For the next few months, Pauline was one of the Union’s most productive spies. Her usual ruse was pretending to be the sister of a missing Confederate soldier, using her sob story to sneak into Confederate Army camps. Once inside, she would assess their strength, supplies and plans. She drew maps from memory and wooed Southern soldiers into giving up intel.
Pauline was so good that in the summer of 1863, she was sent to Nashville to scout for the upcoming Tullahoma Campaign, a sweeping plan to push the Confederates out of Middle Tennessee.
While on a mission, she met a young Confederate officer in possession of fortification plans. She took a risk and stole them. While hurrying back toward the Union camp, her luck ran out. She was captured by Southern troops and court-martialed in Shelbyville. The verdict: guilty. The sentence: death by hanging.
Pauline knew if she could stall just a little longer, the Union troops would be coming. So she mustered all her acting skill to fake an illness so severe her captors would delay her execution. "She used to laugh when she related how she played sick when General Bragg was going to hang her,” Pauline’s San Francisco landlady recalled years later.
Her plan worked. One day, she awoke to the sound of the Confederate camp around her in full retreat. She was left behind in the melee and rescued in the nick of time by her Union friends.
Her story made headlines across the nation, and soon Pauline Cushman was a household name, cursed by the Confederacy and venerated by the Union. The army awarded her the title of “Major of Cavalry.” It was said her exploits made it all the way to Abraham Lincoln himself, who allegedly remarked, "She has done more to earn her title than many a male who wore the shoulder straps of Major during the war.”