Career of a female Volunteer
Among the registered enemies of the United States Government who have been recently sent across the lines from New Orleans, there is now in
Jackson, Mississippi, a lady whose adventures place her in the ranks of the
Molly Pitchers 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 focally she received information that he had joined the
Yankee army.
The Jackson
Mississippian gives the rest of her history:
‘
Disguising herself in a Confederate uniform, and adopting the name of "
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 her home in
Arkansas.
After remaining there a short time she proceeded to
Corinth, and was in the
battle of Shiloh, where she displayed great coolness and courage.
She saw her father on the field, but of course he did not recognize her, and she did not make herself known to him. In the second day's fighting she was wounded in the head, and was ordered to the rear.
She wrote to 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 by a negro and 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 ever 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 again 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 Coun, 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
Connecticut.
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
Meadville with the registered enemies.
An article was recently published in the New York
World in relation to the part
Mrs. Williams has played in this war, but the above is, we are assured, a true account of her remarkable career.
We understand she has attached herself to the medical staff of a brigade now in this city, and will render all the assistance in her power to the wounded in the approaching struggle for possession of the great Valley of the Mississippi.
