After the Battle of Fredericksburg James Reid moved into Emma’s tent, where she revealed more of herself than she ever had to Jerome.
Jerome, finally released from Camp Parole, noted in his journal that his “friend Frank” had grown “extremely fond” of the married soldier, that they seemed to be “particular friends.” He never inquired about the nature or extent of their relationship—he was, after all, still courting Anna Corey—but questions and suspicions crept through his mind. It was all he thought about when he walked with Emma to get the mail at headquarters, or when she stopped by his tent to show him a new novel, Pauline of the Potomac, about a female spy for General McClellan, or when she left camp for a few days, picking up messages at Alexandria. “Have not had a very long chat with Frank and I feel quite lonely without him,” Jerome wrote, “but I suppose he enjoys his tentmate. . . . Reid seems a fine fellow & is very fond of Frank.” He began referring to Emma as Reid’s “pet.”
He told himself that there was nothing untoward about Emma and Reid’s relationship, that they were simply “individuals who repose in the pleasantest arbor of friendship.” He did not want to suspect the worst of Reid, whom he called “one of nature’s noblemen,” nor of Emma, his fellow devout Christian and confidante. He thought about them bunking together, working to weatherize their tent, collecting stones and bricks to build a hearth and chimney, sharing stories by their fire. He wondered if Emma had recounted the night she sheared her hair and bound her breasts and renamed herself Frank Thompson, if he was no longer the only one who knew her truth. He made sure to share the news of each love letter from Anna Corey, searching Emma’s face for the impact of his words.
While away collecting mail Emma sent Jerome a letter, signing her real name for the first time since she was a girl back on the farm in Canada, doodling in her Bible:
Jan. 16/63
In the first place, I will say that I am happy to know that you are prospering so well in matters of the heart. In spite of the ridicule which sentiment meets with everywhere, I am free to state that upon the success of our love schemes depends very much of our happiness in this world. . . . Dear Jerome, I am in earnest in my congratulations & daily realize that had I met you some years ago I might have been much happier now. But Providence has ordered it otherwise & I must be content. I would not change now if I could—if my life’s happiness depended on it. I do not love you less because you love another, but rather more, for your nobleness of character displayed in your love for her—God make her worthy of so good a husband.
Your loving friend,
Emma
Perhaps signing her name let her reclaim some small vestige of truth, lost not because of Frank Thompson—he had always been an authentic part of her—but because she coveted a man who wasn’t hers to have. She had allowed herself to imagine an honest life with Jerome, but this “love scheme” with Reid was a dead-end sin, bringing her equal measures of joy and misery, leaving both her and Frank with nowhere to go. For now, her lies and her lives were intertwined, two strands of a twisting double helix, but she knew the structure could not be sustained. It could unravel at any time, from either within or without.
Her comrades spread stories about women being exposed in the ranks, and such stories seemed to grow more numerous by the day. Most inadvertently divulged their sex in the course of regular army life, as was the case with “Charles Norton,” a private with the 141st Pennsylvania Infantry who stole a fellow officer’s boots. The resulting investigation revealed this “general favorite” to be a she, who was “speedily mustered out of the service.” Two more women, serving under Union general Philip Sheridan, had been discovered just a few weeks earlier. “While out on the foraging expedition these Amazons had secured a supply of ‘apple jack’ by some means, got very drunk, and on the return had fallen into Stone River and had been nearly drowned,” the general wrote. “After they had been fished from the water, in the process of resuscitation their sex was disclosed, though up to this time it appeared to be known only to each other.”
A careless few betrayed themselves through stereotypical feminine behavior. Two women serving with the 95th Illinois Infantry were outed when an officer threw apples to them. They were dressed in full military uniform, but instinctively made a grab for the hem of their nonexistent aprons in order to catch the fruit. They were discharged immediately. Another woman who’d recently tried to enlist was suspected when a commander witnessed her giving “a quick jerk of her head that only a woman could give.” A recruit in Rochester, New York, forgot how to don pants, and tried to put hers on by pulling them over her head.
In the most dramatic discovery, a member of the Army of the Potomac—a corporal from New Jersey—had recently given birth to a baby boy in a camp not far from Emma’s own. She had concealed her sex and her pregnancy beneath an oversize coat, and went into labor on picket duty. The soldier, said another picket, “complained of feeling unwell, but little notice was given his complaints at first. His pain and other symptoms of severe indisposition increased, becoming so evident that his officers had him carried to a nearby farmhouse. There the worthy corporal was safely delivered of a fine, fat little recruit.”
The rank and file of the Union army seemed thrilled by news of the birth, an affirmation of life in the midst of relentless destruction and death, and to Emma’s surprise the men admired rather than condemned the new mother, even taking up a collection for her. Yet despite their generous reaction, Emma was unnerved. Her comrades might take a harder look at her smooth face and diminutive feet, listen for tones lurking just beneath her practiced voice. They might turn “Our Woman” from an affectionate nickname into an accusation. Despite her bravery on the battlefield and her work behind the lines, she could still be dismissed or arrested, depending on the whims of her superiors. She had worked too hard for too long to create Frank Thompson, and she wanted his demise to be her decision alone.
After the bloody defeat at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln replaced Ambrose Burnside with General Joseph Hooker, whose headquarters—a combination, it was said, “of barroom and brothel”—were so infamously wicked that his name would become synonymous with the world’s oldest profession. “Beware of rashness,” the president warned his new commander, “but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.” In mid-March “Fighting Joe” sent Emma, James Reid, Jerome Robbins, and the rest of the Ninth Corps to Kentucky as part of the Army of the Cumberland, preparing to support General Ulysses S. Grant’s renewed attempt to capture Vicksburg, a fortified city that held the Mississippi River for the Confederacy. Emma reached for her journal and penned her last entry as a member of the Army of the Potomac: “The weather department is in perfect keeping with the War Department, its policy being to make as many changes as possible, and every one worse than the last. May God bless the old Army, and save it from total annihilation.”
She took the train to Louisville and then continued on southeast to Lebanon, where she received orders to infiltrate enemy lines. Confederate forces under General John Pegram, said to be the advance of General Longstreet’s division, had crossed the Cumberland River and were circling Union troops at nearby Danville. Emma was to gather any information she could about numbers of cavalry, infantry, and artillery.
Before her arrival Union troops had skirmished with a group of Confederate cavalry, taking five rebels prisoner, and one of them unwittingly donated his uniform for her mission. Noncommissioned officers of the cavalry had no standard uniform, the only requirement being that the cloth was butternut in color, and she decided to pose as a Southern civilian traveling from farmhouse to farmhouse, seeking butter and eggs for the rebel army. As always, she carried her seven-shooter revolver.
Emma wandered past the lines and into a village, knocking at the first door she came to, and was surprised to find herself in the midst of a wedding party, a group of soldiers and sundry relatives gathered around a long mahogany table piled with ham, biscuits, horehound candy sticks, and a traditional wedding fruit cake, sliced open and spilling flecks of apples and raisins. Her mouth watered; her last decent meal had consisted of hardtack and beef soup at Christmas. The bride, Emma learned, was a young widow whose husband had been killed in combat a few months ago, and she’d been eager to remarry ever since, fearful that the war was fast depleting her pick of eligible men.
It was a valid concern; the war was on its way to claiming one in five Southern white men of military age, a situation that prompted frantic letters to the editor. “Having made up my mind not to be an old maid, and having only a moderate fortune and less beauty, I fear I shall find it rather difficult to accomplish my wishes,” an eighteen-year-old Virginian named Hattie wrote to the Southern Literary Messenger. “Do you think I will be overlooked amidst this wreck of matter and crush of men and horses?” Fear of spinsterhood led to a breakdown in mores—“the blockade don’t keep out babies,” one South Carolina woman quipped—and to unconventional liaisons; many girls settled for marrying amputees, or even Yankees. Another captured the attitude of Southern belles as the war progressed: “One looks at a man so differently when you think he may be killed tomorrow.”
Emma noticed that this bride had forgone “widow’s weeds” in favor of a more festive costume: frills of lace at her wrists, pearl buttons trailing down her spine, a single spray of orange blossoms encircling her head, purple fabric in honor of the dead. Her new husband spotted Emma loitering on the periphery of the party and broke away from the crowd.
He was dark-haired and imposing, with a long, loping gait and a mustache that spiraled like the shell of a snail. He introduced himself as Captain Logan, a recruiting officer for the rebel army, and asked what business she had in the village.
Just collecting supplies for the soldiers, she replied.
The captain nodded, raised his glass to his lips. She congratulated him, apologized for interrupting the festivities, and turned to leave.
A hand curled around her shoulder and turned her back.
“See here, my lad,” he said. “I think the best thing you can do is enlist and join a company which is just forming here in the village, and will leave in the morning. We are giving a bounty to all who freely enlist, and are conscripting those who refuse. Which do you propose to do? Enlist and get the bounty, or refuse and be obliged to go without anything?”
His gaze meandered down her body. It occurred to her that she would rather be discovered as a woman than as a Union spy.
“I think I shall wait for a few days before I decide,” she said.
“But we can’t wait for you to decide. The Yankees may be upon us any moment, for we are not far from their lines, and we will leave here either tonight or in the morning early. I will give you two hours to decide this question, and in the meantime you must be put under guard.”
He clenched Emma’s arm and pulled her to a corner of the room. Two soldiers positioned themselves on either side, closing her in. Her head reached only as high as their shoulders. She talked up at them, presenting herself as a simple, honest Kentuckian, worried, like anyone else, about the Yankees invading the town. She wondered how many rebel troops were currently in the area; where were they heading next? With every sip of whiskey her guards let slip another scrap of information; the rebel forces at Danville comprised 3,500 cavalry, three regiments of infantry, and six pieces of artillery. The revelers rose from the table and formed a grand chain, clasping shoulders and sliding hands, keeping time to the plink of the banjo and the clank of spoons, spinning in tight concentric circles like the works of a watch. Minutes tumbled into hours and the circles merged into one, halfhearted and teetering, voices garbling the words to “God Save the South,” whiskey sloshing over glass rims. At a pause in the music Captain Logan lumbered toward Emma, and asked if she’d made her decision.
“I’ve concluded to wait until I’m conscripted,” Emma said.
“Well, you will not have to wait long for that, so you may consider yourself a soldier of the Confederacy from this hour, and subject to military discipline.” He added that he was forming a company of cavalry, and would be ready to set off in the morning.
The captain returned to the circle, leaving her to consider his words. She knew he was serious, especially as she would be required to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate government, but she trusted in God and her own ingenuity to escape the dilemma. She would have to flee before being forced to declare her loyalty to the rebel cause; if she refused to be sworn in at the service after conscription, Logan and his soldiers would suspect her true intentions and execute her on the spot. All night long she stood, foot throbbing, her guards watching her as she watched the captain, twirling and kissing his bride.
At daylight Captain Logan reappeared. He led her to a group of waiting soldiers and pointed out her horse. Within moments they were trotting briskly over the country, the captain complimenting her riding skills. You will be grateful, he said, when the war is over and the South has gained her independence. You will be proud to have been a Confederate soldier, to have driven the vandals from their soil and steeped your saber in Yankee blood. “Then,” he added, “you will thank me for the interest I have taken in you, and for the gentle persuasion which I made use of to stir up your patriotism and remind you of your duty to your country.” As he finished this speech a Union reconnoitering party rose in sight atop a hill and galloped toward them, cavalry in advance and infantry in the rear.
The Confederate captain ordered Emma and his men to charge forward, weapons drawn. A chorus of rebel yells roared fiercely in her ears. They were upon each other then, thrashing and rearing, and she found herself on the Federal side of the line. The Union captain recognized her and signaled for her to fall in next to him, a position that put her directly across from Captain Logan, the man to whom she owed “such a debt of gratitude.” This was her chance, she realized, “to cancel all obligations in that direction.”
Her brain directed her arm to rise and her arm obeyed, aiming her revolver at his head. She wanted not to kill him, but merely to spoil the “graceful curve of his mustache,” to render him, permanently, a lesser version of himself.
She pulled the trigger.