In 1876 the American public was introduced to an astonishing and controversial figure by the name of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez. Like so many others, she wrote a Civil War memoir, The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army. Needless to say this was no ordinary war story, for Madame Velazquez claimed to have so fervently supported the Southern cause that she donned the Confederate uniform as Lieutenant Harry Buford and fought at the battles of First Bull Run, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh.

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When she wrote her book, Madame Velazquez realized that her disclosures would shock her contemporaries, so she made every attempt to legitimatize her behavior by establishing a notable past and a claim to respectability. She claimed to have descended from an ‘ancient Castilian’ background and to have as her ancestors both Don Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba, and Don Diego Rodriguez Velazquez, the Spanish artist. At the same time, despite her unladylike behavior, she laid claim to genteel sensibilities by maintaining that she was thoroughly shocked by the behavior and language of the soldiers with whom she came in contact. She further protested that although she had posed as a man, she had carefully maintained her ‘womanly reputation unblemished by even a suspicion of impropriety.’ Having thus refuted the possible charge of being a camp follower rather than a brave soldier, at least in her own mind, she proceeded with her tale.

Madame Velazquez maintained that she had always wished for the privileges and status granted to men and denied to women. Comparing herself to Deborah of the Hebrews and Joan of Arc, she explained her desire for martial adventures by asserting the her girlhood was spent ‘haunted with the idea of being a man.’ She demonstrated unusual independence for an antebellum adolescent when, at the age of 14, she ran away from her school in New Orleans to marry an American soldier named William. Four years later in 1860 they were in St. Louis mourning the death of their three children. Madame Velazquez was only 18.

When William’s state seceded from the Union, he resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Army. At that point Madame Velazquez again fell victim to her old desire to be a man. Unable to persuade her husband to let her fight for the Confederacy, she simply waited for him to leave, adopted the name Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, was measured for two uniforms by a tailor in Memphis, and proceeded to Arkansas to raise a battalion for the Southern cause. She claimed that she enrolled 236 men in four days and shipped them to Pensacola, Florida, where she presented them to her astonished husband as his to command. Unfortunately he was killed a few days later demonstrating a weapon to his troops. The bereaved widow turned the men over to a friend and proceeded to search for military adventure at the front.

Claiming that she was serving the Confederate Army as an ‘independent,’ she crossed the South from Virginia to Tennessee searching for a suitable opportunity to display her military talents. After the First Battle of Bull Run she grew weary of camp life and borrowed female attire from a farmer’s wife so that she could go to Washington, D.C., to gather intelligence for the Southern cause. While in the Capital the soldier-turned-spy claimed to have arranged meetings with Secretary of War Simon Cameron and President Abraham Lincoln.

She finally returned to the South, where she was rewarded for her services by being assigned to the detective corps. But again she grew weary of her assignment and left her duties to go fight in Tennessee. She arrived at Fort Donelson just in time to see it surrendered. After Fort Donelson she was forced to face the possibility that someone would discover her disguise when she was wounded in the foot and examined by an army doctor. Apparently she escaped detection but decided to flee to New Orleans, where ironically she was arrested on suspicion of being a woman in disguise. Once she was released, she said, she enlisted in order to escape from the city. However, Madame Velazquez had no love for the life of a common soldier, so after showing her commission to her commanding officer, she was granted a transfer to the army in east Tennessee.

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