TGF Re-Run: Trans America, Part 4: Fightin’ Femmes

by Lauren Rene Hotchkiss

The second of our Civil War Veterans, this one on the confederate side, was Loreta Janeta Velasquez born in Havana, Cuba in 1840. She secretly married a young American officer in 1856 and eloped to the U.S.

On the secession of the State in which he was a citizen, his wife persuaded him to join the Confederate forces. When war broke out in the Spring of 1860, Madame Velasquez became deeply interested, and was determined to have a share in it. Declaring herself “perfectly wild about war” and without her husband’s knowledge, she joined his regiment under the name of Harry T. Buford and became a member of the Independent Scouts, CSA. She effected her disguise by donning a military coat heavily padded in the back and under the arms to the hips.

Once accepted and complete in her uniform, Lieutenant Buford was instructed to proceed to Hurlburt Station to raise a regiment of recruits. When this was accomplished, she boarded a train for New Orleans, and at Pensacola was met by her amazed husband whom she advised by telegram of her arrival. Seeing her resolve and the futility of further argument on her course of action, he took command of her recruits and began to train them. Their reunion was short-lived, however, for one week later, while explaining the use of the carbine to one of the sergeants, the weapon exploded and killed him.

Now alone in the world, she resolved to carry out her intention of remaining in the Army in the guise of a man. She was determined to show her fellow officers that Harry T. Buford was “as good a man as any of them and was able to face the enemy as valiantly.” She was certain that she could see service in the war if her sex remained undiscovered, and was full of enthusiasm for the cause of the Southerners. She succeeded in accompanying the troops, and took part in the first battle of Bull Run (Manassas). For the rest of her life she was proud to say that she had been present during the historic moment when Colonel Bee, inspiring his troops to renew their efforts during the battle, pointed to General Thomas J. Jackson and said, “See how Jackson stands there like a stone wall,” — in that moment creating both a nickname and a legend.

After the battle, Loreta grew restless with an extended period of inaction, and resolved to do some spying. She decided to try and get through the enemy’s lines, trusting to her women’s intuition to evade capture. She thought it more useful to reassume her female dress for this purpose, reasoning that the Yankees would be less likely to distrust a woman.

Traveling to Washington, Loreta went to Brown’s Hotel, where she was fortunate in meeting an officer of the Federal regular army who had been a personal friend of her husband. He, not having the slightest idea why she was in Washington, spoke without reserve. By means of shrewd questioning, she soon gained valuable information regarding the movements of Union forces in the West, and the plans to secure possession of the upper Mississippi. She also learned that a large fleet was being fitted out to blockade the mouth of the river.

Returning to Columbus, Tennessee she relayed her information to General Pillow who began active preparations to meet the opposing forces. During the subsequent battle, she was wounded in the foot but fearing detection she left for Jackson, Mississippi, where she worked for awhile as an independent officer. Later, back with army of East Tennessee, she was wounded again, and deciding to retire from active service and resume her spying activities left for New Orleans.

She had not been there long when she was convinced that she was being watched. Her intuition proved to be right, for she was soon arrested as a spy and taken before the Provost-Marshall. Although she felt that her secret was on the point of discovery, she resolved to put on a bold front, reserving the revelation of her identity as a last resort. She was questioned closely by the officer, and then, to her relief, was released from custody.

Arrested on Suspicion of Being a Woman

Her freedom did not last long, for the next evening she was arrested again, this time on suspicion of being a woman. She was questioned this time by a Major Monroe. Still maintaining her male persona, she was thrown into jail until such time as the matter could be determined. Upon subsequent examination by a Doctor Root, and seeing that further pretense was useless, she wrote the Major and asked for a private interview, which he granted. She told him her reasons for her masquerade, and though apparently moved, he still fined her ten dollars and sentenced her to ten days in jail.

Upon her release, undaunted, she re-enlisted in the Confederate army and was soon involved in another battle in which she again was wounded, captured by Union troops and sent to a prison camp. While there she again turned to spying, and disguising herself as a cake-woman she got into the arsenal.

After escaping she made her way to St. Louis, and making friends with a chambermaid at a local hotel, managed to get into the rooms where many Union officers were staying and ransack their possessions for military dispatches or orders. Soon after, she left for Hannibal, Missouri where the end of the War saw her seeing service as a blockade runner.

Leaving the army, she went on to work as a bounty hunter, a New York stock broker, and a prospector in California. Moving to Utah at the end of the gold rush, she lived for a time among the Mormons, but being a man and woman of restless spirit, she subsequently traveled throughout Europe and South America. She was thrice married — each time outliving her husband — and in 1876 published a widely-read autobiography, The Woman in Battle, about her experiences in fighting with the Confederates.

The last of our triad of Civil War Amazons was Sarah Emma Edmonds. She was born in December 1842 in New Brunswick. As a teenager she was inspired to leave a cruel and dictatorial father by emulating the heroine of Archibald Murray’s novel, Fanny Campbell or the Female Pirate Captain. While still an adolescent, Emma cut off her hair, dressed as a man and became Franklin Thompson — a Bible seller for a firm in Hartford, Connecticut, in order to avoid an arranged marriage by her father to a New Brunswick farmer.

During the early stages of her transition from Emma to Frank she ventured out canvassing the good book only by night and sleeping in the woods by day until she became accustomed to her new identity. He began selling in the daylight hours only when New Brunswick was a safe distance behind him. He settled in Flint, Michigan for a year where he lived in the home of Reverend Mr. Joslin, a Methodist pastor. He sold his books in the surrounding area with great success and spent his free time taking his lady friends on country rides in his stylish horse-drawn buggy.

Shortly after the Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Frank Thompson enlisted in a local militia unit. Whether this move was prompted by patriotism or self-preservation is somewhat debatable. As enlistment fever swept the North, Frank’s refusal or indifference to joining up would probably have created greater suspicion or even hostility.

She enlisted in a Michigan regiment in June 1861 and served two years with the Army of the Potomac. She remained unsuspected throughout her army career by all save her close comrade-in-arms, Jerome Robbins, who finally guessed but kept her secret.

Female soldiers in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars were numerous enough that in many instances mention was made in military journals without further comment. It is quite possible, then, that some of them would have come into contact with each other. This is what happened to Emma as she was passing a hospital tent and was drawn by the “pitiful cries” of a young soldier laying on a cot. He was wounded in the neck, and Emma serving as a hospital orderly could plainly see that the wound was a mortal one. The soldier motioned her closer, somehow implicitly trusting her, and whispered that he was not what he appeared to be, but was a female. Now at peace, having disclosed her secret, the soldier received the Chaplain’s blessing and died with Emma at her side.

At Lebanon, Kentucky Emma deserted the army on April 16, 1863 with her friend James Reid of the 79th New York Volunteers and soon resumed her female role and dress.

She began working for the United States Christian Commission as a nurse, and while the war was still raging Emma published the first addition of her best-selling autobiography, Nurse and Spy. In it she claimed that her inspiration to take up arms came from a “nascent understanding of her oppression as a woman.” She also spoke in her book about the “freedom and glorious independence of masculinity” that trousers afforded her. Emma donated the proceeds from the book, which, according to a Texas publisher sold more than 175,000 copies, to the Sanitary Commission — the Civil War’s equivalent to the Red Cross.

Emma married her childhood sweetheart Linus Seelye in 1867, had three children by him, and spent several years petitioning the American government for a full military pension. She appealed to her former comrades-in-arms as an aid to this, realizing the importance of presenting herself as a woman who had made a unique contribution to the Union cause and stressing the importance of her active service.

In 1898, moving for the last time, to La Porte Texas, she spent the last months of her life re-writing her autobiography, but died before its completion.

As part of the Memorial Day services in 1910 her body was moved to the Grand Army of the Republic portion of the Washington Cemetery in Houston.

Tags: featured, Harry T. Burford, History, Loreta Janeta Velasquez, Sarah Emma Edmonds

Category: Transgender History