Sandra Sechriest

English 241-40A

Archive/Rare Book Collection Report

Dr. Thomas Long

The Thrilling Adventures, Experiences, and Escapes of A Woman, As Nurse, Spy, and Scout, in Hospitals, Camps, and Battlefields.

By S. Emma E. Edmonds

I chose to do an archive or rare book report for my second paper. This was the first time I have been in a reference room in a library. I went to the Virginiana Room in the Hampton Public Library. The collection in the Virginiana Room was quite broad; there are biographies, census materials, historical journals, maps, newspapers, and a large selection of genealogical references. The nice woman, who is in my class, gave me a tour and once I got used to the overwhelming smell of old paper, I set to work trying to find a book that piqued my interest. I really had no idea what I was looking for, so I started going through different books. I looked through books on old Southern songs, Harpers Weekly periodicals, some presidential writings, and a book on local Indians. Eventually, I came across The Female Spy of the Union Army by S. Emma E. Edmonds. The version that I found was published in 1883 in Philadelphia.

This book is a true account of S. Emma E. Edmond’s life and actions during the Civil War. She was not an American, but had moved here from the Province of New Brunswick, five years before the book begins. She believed that service in the Foreign Missionary field was her duty. At the time that war broke out she was thankful to God that she was "permitted in this hour of my adopted country’s need to express a tithe of the gratitude which" she felt toward the Northern States. When she joined she was not merely going to Washington to wait for the wounded to arrive, she was going to the front to "participate in all the excitement of the battle scenes, or in other words, be a Field Nurse."

In the book she recounts many of her adventures or escapades as a spy. Emma was with a portion of McClellan’s army in Alexandria when she was "ordered by General Halleck to pass the rebel lines." She went to Washington and "procured a disguise, that of a female contraband" and "passed through the enemy’s lines." There she was ordered to cook at headquarters where the officers would slip up and speak freely. In one evening she had heard enough but decided not to escape until the morning. At that time she discovered some papers that had fallen out of a coat, which she took with her. She left at breakfast time and hid in an old house, around which a skirmish was waged, until she was sure she was safely within Federal lines. She reported to headquarters as just "having returned from rebeldom." The documents turned out to be the "entire plan to insure the capture of Washington." During Pope’s campaign she crossed the enemy’s lines three times in ten days, and during the second battle of Bull Run, she split her time between the Confederates and the Federals. She also talks about being within a few yards of Kearney when he was killed, she saw him fall from his horse and heard the joyful exclamations of the Confederates when they discovered it was Kearney. I found it interesting that at this point in the book, she regrets that she wasn’t the one killed and regards herself as a "poor insignificant creature, with a heart and soul as fully devoted to the Union cause as Kearney’s was; only lacking the ability to accomplish the same results."

Emma goes on to recount one of her most interesting episodes as a nurse in the battlefields. Disguised as a man, she comes across a youthful soldier who has been mortally wounded in the neck. She asked the soldier if there was anything she could do for him and he said yes because he knew he was dying quickly. The soldier went on to reveal that he was not as he seemed, but was in fact a female. She went on to say that she had enlisted with the purest of motives and had never been discovered or suspected. All of her relatives were deceased and so she asked Emma to bury her, because she never wanted it to be discovered that she was a woman. Emma did as she asked. After two years of service, Emma asked to be discharged, feeling that if she stayed any longer she would certainly die. She wrote, "all the horrid scenes that I had witnessed during the past two years seemed now before me with vivid distinctness, and I could think of nothing else." She was released the next day with a certificate of disability, and embarked for Cairo where she laid aside her military uniform and acquired female clothing.

At the end of the book she recounts a story of a dying Union soldier denied a cup of tea by a woman of Virginia. A few moments after the denial "an old lame Negro woman came limping up the aisle with a large basket on each arm." She donated the "packages of tea, cans of fruit, pears and peaches, lint, bandages and pocket-handkerchiefs" to the Union soldiers. The sick men were overcome "with wonder and admiration" and proclaimed her "the only white woman they had seen since they came to Winchester." In her conclusion, Emma speaks of the continuing war and the healthy men who crowd the streets who should be fighting. She reprimands herself for not having done anything for a year and decides to return to the Army to offer her services "no matter how perilous the position might be."

I felt that the book was an incredible account of a woman’s journey in the Army. After deciding that I was going to write about this book, I thought, on a lark, I would go on the Internet to see if I could find any other information on Emma. I was surprised to find several sites where she was mentioned. Visiting these sites helped to round out her character even more. She enlisted in the Army as a man under the alias Frank Thompson, to serve as a male nurse. She completed eleven spy missions before her disability, which was actually a case of malaria, led her to leave the Army for a while. After her bout with malaria, she discovered her alias Frank Thompson had been branded a deserter. At that time she went to Washington to work as a nurse until the end of the war. Emma wrote her memoirs after the war. It turned out to be a very popular book and sold thousands of copies. I found out that it was originally published in 1865 and is still in print today. Emma later married and had three children, but she still could not get over being labeled a deserter. Eventually, she petitioned the War Department to review her case and was granted an honorable discharge.

I was further amazed to find out that hundreds of women, disguised as men enlisted in the Union Army and that she was the only one known to have written about her experiences. I felt that the book gave great insight to the passion that these women felt about the issue of slavery and how patriotic they felt towards their country. It serves as a great asset to American Literature to have a female insiders’ version of the Civil War and I think it is an immense tribute that it is still in print.

Edmonds, S. Emma E. The Female Spy of the Union Army. Philadelphia: Crawford &

Company, 1883.

Markle, Donald E. Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War. 25 June

2001http://www.civilwarhome.com/edmondsbio.htm.