During the war between France and Mexico, several women and girls were discovered fighting in the ranks of Juarez. One of them, a young Indian, aged twenty-two, enlisted with her husband, in the regiment of Zacatécas. She fought so bravely as to speedily gain her epaulettes. Her husband was slain; but the widow remained in the regiment, where her daring courage soon not only procured the esteem of her superior officers, but caused the Mexican generals to promote her to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, May 5th, 1862. When the French captured Puebla, in the summer of 1863, she was made prisoner, and sent to Vera Cruz; whence she embarked in the "Rhône" steam transport for France. During the voyage, though a prisoner, she was treated with all the respect due to a superior officer. She arrived in France in August, 1863, and was seen by many persons, who described the female colonel as rather good-looking, but somewhat unfeminine in outward carriage and bearing.
If we may believe Transatlantic newspapers, the Civil War in America was more productive of female warriors than almost any conflict since the days of the Amazons. The ranks of both Federals and Confederates, from the very commencement of the great struggle, were swelled by numbers of women, who, for various reasons, chose to risk their lives under the Stars and Stripes, or the Stars and Bars. In the summer of 1864, it was said that upwards of one hundred and fifty women were known to be serving in the Army of the Potomac. It was generally supposed that these women had been in collusion with an equal number of men who had been examined by the surgeons; after which the fair ones substituted themselves, and went to the seat of war. More than seventy of the valiant _demoiselles_ were, when their sex became known, acting as officers' servants.
Early in May, 1863, a Pennsylvania girl was discovered serving in one of the regiments in the Federal Army of the West, to which she had belonged for ten months. She said that there were many females in the ranks of this army, and one female lieutenant. She had herself, she declared, assisted in burying three female soldiers whose sex was unknown to any but her.
Mrs. Francis L. Clayton, another female Federal, enlisted in 1861, in company with her husband at St. Paul, Minnesota. The husband and wife fought together, side by side, in eighteen battles, till the former was slain in the engagement of Stone River. After his death, the wife did not care to remain any longer in the service, so she went to the general, and told him she was a woman, and was at once discharged. She then returned to Maine. During her military career, Mrs. Clayton was wounded three times, and once was made prisoner.