Women in the Civil War

by Larry G. Eggleston

  She often served as a guide for General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson and his Confederate cavalry to lead them through the rough terrain, which she knew well. She also lead Confederate soldiers to isolated Federal outposts where the element of surprise was on their side.

  She became an accomplished spy, entering Union strongholds under the guise of selling eggs and vegetables. While peddling her goods she would learn everything she could about the strength, gun emplacements, and plans of the Union soldiers. She kept the information in her memory, and reported it to the Confederate authorities.

  After many successful missions, the Union authorities realized she was spying for the Confederacy and a bounty was placed on her head. Colonel Starr of the 9th West Virginia Regiment captured her in July 1862 while on a scouting expedition to Somerville, Tennessee.

  Nancy Hart. Courtesy of the West Virginia Archives.

  During her captivity she looked for ways to escape and get even with her captors. Late one night she got her chance when the guard assigned to watch her was not paying close attention to her. She quickly overpowered him, grabbed his gun, which she fired, and fatally wounded him. She then stole Colonel Starr’s horse and sped away in the dark of night.

  The next morning she led Confederate Major Bailey and 200 men on a raid to Somerville. The Union pickets panicked when they saw the Confederate troops approaching and fled without firing a shot, leaving the Union camp unguarded.

  At four o’clock in the morning, the Federal camp was awakened by a single shot fired by one of the raiding party to wake the camp. When the Union soldiers rushed to the assembly area they found themselves completely surrounded by Confederate troops.

  Major Bailey confiscated all the Federal supplies, weapons, and ammunition. The Federal troops were all taken prisoner and marched down the same road that they had forced Nancy to walk when she was their prisoner.

  Clara Judd—Confederate Spy and Smuggler

  Clara Judd was born in Minnesota and was the widow of an Episcopal clergyman from Winchester, Tennessee. During the Civil War she gained a reputation as a Confederate spy and smuggler. Her main expertise was in smuggling and she supplied most of the drugs used by the Confederate troops from Tennessee. She was also a spy for General John Hunt Morgan.

  On December 16, 1862, she was sent to Louisville, Kentucky, to gather information for General Morgan about the number of Federal troops stationed there and where they were located. On her way back, while walking between Murfreesboro and Nashville, a man named Delos Thurman Blythe approached her. He was a Yankee agent sent by Allen Pinkerton to trap her. He was posing as a paroled Union prisoner with a pass from General Bragg to enter Nashville.

  With his charm and wit he soon won Clara’s confidence. As they walked he told her that he was a Confederate agent. He talked about several of his spying exploits in detail and by the time they reached Nashville, Clara was beginning to confide in him about her espionage and smuggling activities. Because of her infatuation with Blythe, she was beginning to let her guard down.

  Upon reaching Nashville they found rooms at the Commercial Hotel. Once settled in, Blythe contacted Federal authorities and requested Clara be put under constant surveillance. Blythe continued to romance Clara while they were in Nashville, learning more about her spying activities each day. When she attempted to move on, Blythe faked an illness, which required nursing care. Clara stayed on to nurse her new lover back to health. This gave Blythe time to set the trap.

  When Blythe recovered, he joined Clara as she was preparing to leave Nashville. She was busy packing drugs, medicine, and secret documents into the false bottoms of her travelling trunks. She was concerned that her bags would be searched and she would be discovered. Blythe told her not to be concerned because he had taken care of everything and her baggage would not be searched. Clara again let her guard down. She should have suspected something was not right when he told her that he had taken care of everything. But she was too taken with her newfound love to be wary of him.

  Federal agents a few miles out of Nashville stopped the train on which she and Blythe were traveling. The train was carefully searched and both Clara and Blythe were arrested as spies when the documents and drugs were discovered in their luggage.

  Blythe’s plan had worked perfectly. He was roughed up in front of Clara and then supposedly taken to a Federal prison. The Federal agents had Clara lodged in a Nashville hotel under guard. Believing that her lover would soon be executed, she begged to meet with Union authorities to plead for his life. Her request was denied.

  She never found out the fate of her lover or that he had so cleverly deceived her.

  General William Starke Rosencrans ordered Clara sent to Alton Military Prison, in Alton, Illinois, to await trial. Since the Alton prison had no facilities for women she was kept in a local boarding house. She stayed there until August 4, 1863, when, to her surprise, she was released without trial. She returned home to Minnesota never knowing the fate of her lover, Delos Blythe.

  Her capture cost the Confederacy a large amount of drugs and information. It also caused the delay of General Morgan’s raid into Kentucky.

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  Sarah E. Thompson: Union Spy and Nurse

  It took one courageous woman to bring down the feared Confederate raider General John Hunt Morgan. Her name was Sarah E. Thompson. She accomplished what the Union army failed to do in the three years it chased Morgan.

  Sarah E. Thompson was born on February 11, 1838, in Green County, Tennessee. In 1854, at the age of 16, she married Sylvanius H. Thompson. Sarah was 23 years old when the Civil War began. Sylvanius and Sarah were both loyal to the Union even though the area of Tennessee where they resided had mixed loyalties, but leaned toward the Confederacy.

  After the war began Sylvanius enlisted in the 1st Tennessee Cavalry and served as a recruiter for the Union army. Sarah worked with her husband and helped organize Union sympathizers for recruitment around the Greenville area.

  Sarah would gather all the Union loyalists at a pre-designated spot at night and move them north to join the Union army. She is said to have led over 500 loyal recruits to the Union army this way.

  Sarah was captured several times and wounded once by Confederate soldiers while making her way through the woods with recruits or dispatches. She was always able to talk her way out of her arrests and was set free.

  In late 1863 Sarah’s husband Sylvanius was captured by Confederate forces while carrying a message to General Ambrose Burnside, the commander in Knoxville. Sylvanius was sent to Belle Island Prison in Richmond, Virginia. He escaped and by early January 1864 he was back in the Greenville area where he continued his recruiting efforts for the Union. His return to duty was short-lived because on January 10, 1864, he was ambushed near Greenville and killed by a Confederate soldier.

  Sarah was grief-stricken by the death of her husband. His death at the hands of the Confederates spurred her to intensify her efforts on behalf of the Union. She delivered dispatches and recruiting information to the Union army and continued her efforts to organize recruits.

  General John Hunt Morgan. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Her desire to avenge the death of her husband was finally becoming a reality when in early September 1864 General John Hunt Morgan and his Confederate Raiders rode into Greenville.

  General Morgan had been captured by Union forces near New Lisbon, Ohio, in late July 1863 and sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary. In April 1864 he and six of his comrades, using table knives as shovels, tunneled out of the prison and returned to the Confederate army. When he returned to the Confederacy, he was appointed commander of the Department of Southwest Virginia.

  On August 23, 1864, Morgan’s Raiders headed for Greenville. General Morgan and his 1,600 troops arrived there on September 23. He decided to stay overnight at the Williams mansion, a two-story brick home on Irish Street. He had stayed in the Williams home twice before even though the Fry Hotel was just around the corner.
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  Dr. Alexander Williams, who died prior to the war, built the mansion. He and his wife Catherine had one daughter, Fanny Williams, and three sons. When the Civil War began, two of Mrs. Williams’ sons became Confederate officers. One of the sons was on General Morgan’s staff. The third son, Joe, remained loyal to the Union. Joe was married to a loyal Union woman named Lucy.

  The night that General Morgan stayed at the Williams mansion, Lucy was visiting a relative at College Farm, four miles from Greenville. Some accounts of General Morgan’s death give the credit to Lucy Williams as the informant who tipped off the Union army. She could not have done so since she was not in Greenville at the time.

  As General Morgan rode into town Sarah Thompson noticed that he had posted guards around the town and around the Williams mansion. She quickly grabbed her milk pail and made for the edge of town. When stopped by the Confederate guards she explained that her cows were over the hill and needed milking. The guards let her pass.

  Once over the hill she discarded the pail and ran for the woods so she could make her way to the Union lines. She stopped at a neighbor’s house and borrowed a horse and rode along the railroad track to Bull’s Gap where the Union army was encamped. She reported the whereabouts of General Morgan to Union General Gillem who was somewhat skeptical of her report until Colonel John S. Brownlow of the 3rd Tennessee Calvary and Lieutenant Edward J. Brooks of the 10th Michigan Infantry vouched for her, based on her past performance.

  One hundred Union cavalrymen were selected from the 10th Michigan and the 3rd, 9th, 12th and 13th Tennessee Regiments. Sarah was given a fresh horse and accompanied the soldiers toward Greenville.

  General Morgan was still asleep when the Union troops swept into Greenville just prior to dawn. When the alarm was sounded by one of the sentries, General Morgan was shaken awake by one of his guards. Quickly donning a pair of pants over his nightclothes he hurried downstairs and asked Mrs. Williams where the Yankees were. She replied, “Everywhere,” which made General Morgan realize that he had underestimated the enemy.

  General Morgan dashed out the rear door of the mansion and across the huge lawn to Main Street where he hid behind the Fry Hotel. This hiding place did not give him adequate cover so he ran to the Episcopal Church, which was next door to the hotel, and hid himself in its cellar.

  Before leaving home Sarah had asked Flora, a servant girl, to keep an eye on the Williams mansion for her. Upon returning home, she asked Flora if she knew where Morgan was hiding. The servant indicated that he was somewhere on the premises. Sarah left the house to search for Morgan. She walked down Depot Street, which bordered the Williams estate on the south.

  Meanwhile, General Morgan began to feel insecure in the church cellar. He then ran out the back of the church, through the shrubbery of the Williams lawn and slid under a white fence next to the grapevines.

  Sarah spotted him as he slid under the fence. She ran and hailed the first Union trooper she could find. She told him to tear part of the fence down and he would find General Morgan.

  The Union cavalryman was Private Andrew Campbell of Company G of the 13th Regiment Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry. When he pulled back a board on the fence he recognized General Morgan and shouted for him to surrender. General Morgan shouted back, “I will never surrender!” Private Campbell noticed Morgan reaching for something and, thinking that it could be a gun, fired his rifle at the General. The bullet hit General Morgan in the center of his body. “Oh, God,” were the last words General John Hunt Morgan ever spoke. He died almost instantly. During the battle, 100 of the Confederate soldiers were killed and 75 were taken prisoner. The rest of Morgan’s men managed to escape.

  After this, Sarah could not remain in Greenville—especially since the Confederacy had offered a bounty for her capture.

  Sarah and Lucy Williams, because of their Union loyalties, had to flee to the safety of the North.

  Sarah then served as an army nurse until the end of the war. She served first in Knoxville, Tennessee, and then in Cleveland, Ohio. After the war she supported herself by giving lectures in northern cities on her experience during the war.

  On January 1, 1866, she married for the second time, to Orville Bacon of Broome County, New York. Orville died in 1877 and Sarah moved to Washington, D.C., to take a $600 a year clerical job in the Treasury Department.

  In the 1880s she married for the third time to James W. Cotton. By 1890 she was widowed for the third time.

  Sarah then applied for a pension for her work during the war. A bill (S.1837) was presented before Congress to give her a pension of $12 per month. She was awarded the pension by a special act of the fifty-fifth Congress in 1899.

  Sarah then worked for the Post Office until 1903 when she retired at the age of 65 and went to live with her son Orville Bacon, Jr., on Capitol Hill.

  One April morning in 1909 Sarah was caught between two trolley cars and received a skull fracture. She died two days later on April 21, 1909. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

   38

  Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke: Union Nurse

  Mary Ann Bickerdyke was born in 1817 in Knox County, Ohio. She was the mother of one daughter and two sons. She lost her husband and daughter prior to the beginning of the Civil War. After this tragic loss she decided to become a nurse and devote her life to helping relieve sickness and suffering. She was a trained nurse working in Galesburg, Illinois, when the Civil War began.

  One Sunday in June 1861 Mary Ann was attending church when the pastor, Edward Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, asked the congregation to donate food and supplies to help the military camps in Cairo, Illinois. A full wagonload of food and supplies was soon gathered and Mary Ann Bickerdyke was asked to deliver them to the Union camps. She accepted the task, said goodbye to her sons, and began the trip to Cairo, which marked the beginning of her extraordinary service to the Union army. Other than short visits she would not see her sons until the end of the war.

  When she arrived in Cairo she was appalled by the unsanitary conditions in the hospital. She decided to do something about these conditions by offering her services. She rented a room and demanded that the hospital be cleaned up. She explained that the men would have a better chance of recovery if they were bathed and surrounded by sanitary conditions.

  Her efforts to clean up the hospital soon spread to five other area hospitals. Although she was not welcomed at first by the surgeons, she was soon receiving praise for her efforts. Doctor J.J. Woodward of the 22nd Illinois Infantry Regiment gave her praise by describing her as “Strong as a man, muscles of iron, nerves of steel; sensitive, but self reliant, kind and tender; seeking all for others, nothing for herself.”

  Her efforts in getting supplies and food for the soldiers and her untiring nursing of the sick and wounded soon earned her the nickname “Mother Bickerdyke.” Her notoriety began to spread and she soon gained the friendship of many high ranking officers including General Ulysses Simpson Grant and General William Tecumseh Sherman.

  She would do anything to get proper food and supplies for the sick and wounded. She would even beg food and supplies from any available source. She would on occasion raid government supplies without permission. She always found some way to keep the hospitalized soldiers fed and cared for.

  As an agent for the Sanitary Commission, Mary Ann Bickerdyke ran field hospitals for General Grant’s Army in Tennessee and Mississippi, then with General Sherman’s Army in Chattanooga and Atlanta. She set up army laundries, foraged for food, cooked, and nursed the wounded and sick soldiers through 19 battles. She refused to be tied up with army red tape. She said that there was too much work to do to bother.

  On May 30, 1862, while Mother Bickerdyke was serving at a hospital in Corinth, Mississippi, General Harry Wager Halleck was marching his troops past the hospital. Mary Ann had all the hospital’s barrels of drinking water set alongside the marching route with drinking ladles. When General Halleck refused to let the men
stop, she shouted in a loud rough voice, “Halt!” The troops stopped and while they were trying to figure out what happened the hospital staff gave all the troops water, bread and fresh fruit. As it turned out, this was the only food the men would have for two days. She was reprimanded for her actions but made no apology.

  In June of 1863 Mary Ann was put in charge of the Gayoso Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The hospital was formerly the Gayoso Hotel and Mary Ann decided to make it the best, neatest, cleanest, and most comfortable hospital in Memphis.

  Soon after her arrival she entered one of the wards at eleven o’clock in the morning and found badly wounded soldiers who had not been fed breakfast. After investigating, she found out that the surgeon in charge of the ward had been out on the town the night before and had slept late. He neglected to feed and tend to the men who were under his care.

  She was denouncing him quite loudly when he entered the ward and asked what was wrong. She called him a miserable scoundrel and said that these wounded men were worth a thousand of him and were sick and left to starve while he was out getting drunk.

  She told him to take off his shoulder straps because he wasn’t going to be in the army much longer. Within 30 days he was discharged from the army. The surgeon appealed his discharge to General Sherman who patiently listened to the whole story and then replied, “Well, if it was her, I can do nothing for you. She ranks me. You will have to see Mr. Lincoln.”

  While she was serving as matron of the army hospital in Cairo, she noticed that food designated for the sick and wounded was disappearing. When she complained to the chief surgeon he threw her out of his office. She decided to set a trap and catch the thief. She laced some peaches with medicine, which would make a person vomit. Soon she heard moans from the kitchen, and upon investigation she found several sick members of the hospital staff who had eaten the peaches. She then warned them that the next time she would use rat poison.