Sue Mundy was the embodiment of the Civil War in Kentucky. She was an idea, a taunt, a mask, and the very real off-spring of the war in the Bluegrass State. Guerrilla warfare was the predominate brand of fighting in the state, a type of war in which men and women worked together to defend their households. Indeed, guerrilla warfare blurred the lines that usually served to divide the genders, at times leading women to act manly and men to act like women were traditionally thought to act. Simultaneously masculine and feminine, Sue Mundy came to incorporate the guerrilla; she/he was the beautiful bushwhacker who not only threatened Union patrols, but threatened the gender conventions of mainstream nineteenth century society.

Dr. Joseph M. Beilein Jr. is a Civil War historian who specializes in the fields of guerrilla warfare and manhood. He is the author of the book Bushwhackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri and co-editor of The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth. He has also authored a number of other essays on the guerrilla conflict in the Civil War. He is an associate professor of history at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.