Command Performance

CROSS-DRESSING TO CONFOUND THE CONFEDERACY

The Confederate Navy is building an ironclad river boat to end the Charleston Blockade, which could ensure the South wins the Civil War. And the only two Union people who know this are a man playing a woman, and a runaway slave.

Months earlier, Nathan VanHorn was a stage actor in 1862 Connecticut. He was skilled at playing (short) leading men, also teen boys-but what he was famous for was playing young women. Theater critics described his portrayals of ingenues as uncanny.

Nathan’s acting talents got him recruited as the perfect Union spy. What Southerner would believe that a moustached German man, an Irish crone, a panhandler twelve-year-old stripling, and a Southern belle were all the same Connecticut man?

Nathan and Hattie Hamundsen, a smart and educated Negress, are sneaked into South Carolina. Soon they arrive at Belle Bois, where Nathan impersonates Katherine Bonveneau, the young, flighty heir to her father’s plantation.

Soon after, Nathan and Hattie get orders: the Rebels are shipping lots of iron to a South Carolina swamp; Investigate and report.

But soon they realize: This ironclad is a serious threat, and things are happening too quickly. Nathan and Hattie must do more than report the ironclad, they must destroy it.

Tags: acting and actors, American Civil War, Charleston (SC), Civil War, Confederacy, Confederate Navy, Connecticut, cross-dressing, female impersonator, ironclad ship, New Haven (CT), no sex, plantation life, South Carolina, spies, tg, theater, transgender, transvestite