Loreta+Velazquez+(alias+Lt.+Harry+T.+Buford)

My father was in the Mexican American war, where they lost their large estate. At age 8 I was sent to live with an aunt in New Orleans. At 14, I eloped with William, a Texan officer in the U.S. Army. I later received a large endowment from my father. I moved around to many army camps with my husband and had two children. However, after my two children died in en epidemic and my third died in childbirth I thought of the idea of following my husband into war. William objected, of course, and in trying to convince me otherwise he let me dress up in one of his uniforms and go to a bar with him. He hoped the vulgarity of the men would make me change my mind, but when I realized that the men didn't recognize me it only encouraged my idea. My husband left for war thinking he had changed my mind but I traveled to Memphis, cut my hair, bought a fake mustache and dressed in padded uniforms to become Lt. Harry T. Buford. In Arkansas, I used my father's inheritance to recruit and equip more than 200 volunteers. As Buford, I led them to Pensacola, Fla., where William was encamped while organizing troops. He was shocked when I revealed my identity -- but agreed to take command of my volunteers anyways. Then the terrible new arrived William had been killed during a drill when his rifle exploded in his hands. Grief-stricken, I left my Arkansas volunteers and headed north, as Buford, to find my own destiny on the battlefield. In time, I wearied of camp life and changed back to women's clothes to begin work as a spy behind Union lines. I gathered intelligence by calling on my husband's old friends, who were fighting on both sides of the war. I then returned to her first disguise and, back in New Orleans recovering from a battlefield wound, I was arrested for dressing as a man. I spent time in other Confederate jails for the same offense over the years. I gave up my male disguise when the city fell under Union occupation in May 1862. I got married and was widowed two more times and I moved to Texas to raise my son. Two years later my book //The Woman in Battle// fell into the hands of Jubal Early, a former Confederate general who had become head of the SHA. He began a letter campaign denouncing the book as a hoax, calling me a fraud and a "camp follower," a euphemism for a prostitute. I wrote back saying that some facts my have been strewn but overall it was factual, my book was later published.