Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War

Part 5 is the falling action and resolution of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy. In the final section, Abbott concludes Belle, Emma, and Elizabeth’s Civil War stories as the Civil War reaches its resolution. By aligning the structure of the women’s narratives with the timeline of the Civil War, Abbott offers readers insight into the complicated conclusion of the war. Each woman had her own personal perspective on the end of the war; their stories are tied together by their work as spies.

The falling action of Belle’s story is bittersweet, reflecting painfully on the theme of Loyalty and Betrayal in Espionage. Belle wrote a letter to President Lincoln threatening to publish a memoir depicting the “Union atrocities” she witnessed throughout the war if he did not release her husband from imprisonment. Her letter was likely ignored, but Hardinge was released, which should have been a happy ending. However, Belle couldn’t adjust to life after the war: “Soon she would no longer have even the war, those four ferocious, thrilling years that had raised her and given her a name” (404). Belle had come of age over the course the Civil War, and her fierce loyalty to the Confederacy defined her. Her identity was intimately interwoven with the South and her role as a spy. Even in her efforts to move on, Belle struggled to fit into her expected gender role: She married three times and toured the United States and Europe as an actress, telling dramatized tales of her life during the war.

Emma’s eventual acceptance of the parts of herself that she believed only belonged to “Frank Thompson” marks a final exploration of The Subversion of Gender Roles During Wartime. Her return to nursing, in a narrative sense, was a fitting resolution to her wartime life; nursing was how she began the war and, in the book’s conclusion, how she ended it. While living as a woman for the first time in almost a decade, Emma wrestled directly with questions of how gender roles shape identity. Her memoir about her experience as a female soldier provides insights into her private thoughts on the matter. Emma married and had children, a life that prior to the war was unthinkable to her. However, she admitted to always feeling like something was missing as she lived out the rest of her life as a woman. The freedom she experienced living outside of the expected female gender role was not possible to forget.

Finally, the conclusion of Elizabeth’s story offers a darker reflection on the theme of Legacy and Fame as a Means of Survival, marking the other side of the theme: how obscurity can be a fatal weakness. There is an irony here, as much of Elizabeth’s work would have benefitted from the obscurity she slipped into at the end of her life, when more national attention to her case likely would have benefitted her cause. Elizabeth’s substantial sacrifices for the Union took place under ever-intensifying scrutiny; the war’s impending conclusion pushed Elizabeth and her spy ring to take on greater and greater risks. As the Confederacy crumbled from the inside out, free speech was restricted, preventing anyone in Richmond from discussing the state of the Confederacy. Elizabeth nonetheless gathered a final piece of intelligence, giving Ulysses S. Grant the information he needed to win the final, decisive victory. However, Elizabeth’s wartime story concludes with hardships derived from her inability to exert sufficient social pressure. She was never repaid by the US government, despite her greatest efforts, and much of Richmond refused to work with her or her family. She was well-known enough only to be rejected from her local society; she died alone in her mansion, an outcast.

In Part 5, Abbott weaves together her themes of loyalty and betrayal, subversion of gender, and fame and legacy as a means of survival. The Epilogue pushes the reader to consider the long-term consequences of the sacrifices each woman made as a spy for her cause.