She looked quite impressive, considering the world that she lived in.

In an 1865 photo of her, Pauline Cushman looks like a lot of other women of her day, wearing

a military-style outfit to show support for their particular side of the Civil War.

But while most were unofficial copies, Pauline wore the real deal, because she was a union spy.

Her real name had been Harriet Wood, but at 17, she changed it when she moved to New York City to pursue acting. There, she met her husband, Charles Dickinson, in 1853,

and the couple had two children together. Unfortunately, her husband died in 1862,

and Pauline left her children with her in-laws while she continued her career. While performing

a play at the Woods Theater in April of 1863, Confederate officers paid her

$350 to make a toast to the Confederacy during the performance.

So Pauline approached a union officer named Colonel Orlando Hurley Moore and asked what she should

do. Surprisingly, he told her to accept the offer and then report to his office the next day.

Her toast brought the house down, but it also cost Pauline her job. She reported to Moore's

office, though, and soon accepted a new position as a union spy. In the summer of 1863,

she left on an assignment to Nashville, Tennessee. There, she pretended to search for

a missing brother in Confederate camps. Of course, the real goal was to determine each camp's

size, fortifications, and what sort of supplies they had. Every visit required her to recall

the information by memory, since taking notes would get her caught. At one camp, though,

she came across fortification maps, realizing their importance, she tucked them into her boots,

but her frequent trips across union lines had raised suspicions, and Confederate officers stopped

her. Naturally, they found the maps and promptly arrested her. Soon afterward,

they found her guilty of spying and sentenced her to hang. But Pauline fell ill, and as luck would

have it, the union soon captured Shelbyville, forcing the Confederates to flee and leaving her

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