Behind Rebel Lines: The Incredible Story of Emma Edmonds, Civil War Spy

After so many daring expeditions, Emma gets a much-needed furlough for two weeks. She goes to the nearby city of Williamsburg, Virginia but finds leisure not to her liking: “After months of danger and battle, civilian life seemed dull. She was soon bored and spent the rest of her leave doing volunteer nursing” (92). Emma doesn’t discriminate when it comes to tending the wounded. She volunteers at both the Union and Confederate hospitals in town.

When Emma returns to active duty, the Union transfers her unit to the Shenandoah Valley under General Grant’s command. During this time, she goes back to spying as the enslaved male named Cuff—and as an enslaved female laundress who discovers a packet of important documents in an officer’s jacket pocket. She triumphantly returns to the Union lines with these valuable papers. This spying activity continues for many months until the Union transfers Emma to Louisville, Kentucky.

Kentucky is a neutral state with sympathizers on both sides of the war, and Louisville is a hotbed of Union and Confederate spies. To ferret out information about an important rebel agent, Emma adopts civilian attire for this mission: “The mysterious Mr. Mayberry was actually Emma on a new assignment, wearing another of her many faces” (100).

As Charles Mayberry, she quickly targets a local businessman named P. N. Aylesworth and convinces him to hire her as a clerk in his office. Emma observes that Aylesworth has secret dealings with a man named Hall, but she’s unable to eavesdrop on their conversations. In frustration, she finally devises a risky plan to expose the Southern spy.

After winning her boss’s confidence, Emma tells Aylesworth that she wants to enlist in the Confederate Army. Aylesworth believes that Emma’s commitment to the rebel cause is sincere and arranges for her to travel south with Hall. Emma alerts her Union allies to the trip so that they can intercept Hall on the road.

Hall is suspicious of Emma, but Aylesworth convinces him to trust the clerk. As they travel by night, Emma grows nervous as she eyes Hall’s pistol: “In the darkness Hall seemed to grow bigger and more menacing—a grim image foretelling doom. Charles fought to stay cool and composed” (112). Eventually, the Union rescue party arrives and catches Hall red-handed with secret Union plans and the names of additional Confederate operatives in Louisville. The mission is yet another success for Emma, and she receives an engraved sword as a reward.

The Union next transfers Emma’s unit to Vicksburg, on the banks of the Mississippi River, where she contracts malaria: “Then Emma’s luck—which up till then had been so good—suddenly ran out. For some time she had been feeling sick, but had been too busy to do anything about it” (117).

Emma is afraid to check herself into the Union hospital because doing so would reveal her gender. After confiding in Mrs. Butler, she slips away to Cairo, Illinois. There, she resumes female attire and goes to a local hospital for treatment. During her recovery, the tides of war shift in favor of the Union. Once she’s well again, Emma plans to rejoin her unit—until she learns that the Union has listed Franklin Thompson (her cover identity) as a deserter.

Emma can’t go back to defend her good name without exposing her secret, so she must remain on the sidelines for the rest of the war. After resuming her real name and female identity, she travels to Washington and finds work as a nurse in the local hospitals for the next two years. When General Lee surrenders in 1865, Emma rejoices that the nation’s bloodshed is finally at an end.

Shortly after the war ends, Emma publishes a book about her exploits entitled Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. Many thousands of copies sell because of the public’s keen interest in her story: “In all, Emma spent two years as a man in the Union army and made eleven different trips behind rebel lines” (123).

In 1867, Emma marries a childhood friend named Linus Seelye, and they have three sons together. Later, Emma reconnects with some of her army comrades, who encourage her to set the record straight about her years of service as Franklin Thompson. A special act of Congress in 1884 grants Emma back pay, a pension, and an honorable discharge from military service. She lives out the rest of her days peacefully in Texas with her family. When Union veterans found the Grand Army of the Republic, Emma is the only female on its membership roll.