Kickass Women in History: Loreta Janet Velazquez

Welcome back to Kickass Women! This month we are paying tribute to Loreta Janeta Velazquez, a woman who was born in Cuba and ended up serving as a soldier and spy during the Civil War. Much of what we know about Loreta’s life comes from her memoirs, in which fact may or may not have taken a backseat to entertainment value. But even allowing for embellishment, she led a kickass life, albeit one that was squarely on the wrong side of history.

Loreta was born in Cuba in 1842 to a plantation-owning family. She was sent to New Orleans to live with an aunt in 1849. She learned English and rebellion, falling madly in love with a much older man. He was a Texan in the army named William (he was also her best friend’s boyfriend). Loreta eloped with William at the age of fourteen. Between the age of fifteen and eighteen, she had three children with William, all of whom died of illness, leaving Loreta heartbroken.

When the Civil War broke out, William joined the Confederate Army. Loreta wanted to follow him to Florida, where he was posted to train troops, but he said no and left.

The end.

HAHAHA. No, of course that’s not the end, because Loreta disguised herself as a man, adopted the name Henry T. Buford, raised a regiment of 236 troops, and stormed off to war to Get Her Man, as one does. She found him, and in what I personally consider to be an eyebrow-raising factoid, he died shortly thereafter in “a shooting accident.” Loreta left the regiment and went on to fight in several battles including Bull Run.

In addressing Loreta’s wartime exploits, it’s important to note that she was fighting for the Confederacy. At some point Loreta bought a slave, Bob. The documentary Rebel speculates that Bob knew Loreta’s secret (she alludes to this in her memoir) and that Bob and Loreta/Buford tried to protect each other to a certain extent from other officers.

Lorena stated that Bob was an excellent soldier: “Far better than many white men who think themselves so superior to him.” Bob escaped to Northern lines during the war (in middle of battle, because he was a BADASS) and lived the rest of his life as a free man.

In her memoirs, Loreta tells of being recruited to be a spy, which required her to dress as a woman and travel to Washington D.C. She claims to have met Abraham Lincoln along with pretty much every other notable figure on both sides of the war. At various times she was a spy, a scout, and a smuggler. She returned to the South as a man and had a wide variety of exploits including reuniting with her original handpicked regiment. After being wounded, Loreta was afraid her secret would get out if she stayed in the army, so she spent the latter part of the war as a double agent, working undercover in the North on behalf of the South. She married twice during the war (when did she find the time?) and both husbands died.

After the war, Loreta traveled through Europe, returned to America, and traveled throughout the West, got married again, became widowed again, met Brigham Young, and eventually settled down in Nevada. Loreta published her memoir in 1876, with the aim of raising money for herself and her son.

The memoir has the fabulously elaborate title: 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. I deeply regret that I haven’t read this yet, but it is available from Amazon. Her most vocal critic was the Confederate General Jubal Early, who asserted that the entire book was fictional. Early was a huge proponent of promoting a very specific picture of the Confederacy, one which reinforced an idea of a glorious Southern way of life protected by brave men and noble women. Loreta’s book revealed the brutality of war, the “vulgarity” of soldiers, money as a force of corruption in war, and the versatility of women. Early and Velazquez argued publically, privately, and in person, and their argument seems to have ended in a draw.

Velazquez lived in a time when embellishing one’s memoirs was common and expected. However, she always claimed that everything she said was true. Attacks against her veracity tended to revolve around the following issues: she left everything so vague that it’s impossible to fact-check, she met an improbable number of people in such a sort time (she was the Forrest Gump of the Civil War) and she acted in a way inconsistent with patriarchal visions of “Southern Womanhood.”

It’s true that in her memoir, Velazquez makes vague statements that are difficult to fact-check. She also claims to have met pretty much every important figure of the day and been in every important battle. However, she certainly would not have been alone as a woman disguised as a man, and the basics of her story are probably true, if not every detail. Lorena was criticized not only for violating gender and racial norms, but for refusing to glamorize war or the people who fought in it.

For more Civil War history about women who fought as soldiers, check out Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott.

My sources included:

Rebel: Loreta Velazquez, Secret Soldier of the American Civil War, written and directed by Maria Agui Carter

This documentary talks a lot about race and class, and how those issues affected Loreta as a high-status Cuban woman in New Orleans. It explains how so many women were able to pass as male in the Civil War (a preponderance of very young soldiers, baggy uniforms, and outdoor living helped). It also reveals some discrepancies between the legend of Loreta and her own reports. For instance, the documentary states that Loreta didn’t join the army until after William died, motivated largely by her total isolation, since family disowned her when she eloped and her children and husband were dead.

Here’s what it has to say about those who question the facts of Loreta’s memoir:

The Woman in Battle has never escaped its charge of inauthenticity. Authenticity has always been a way of challenging narratives that somehow challenge the mainstream notion of what is truth.

You can purchase this DVD from Amazon.  However, I was lucky enough to find it at my local library. You can also find an interview with the filmmaker here, in which she talks about Loreta as a writer and as a Latina, and about new information that has come to light since Hoffert article “Heroine or Hoaxer” that corroborates many of Loreta’s claims (citation below).

“Madam Loreta Janeta Velaquez: Heroine or Hoaxer” by Sylvia D. Hoffert for Civil War Times, reprinted on History Net

“Loreta Janeta Velazquez,” for Civil War Trust

Wikipedia