Harriet Tubman's Role In The Civil War

Harriet Tubman: One of the most influential and essential woman of the civil war era. Not only was she a conductor of the underground railroad, but she was a Union spymaster. What is a union spymaster you may ask ? Well a Union spymaster is the leading spy, or one of the leading spies of the Union. She demonstrated intelligence that could be considered advanced for the era, although espionage could have existed long before the civil war.

Along with helping slaves through the underground railroad, she served as a spy for the union army. Harriet did not initially start off as a spy for the union, but as a chef and a nurse for the army. While she was volunteering as a nurse, she was recruited to become a part of the spy ring made up of former slaves. Not only was she a spy for the union army, but she was also the first woman in the country to
lead a military expedition .

Col. James Montgomery along with Harriet led a military expedition to free the slaves that were forced to work upon the rice plantations amongst the Combahee river. With stealthy planning and careful steps, the team avoided water mines and other obstacles that could have deterred them from their destination and goal. When they reached the shore of their destination, they destroyed a confederate supply depot that lead to the release of over seven hundred and fifty slaves. After the mission she went on, she tried to collect money, but was unsuccessful in doing so. The one thousand and eight hundred dollars that she was asking for was reduced to eight dollars a month for a widow pension.

Although the government authorized a payment of twenty five dollars, Harriet only received twenty dollars a month, until her death in 1913.
Buried with military honours at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York, she will always be a leading woman in the civil war time along with the other conductors and fellow spy masters of their era.

Harriet tubman was not the only woman who participated in the espionage of the civil war. Some women were spies for the Union army, while others were spies for the Confederate army. Pauline Cushman was another woman who participated in the Union spy ring, becoming an important part in the war. Pauline loved to act in plays and other activities, which lead to her becoming a part of the Union spy ring.

While performing in Louisville, Kentucky, she was dared by Confederate officers to interrupt a show to toast Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy. Cushman contacted the Union Army’s local provost marshal and offered to perform the toast as a way to ingratiate herself to the Confederates and become a federal intelligence operative. The marshal agreed, and she gave the toast the next
evening.

After the toast, Pauline Cushman was sent to Nashville, which was federally occupied. While in Nashville, she went on operative missions such as identifying Confederate spies, enemy operators, and other things among that lines. Becoming a spy was high risk at the time, and still is. Soon Pauline was caught and arrested by the Confederate. Although she was sentenced to hang, she was saved by the Union forces. After the attention received as an Union spy, she as forced to stop that line of work.

The return to acting was short lived, since the audience favors started to waver, which meant that she had to choose another career path to support herself. While coming down with an illness, Pauline became addicted to Morphine.

She died of an overdose at the age of 60 and was buried with military honors by the Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic in their cemetery in San Francisco.