After exposing a number of other improbabilities, he concluded that the book was untrue and that it could not even be considered good fiction since it libeled Confederate officers as “drunken, gasconading brutes” and pictured the flower of Southern womanhood as “ready to throw themselves into the arms of the dashing ‘Lieutenant Harry T. Buford,’ and surrender without waiting to be asked, all that is dear to women of virtue.”

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He apologized for any injury his opinion of the book may have done to Madame Velazquez or her child but added, “I cherish most devotedly the character and fame of the Confederate armies, and of the people of the South, especially of the women of the South, and when a book affecting all these is sought to be palmed on the public as true, and bears on its face the evidence of its want of authenticity, then I have the right to speak my opinion and will speak it, whether the author be a man or woman.”

Early finished the letter but did not immediately send it to Slemons. He still had not convinced himself that he should answer Velazquez but feared that if he failed to respond, she could say that she had silenced his criticism. After considerable thought Early sought the advice of a friend and sent a copy of the Velazquez letter along with his answer to John R. Tucker, a congressman from Virginia. He asked Tucker to consider his problem and advise him whether or not he should mail his letter to Slemons. Early’s response to Madame Velazquez was never sent and all three letters reside in the Tucker family papers in the Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Two other of her contemporaries believed her story. Her editor, C. J. Worthington, understandably wrote that he had complete confidence in her veracity.

There are thousands of officers and soldiers who fought in the Confederate armies who can bear testimony, not only to the valor she displayed in battle…but to her integrity, her energy, her ability, and her unblemished reputation. . . that it is a true story in every particular, there are abundant witnesses whose testimony will not be disputed.

Unfortunately for the researcher trying to determine the truth, the value of his testimony as well as his judgment becomes questionable when a few sentences later he described Madame Velazquez as a “typical Southern woman of the war period.” Anyone who reads her book can clearly see that there was nothing typical about Loreta Velazquez.

A third contemporary source whose testimony is available was a reporter for the New Orleans daily Picayune. His story about her appeared in January of 1867. At that time she had just arrived in New Orleans to serve as an agent for the Venezuelan Emigration Company and was using the name Mary DeCaulp. The article described her adventurous life in some detail, must of it inaccurate if one accepts the story she published nine years later as true. For example, the article asserted that she was a first lieutenant in a Texas cavalry company and mentions nothing about her espionage activities. The reporter also mentioned that he remembered having seen her in New Orleans during the war “dressed in a rough gray jacket and pants, the suit rather the worse for wear, with her hair cut short, and supporting a bandaged foot with a crutch of the most primitive pattern.” A few sentences later, however, his identification of her became less conclusive when he admitted that Madame Velazquez looked considerably different from the soldier who came to New Orleans during the war.

Contemporaries as well as historians disagree about the truthfulness of the Velazquez story. If they are to base their judgment on the information that can be confirmed we still do not come up with an entirely verifiable story. First of all, her book contains very little factual information. True, she put the right generals at the right place in the right battles, but this kind of information was easily accessible. Even the charges that she made concerning corruption and profiteering are not specific. She included no complete names and spoke only in vague generalities. Most of the individuals in her book have only a first or a last name. Even though she married four times, she provided us with the full name of only one of her husbands!

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