Pauline Cushman: The Life of the Southern Actress Who Became a Union Spy during the Civil War

Given the necessity of spies to hide in plain sight, on some level it is perfectly sensible that women played a larger and more decisive role in espionage operations, because during the Civil War, women were not taken seriously as threats. They openly moved through areas that men in uniform could not easily penetrate, and they were able to publicly receive callers, visit prisoners, manage households, carry on the ordinary commerce of social life, and cross lines that military authorities maintained without bringing any attention upon themselves. Ironically, both sides used several women as spies precisely because they drew less suspicion, yet neither the Union nor Confederates took potential women spies seriously.

In some ways, Pauline Cushman was able to take advantage of the fact she was a woman, but unlike regular civilians who could blend in, she had the disadvantage of being a recognizable actress. Near the end of the war, she was photographed by Matthew Brady, who had documented the Civil War's battlefields, generals, and, most memorably, casualties. In the photograph, Cushman is wearing a military uniform with a sword at her side, and her gaze is fixed beyond the frame with the composed confidence of someone who had seen worse things than a camera. She was 31 at the time and had recently been sentenced to hang.

By the time Brady pointed his lens at her, she was famous as the “Spy of the Cumberland,” making her the greatest heroine of the year. Major Cushman was a woman whose story was being told in newspapers from Boston to San Francisco with the breathless enthusiasm of a nation that needed heroes and found in her something it could not quite categorize. She had done a soldier's work, faced a soldier's death, and survived to tell. 

However, Cushman’s story was not just about being a spy, but also about what it cost to be a woman who wanted to be of use to her country in a time when her country had no official way to acknowledge her contribution.