"Major" Pauline Cushman

           She was born in New Orleans, but moved with her family to Grand Rapids, Michigan. At age 18, she ran off to New York City to become an actress.
           She was appearing in a road show in Union-held Louisville, Kentucky, when two paroled Confederate officers offered her $300 to toast Jefferson Davis during her performance. She did, but first she reported the incident to the federal provost marshal, who recognized that this expression of secessionist loyalty would give Cushman entry into Confederate camps and would make her valueable as a Union spy. The theatre company fired her for making the toast, and she was evicted from the Union lines.
           Claiming to be looking for her officer brother, she began following the Confederate army. The actress became the darling of the Confederate troops, and she gathered information of great value to the advancing Union forces. She was finally captured with compromising papers, taken to the headquarters of Gen. Braxton Bragg in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and sentenced to be hanged within 10 days. Before her execution could be carried out, Union troops invaded the area. Cushman's knowledge of Southern movements and strategies were a great help to Union Gen. William Rosecrans, and President Lincoln awarded her an honorary major's commission.
           Too well known to serve as a spy again, Cushman toured the country dressed in uniform lecturing about her experiences, reportedly embellishing her story with each performance. She then returned to acting in San Francisco. Addicted to opium she had begun taking for an illness, she took her own life with an accidental overdose. The San Francisco Grand Army of the Republic buried her with military honors in its cemetery.

"Civil War Cards", Barbara Hughett, 1963 Atlas Ediutions