When she became ill herself, she had to resign from the hospital, but she continued as a "secret service" agent at the provost general's headquarters.

[2][4] She told of interviewing two young women who enlisted in disguise, "They both wept bitterly, not only at the disgrace [of being discovered], but at being obliged to return to their homes, leaving their loved ones, perhaps never to see them again.

"[3] She later petitioned Congress for compensation for her wartime service, and was granted a pension in 1890,[5] when the Senate committee found her to be "very clearly ... a meritorious case".

[6] Later in life, Spurgeon took an interest in the lives in children in Washington, D.C., and the work of the city's Church of the Epiphany.

[2] In the 1880s and 1890s, she served as a missionary at the city's Freedmen's Hospital, helping patients find homes after discharge.