She is purported to have hung the first Confederate flag in Franklin, Tennessee and became famous during the American Civil War for assisting her cousin, Adelicia Acklen, in smuggling cotton out of the country to sell in Europe.

[2] The family home, on the Murfreesboro Pike in Nashville, had been given to her grandfather, Colonel Alexander Ewing, in 1787 for his services during the American Revolution.

[2][5] At her home, she enslaved multiple people who had been left to her in her father's will, including Millie Simpkins and Andrew Ewing, the latter of whom would later serve as a 1st Sergeant of the 12th United States Colored Infantry Regiment.

[9][3][10] While in Louisiana, she also purchased fourteen bales of cotton from a farmer who worried about his crop being burned by the troops, and sold it for $1,500 in Liverpool.

[3] During the Battle of Franklin in 1864, Gaut and her daughters sought shelter in the cellar of their Columbia Avenue home, the Carter House.

[12][13] Gaut smuggled notes detailing Union plans to Confederate officers in a whiskey bottle concealed under her petticoats.

[2][3] On October 28, 1895, Gaut organized Franklin Chapter Number 14 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the front room of her house.