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Pauline Cushman, union spy
Military Images, May/Jun 2000 by Fitzpatrick, Michael
"How, though, if I am found guilty?" asked the dark-eyed, raven-haired beauty, her face pale with dread of the answer she knew would come.
"You know the penalty inflicted upon convicted spies," replied the Confederate General Braxton Bragg portentously. "If found guilty, you will be hanged." The captive had been confronted with the evidence against her and was undergoing cross examination by her accusers. Her beguiling answers, however, had caused one of her interrogators to rant, "That woman is the very devil, and would almost convince one that black was white!"
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The woman herself was an enigmatic paradox. She was, or at least appeared to be, many contradictory things: She had been born in the deep South, but was raised in the far Noth; an unlettered frontier girl who became a cosmopolitan actress. She had been married in New Orleans to a man from Ohio. She was a wife and mother and a carefree woman on her own. A frail female in a chauvinistic world, she would be made an honorary major in the Union Army. She had made a life for herself based on her beauty and talent but in the end she would take her own life when they no longer sustain her. The woman's real name was Harriet Wood but she is much better known to history as Pauline Cushman.
Her biographer, writing during the prime of her career described her as "lavishly endowed with the wealth of nature. Her form is perfect --so perfect that the sculptor's imagination would fail to add a single point, or banish a single blemish. Her arm is equally beautiful, resembling in mould the marble efforts seen in the great art-galleries of Europe. The outlines of her face are exceeding beauty, and the perfect features are set of...by a pair of large, flashing black eyes, which look out with a keen, brilliant expression. Miss Cushman's hair is black as night."
In addition to being a stage actress, Pauline Cushman was a spy - the darling of the Army of the Cumberland - who, in early 1863, provided valuable information to Union forces in Tennessee. But what is not as well known is the fact that she was also the widow of a Union soldier and the mother of two small children. Unfortunately, because of the clandestine nature of her work, no official records were kept of her services.
Harriet Wood was born June 10, 1833 in New Orleans; her family soon moved to western Michigan. At seventeen she ran away to New York to become an actress and changed her name to Pauline Cushman. She may have adopted the stage name Cushman in imitation of the well-established actress Charlotte Cushman, who was then a top star of the theater.
Pauline did not stay very long in New York. She landed an acting job in New Orleans, and while there married Charles Dickinson "a musician, harpist and organist." They were young: she only 19, he about 21. The wedding took place February 7, 1853 at the Magnolia House. It was reported that "both of the parties... were theatrical people and stopping at said Hotel."
Sometime after their wedding, Charles and Pauline moved to his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, where Charles apparently found employment as a music teacher. In Cleveland they "frequently lived in the same house with his parents" until their children were born. Pauline's oldest child, Charles L. Dickinson, was born in March of 1858, followed by a daughter, Ida Dickinson.
The advent of the Civil War split the family apart. On October 22, 1861, Charles Dickinson enrolled as a musician in the band of the 41st Ohio Infantry at Cleveland. Shortly after the battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Dickinson was stricken by chronic diarrhea, in fact "all the boys had it more or less." One of the band members later recalled, "We were camped on the battle field of Shiloh for about a month after the battle and we had nothing but the filthy surface water to drink and the food was not of the best, consisting mostly of raw pork, as we were not allowed to build fires most of the time." He also wrote that "[we] had no tents, no cooking untinsels [sic], nothing to eat only raw pork & crackers, coffee beans we had to grind with our teeth & rain nearly every night." It was his opinion that living under these harsh conditions was the cause of "a great deal of sickness." He remembered Dickinson as "a man that never complained much, only in a joking way." He went on to say that Dickinson "was of cheerful disposition, always lively unless very sick."
As time progressed Dickinson was frequently heard to say things such as, "I feel might smart sick," or "I am powerful weak," and as his health declined there was more and more of an ominous truth to his half joking complaints.
By early June "the regimental officers determined on sending [Dickinson] home to be discharged, said action being only pre-empted by the receipt of General Orders from the War Department directing the muster out of the band." Dickinson was discharged from the army on June 9, 1862. When he arrived home in Cleveland his condition shocked his wife. He had lost 50 pounds. Pauline must have been unprepared for the emaciated 120 pound skeleton that greeted her. "When my husband came home from the Army," she wrote, "he was in very poor health, in fact a complete wreck...I had two small children to take care of and was unable to take care of both them and him and as his father had a very large house with plenty of room and he had two brothers and three sisters at home beside his father and mother, he went there to be taken care of...I heard his condition every day and frequently saw him. We never expected him to get any better but regarded him beyond the hope of recovery."
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