"Woman fought like a Man"

[Dale Beasley]

This came from Weekend Edition on National Public Radio...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104452266

[csabugler]

Re: "Woman fought like a Man"

Hmmm. I suppose she could pass for a dude, which isn't much of a compliment. And is unlike many of the women who try to portray soldiers in reenacting.

[Dale Beasley]

Re: "Woman fought like a Man"

Mr. Peterson,

I think where the compliment was intended was to her service to her country.

[csabugler]

Re: "Woman fought like a Man"

I agree. I have often said i would be tickled with finding out after an event that a woman was in the ranks undiscovered. We know it happened. I guess maybe I unintentionally took your post in a different direction by thinking certain individuals might use it as fuel for their inappropriate impressions. I did not intend to dismiss her service. I appologize if that was implied.

[Dale Beasley]

Re: "Woman fought like a Man"

Mr. Paterson,

I am sure you meant it in nothing but an honorable intent. Where there may be some who would try to use it to further an agenda, I believe the few that could pull it off, and I know one that could, would not make it an issue, as this person that they spoke of in the article did not, and should not. For if they did, would defeat the purpose of our goals.

[yeoman]

Re: "Woman fought like a Man"

Sir, here is a article from the Mobil Register and Advertiser, June 13, 1863 p.1, c.7.

Career of a Female Volunteer.
Among the registered enemies of the US Government who have been recently sent across the line from New Orleans, there is now in Jackson, Mississippi, a lady whose adventures place her in the ranks of Mollie Pitcher of the present revolution. At the breaking out of the war Mrs. Laura J. Williams was a resident of Arkansas. Like most of the women of the South, her whole soul was enlisted in the struggle for independence. Her husband was a Northern man by birth and education, and a strong Union man. After Arkansas seceded from the Union he went to Connecticut, he said, to see his relations and settle up some business. Mrs Williams suspected his purpose and finally received information that he had joined the Yankee army. The Jackson Mississippian gives the rest of her history:
She disguised herself in a Confederate uniform, and adopting the name "Henry Benford," she proceeded to Texas, where she raised and equipped an independent company and went to Virginia with it as 1st Lieutenant. She was in the battle of Leesburg and several skirmishes, but finally, her sex having been discovered by the surgeon of the regiment-- the 5th Texas Volunteers, to which the company had been attached--she returned to Arkansas. After remaining there a short time she proceeded to Cornith, and was in the battle of Shiloh, where she displayed great coolness and courage. She say her father on the field, but, of course, he did not recognize her and she did not make her self known to him. In the second days fighting she was wounded in the head, and was ordered to the rear. She wrote her father, and then came on down to Grenada, where she waited for some time, but never saw or heard from him.
She then visited New Orleans, was taken sick, and while sick the city was captured. On recovery she retired to the coast, where she employed herself in carrying communications and assisting parties to run the blockade with drugs and cloths for uniforms. She was informed on, arrested and brought before Gen. Butler. She made her appearance before Gen. B. in a Southern homespun dress. She refused to take the oath--told him she gloried in being a rebel--had fought side by side with Southern men for Southern rights, and if she lived to see "Dixie", she would do it again. Butler denounced her as the most incorrigible she rebel he had ever met with. By order of the Beast she was placed in confinement, where she remained three months. Sometime after her release she was arrested for carrying on "contraband correspondence," and kept in a dungeon fourteen days on bread and water, at the expiration of which time she was placed in the State Prison as a dangerous enemy. Her husband, it so happened, was a Lieutenant in the 13th Conn. regiment, and on duty as provost guard in the city. He accidentally found her out and asked if she wanted to see him. She sent him word she never wanted to see him so long as he wore the Yankee uniform. But he forced himself upon her, tried to persuade her to take the oath, and get a release, when he said he would resign and take her to his relations in Conn. She indignantly spurned his proposition, and he left her to her fate. When Gen. Banks assumed command he released a great many prisoners, but kept her in confinement until the 17th of May last, when she was sent across the lines to Meadesville with the registered enemies.
An article was recently published in the New York World in relation to the part Mrs. Williams has played in the war, but the above is, we are assured, a true account of her remarkable career. We understand she has attached to the medical staff of a brigade now in the city, and will render all the assistance in her power to the wounded in the approaching struggle for the possession of the great Valley of the Mississippi.

http://www.uttyler.edu/vbetts/mobile_reg_and_adv_61-63.htm

Down the page at this URL is another story dated Oct. 31, 1863-- Death of a Young Woman on the Battlefield of Chickamauga.