Sarah's father was a farmer, and he'd really wanted boys to help with the crops. He was irritated that instead, he got a daughter, and he treated her abominably, physically and emotionally abusing her. She'd often dress as a boy and hire herself out for labor jobs just to escape the drudgery of her real life.
In 1857, as the American Civil War was brewing south of the Canadian border, Sarah's father attempted to force her into an arranged marriage with a much older man she did not love. She decided this would not be her fate. Running away from home, she slipped across the border to America. Terrified of being tracked down - and more than a little inspired by her childhood hero Fanny Campbell - Sarah decided to disguise herself as a man, and took the name Franklin Thompson. Her good looks shone through as "boyishly handsome," and she quickly landed a job as a traveling Bible salesman. She turned out to be amazingly successful at this, and was sent west to Michigan, where she ended up in Flint, staying at a boarding house and continuing to sell Bibles.
"Thompson" was considered by the Flint locals to be intelligent and politically active. She was a strong believer in the Union. She wrote that she believed if the Confederacy was allowed to secede, it would be the eventual death of the United States. When the Civil War broke out and recruiting posters went up for the Union Army, "Franklin Thompson" decided to enlist.
 |
| "Franklin Thompson" |
While she was normally in the rearguard of the army in some sort of field hospital during battles, Sarah saw actual combat more than once. At the Battle of Williamsburg the field hospital was overrun by Confederates, and she took up a musket and helped fight them back, even personally leading a bayonet charge, according to one eyewitness. Then, under withering cannon-fire and later pouring rain, she and another soldier carried stretcher after stretcher of wounded soldiers to safety miles away.
At the Second Battle of Bull Run, she was assigned to carry messages - more dangerous than it sounds. Carrying orders from one part of the battlefield to another, Sarah was thrown from her horse when it was shot out from under her. She landed in a ditch, broke her leg, and sustained several internal injuries. It's speculated she might not have sought out the level of medical treatment she really needed, because she didn't want to be discovered as a woman and sent home. She also acted as a courier in the Battle of Fredericksburg, serving as an orderly to Col. Orlando Poe. She avoided direct action but was in the saddle constantly throughout the battle, relaying orders.
During this time, Sarah was assigned to military mail delivery, which was incredibly dangerous. It often involved journeys of more than 100 miles, and when it wasn't directly through enemy territory, mail carriers were in constant danger from "bushwackers" and southern sympathizers behind Union lines. While she would often be assigned back to nursing duties, Sarah continued carrying mail - always as Franklin Thompson, of course - and it was sometime during this service that she began to act as a spy for the Union.
It turns out Sarah was aching for revenge - she had a close male friend in her unit, James Vesey, who may have known her secret. He was killed in a Confederate ambush and she was devastated. When she learned a Union spy had been captured and executed in Virginia, she applied for the job, and, as Franklin Thompson, got it.
Used to riding long distances alone and handling herself without an escort, Sarah was sent behind enemy lines to gather information. Already a master of disguise, fooling her own fellow soldiers and commanders, she adopted new disguises to help in her espionage work. She even had an alternate identity in the south as a black man named Cuff, which she'd use to get close to Confederate troops to overhear plans and make notes of troop strength and locations. To do this, she used silver nitrate to dye her skin black, and wore a black wig. No one ever suspected Cuff. She also operated as a white woman under the name Bridget O'Shea. "Bridget" was an Irish immigrant, a peddler who sold soap, fruit and other luxuries to Confederate soldiers. Another time, she disguised herself as a black woman to get a job as a laundress for the Confederates. This paid off when she found a packet of official war papers an officer had left in his jacket when he sent it to be laundered. We don't know what was in those papers, but we know it was important enough that she immediately returned to Union territory and "delighted" the Union command with the contents of the papers. The commanders then sent her (still thinking she was Franklin Thompson, of course) into Maryland disguised as a detective named Charles Mayberry to track down a secret agent working for the Confederates. It's worth noting that no official proof of any of these spying activities has come down to us, other than stories Sarah herself shared. But formal records, then and now, of espionage activities were often not kept.
Although Sarah managed all of this without ever taking a bullet, without ever letting her real identity and gender be known, there was one enemy she couldn't fight - malaria. When she realized she'd come down with it, she was terrified that army doctors would discover her secret.
Sarah applied for a medical furlough, but it was denied. One evening in the spring of 1863, "Franklin Thompson" slipped away from camp, and Sarah Emma Edmonds entered a private hospital. By the time she'd healed, she was ready to resume her identity as Thompson and go back to war - but, to her horror, she saw posters saying Franklin Thompson was being hunted as a deserter.
Rather than risk execution as a deserter, Sarah decided to quit while she was ahead. She acquired feminine garb and started living again under her real identity, fears of her father's vengeance long gone. But Sarah was still called to serve. She quickly secured a position with the United States Christian Commission as a nurse - a female one - and went right back into the field hospitals to care for wounded soldiers.
As the war wound down, newspaper stories about other female soldiers who had dressed as men to serve the Union began to surface. Frances Clayton was one, and we'll visit her in a future article. Pauline Cushman was another. Sarah realized she had a story to tell, and she wasn't likely to be punished for her Franklin Thompson charade. She wrote a book called "Nurse and Spy in the Union Army." It was a best-seller, and, continuing her convictions, she donated almost all of the proceeds to help wounded soldiers in their recovery.
Things turned out well for Sarah. She met and married a mild-mannered Canadian mechanic named Linus Seelye three years after the war. They had three children together. In the late 1870s she attended a reunion of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and was "warmly received." Her fellow-soldiers remembered Franklin Thompson as "fearless and active." Despite the fact that women who'd done what she did were often considered "mentally ill" (that's 1860s code for "lesbian") or prostitutes, the men of the 2nd Michigan Infantry treated her like a hero.
In fact, her fellow soldiers thought so much of her they joined together to petition to have the charges of desertion against Franklin Thompson formally rescinded. They also fought to get her a military pension due to her injuries from the fall from her horse at the Second Battle of Manassas. Wouldn't you know it - one act of Congress later, they were successful. Sarah received a full military pension and Franklin Thompson was cleared as a deserter.
Sarah lived on and was active with veteran's organizations, including the Grand Army of the Republic, of which she is the only female member. She lived until the late 1800s, and was buried with full military honors in Houston in 1901.
So it seems Sarah was able to live out her dreams of dressing like a man and having adventures after all. And, like the storybook hero Fanny Campbell, Sarah got a happy ending.
No comments:
Post a Comment