This Female Civil War Soldier Participated in the Bloodiest Battle in American History and Spied on the South—or Did She?

Kellie B. Gormly Contributing Writer On the evening of September 17, 1862, in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Private Franklin Thompson of the Second Michigan Infantry Regiment walked among the wounded, the dying and the dead. According to Thompson’s later recollections, a young soldier bleeding profusely from a neck wound caught his attention, and he knelt to ask if he could do anything to help. “Yes,…