The Lady was a Soldier (or not!) Article 125)

“She has led a remarkable life” – The New York Herald

“I loved my country and was prepared to die to see the Confederate cause live.” -Loreta Valasquez”

“The Kardashian of the Civil War” – William Davis, author of “Inventing Loreta Velasquez”                       

 What to believe? Was she a young woman who disguised herself as a man and fought in several Civil War engagements? Or, was she a fraud who wrote a fictious book of her exploits after the war for money? Or, is the truth somewhere in between?

According to her narrative, Loreta Janeta Velázquez was born in Cuba in 1842 to a Spanish father and a mother of French and American ancestry.  Her father owned a large ranch in Mexico where the family often resided; but he lost the ranch and most of his wealth in 1848 in the Mexican War. He returned to Cuba and quickly regained his financial position, becoming a leader among the Cuban aristocracy. He resented the United States for its “invasion of Mexico” and instilled in his daughter a distrust of the American government. He appreciated education and sent Loreta to New Orleans to attend school where she lived with a French aunt and became fluent in French, to go along with her command of English and Spanish.

In 1856, at fourteen years old, she became engaged to a young Spaniard, whose family had ties in both New Orleans and in Cuba. The engagement was arranged by the two families, but Loreta was already beginning to display the independence that would mark the rest of her life. It is unclear from her memoir whether she actually married the Spaniard in a formal ceremony, which she later referred to as a marriage of convenience; however, she soon eloped, at age of fifteen or sixteen, with a U.S. Army officer. For the next few years she moved with her husband to several military assignments and grew permanently estranged from her family.

This earlier information seems to be historically accurate; however, the rest of the story, as they say, is a bit murky. Most of what we understand came from a “memoir” written by Loreta ten years after the Civil War titled, “The Woman in Battle.” She sub-titled her book, “A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loretta Velasquez; Otherwise known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army.”  Evidently, long subtitles were common in that period.

The following episodes are from her memoir. (Note that she varied the spellings of her name, even within her memoir, as either Velasquez or Velázquez.)

According to her account, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, Velasquez’s husband resigned his U.S. Army commission and joined the Confederate Army.  At first, her husband supported her request that he help her enlist, after, of course, she was disguised as a man; but he soon decided the idea would not work and would put his career in jeopardy. She would not give up her plan, however, and obtained a uniform, wore a fake mustache, adopted the name Harry T. Buford, and enlisted. With her obvious education, she was given the rank of Lieutenant and asked to travel to Arkansas to recruit troops to be stationed in Florida; ironically, where her husband had been stationed. She was successful and recruited over 200 men and travelled with them to Florida; where she placed them under the command of her husband. She did not record whether her husband was astonished, or proud, or both; nor whether they resumed any semblance of husband and wife.  Her husband was killed shortly thereafter in an artillery accident and Velasquez (Lt. Buford) asked to be relieved and to be assigned to Confederate forces preparing to engage the Union Army in Virginia.

This is where her story becomes even more murky, but this is what she claimed.

She fought at the first battle of Bull Run (called Manassas by the Confederacy) and survived fierce contact with Union soldiers. She wrote that she would also occasionally wear female clothes and move through Washington DC, undetected, return to a battle area, re-don her disguise and uniform, and report her findings to Commanding Officers

The battles farther west in Tennessee and Mississippi were raging and she managed to be re-assigned again to fight with Confederate units there. While in Tennessee, she received a wound in battle; but it was not serious and no one discovered (yet) that Lt. Buford was really a woman.

At Shiloh, Mississippi, she found the battalion she had raised in Arkansas and fought with them in that famous battle where she was again wounded, this time more seriously, and was taken to a doctor. He quickly discovered he was treating a woman and she decided that Lt. Buford had served enough; and she never again wore the Uniform.

She went to Richmond, Virginia and offered her services as a spy and went frequently into Washington DC and even into Union battle camps, then reported her findings back to Confederate officials. At some point, she married again to Captain Thomas De Caulp, who also died of wounds soon after. Not yet finished with her efforts for the Confederacy, she went to Ohio where she hoped to organize a rebellion by Confederate prisoners of war, but she was unsuccessful.

After the war, she married again to and moved to Venezuela; however, that husband died in Caracas and she returned, penniless, to the United states. At some point in these travels, she had had a baby boy, who accompanied her on all of her future exploits.

And, according to her book, she had more exploits.

She wrote that she traveled to mining towns in Nevada, where she received several offers of marriage and accepted one; but never mentioned the man’s name. After that, her son became her only companion.  

Her book was published in 1876 and she clearly stated in the preface that she wrote the book for money to support her family. However, she insisted it was a truthful account of her life.

If only half of her story is true, she led a remarkable life. If it was all fiction, it was one imaginative tale!

When her book was first published, a few newspaper reporters attempted to verify her claims by interviewing Confederate veterans who had served in the battles she mentioned, but none could specifically recall her. Confederate General Jubal Early responded on more than one occasion when asked, that he did not believe she could have fooled other soldiers. (Although we now know that several women did get by with a similar masquerade as noted in the postscript to this article.)  Generally, historians dismiss most of her claims, but the book contains so many specific details of camp life, battleground actions, and conversations with historical figures, that much of it seems, at least, plausible. Several of her biographers over the years have agreed that some of her experiences likely occurred, but were “enhanced” in her book. However, William Davis, who published a recent biography, believes she was “a fraud and a liar” with regard to her Civil War exploits and wrote that she was the “Kardashian of the Civil War”, in no uncertain terms. According to Davis, Loreta Janeta Velázquez died on January 26, 1923 as Loretta J. Beard in an asylum for the insane in Washington DC.

Her full life story, at least as she told it, is certainly fascinating. She may have served as Lt. Buford in the early days of the War and may have spent some time in army camps. But as for me, I think she took a basic story of her brief experiences and wove a grand (but largely false) memoir.

But, give her credit, she was a great storyteller!

(Postscript: There are better documented cases of women who joined either the Confederate or Union Army disguised as a soldier; perhaps as many as several hundred. A blog which I published earlier, Article 118, Women Soldiers, North and South, covers some of these women including, among others,  Sarah Edwards Seelye, Jennie Hodgers, Mary and Molly Bell, and Mary Ellen Wise. It may be found under “Blogs” at the website www.alincolnbygadorris.com