A Spy in the Civil War
“Franklin was known by every man in the regiment, and her desertion was the topic of every campfire. The beardless boy was a universal favorite, and much anxiety was expressed over her safety. We never heard of her again during the war, and could never account for her desertion.” Captain Morse stated while being interviewed by the Kansas City Star. Sarah Emma Edmonds was a woman who helped out in the Civil War by selling bibles and books, was a nurse, and a spy with many different jobs, while being disguised as a man. Sarah Emma Edmondson was born on December 1841 in New Brunswick, Canada. She had unsympathetic parents who had resented her due to her not being born a boy. Sarah grew up working in the fields everyday, while wearing boys clothes. At the age of 16, she escaped from her family before her father could force her to get married to a neighbor. Sarah freed from her home in Canada, lived in Moncton, and eventually moved to Flint, Michigan to keep …show more content…
Scared that her identity wasn’t secured, she quit and got another job as a bible salesman in Connecticut. This time, she was disguised as a man. In order to make the change believable, Emma had to change her name once again to Franklin Thompson. That name she would keep throughout her whole Civil War experience. After Edmonds had heard the news of the Civil War outbreak in 1861, she was determined to become apart of it. Edmonds enlisted under the name of Franklin Thompson and was accepted in May of 1861 into the Michigan Infantry. She was first enlisted as a male field nurse who stayed behind and helped the wounded soldiers during every battle. After a few months of being a nurse, she was assigned to be a mail carrier who delivered the mail that was sent between different regiments in the Civil War. It was a little after that when she was assigned to many different spy missions by General