Readers of the Louisville "Courier" in 1864 were intrigued to learn that a band of Confederate guerillas roaming Kentucky was led by a woman. Her name, the paper said, was Sue Mundy.
Actually, Sue Mundy was a young man, small and long-haired, named Marcellus Clark, the scion of a distinguished family. The newspaper had brazenly invented his female persona - even borrowing the name of a notorious local madam - to embarass the Federal army commander in Louisville, with whom it was feuding.
The hoax worked, and by early 1865 the capture of Sue Mundy's gang had become an urgent priority, especially after well-publicized accounts related that she had joined forces with William Quantrell's Raiders. A few weeks before the war's end, a troop of Wisconsin cavalry captured Clark in a Kentucky barn. He demanded to be treated as a prisoner of war, but because of "Sue Mundy"'s infamous celebrity, he was hanged as a criminal instead.
"The Civil War, Spies, Scouts and Raiders" Time - Life books, page 143
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