman overheard her captors discussing Rosecrans’ movements. His army was just days from beginning their attack on Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. But a more pressing issue for Cushman was her looming execution.
Then Cushman fell gravely ill—or at least appeared to. With the Confederates unwilling to hang a sick woman, the longer they believed she was unwell, the longer she would have to live. Her condition persisted for more than a week. Just long enough for Rosecrans’ troops to roll in and chase Bragg’s army out of town.
Saved. Cushman had escaped death and would soon find herself in the hands of the advancing United States Army. While the Union went on to take over Middle Tennessee, Cushman went on to tell her story of adventures behind enemy lines to military leaders and later readers and theater audiences across the country. “Statements of every variety, some correct and some erroneous, have been made respecting my strange and trying adventures behind the Confederate lines and my character of a federal scout and spy.
”
Pauline Cushman was a performer, and throughout the rest of her life, as she told her story, she did so with a great deal of drama. She continued to perform this role through the rest of her life. After her release from captivity, she became somewhat of a celebrity for her actions. She went on tour speaking, she sold books, and she was managed by P.
T. Barnum. Her story shows the way in which women took some pretty drastic dramatic action to immerse themselves in the war itself. No matter how much Pauline Cushman may have wanted to dramatize her story later, she was a really good actress.
Maybe that was the best, most effective acting of her life. “The adventures I narrate have been but too real. My arrest, my condemnation to death by hanging, my rescue from the very jaws of death are absolute and solemn facts which I, at least, can never forget.
”
