Booknotes: An Imposter of No Ordinary Rank

New Arrival:

• An Imposter of No Ordinary Rank: The True Story of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, alias Confederate Lt. Harry T. Buford, and her Civil War Memoir, The Woman in Battle by William L. Post, Jr. (Author, 2023).

Popular Civil War writing is full of tall tales, and one of the biggest is the personal story of Loreta Velazquez (also spelled Velasquez by some), who claimed among a great many other things to have disguised herself as a Confederate line officer. Every summary of her life that I've read has my BS meter ringing so loudly that I've always adopted a dismissive attitude (fair or not) about it. However, many do not share that outlook, and she has many advocates who still believe much of her story as published in her controversial 1876 memoir The Woman in Battle. The memoir continues to enchant readers. A quick Amazon search reveals a boatload of available reprints of the memoir, and she's one of three individuals featured in the 2002 book Cubans in the Confederacy.

Perhaps the most comprehensive debunking of Velazquez's claims is found in William C. Davis's book Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist (SIU Press, 2016). In it, Davis determines that most of her most celebrated claims are complete falsehoods, but he also finds her real life to be "far more interesting than misguided interpretations (of it) and her own fanciful inventions." William Post's An Imposter of No Ordinary Rank: The True Story of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, alias Confederate Lt. Harry T. Buford, and her Civil War Memoir, The Woman in Battle is a new book written in the vein of Davis's critical account.

From the description: "In 1876 Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez published a 600-page memoir, The Woman in Battle, which recounted her exhilarating adventures in the American Civil War disguised as a Rebel soldier, alias Lieutenant Harry T. Buford. She claimed she fought valiantly at the Battles of Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff and Shiloh. Her male soldier disguise fooled generals time and again, but she was found out and thrown in Castle Thunder Prison! She reinvented herself into a slippery female Confederate spy who tricked U.S. Secret Service Chief Lafayette Baker when he hired her to find herself.

Some historians and writers have been unsure whether to believe true all Velazquez claimed, but others have become her advocate. One documentarian said it is “one of the most dramatic untold stories of Latino American contributions to a pivotal event of American history- the American Civil War.” Because of Velazquez’s unbelievable claims, dispute has followed her autobiography, but regardless, every new generation is mesmerized by it."

In the introduction, Post describes The Woman in Battle as "captivating" but containing "much exaggeration and many deliberate lies." His nearly 750-page investigation, supported by footnotes, of the Velazquez life and memoir is self-described as a "process of separating the truth from the lies," a daunting challenge that frequently resulted in "dead ends." Like Davis, Post is critical of the many Velazquez story proponents who "refuse to understand that the memoir is full of lies" and "willfully perpetuate the lies to mask the true Velazquez." According to Post, "(b)y the conclusion of this book, readers will know the difference between embellishment, unwittingly accepted lies, and purposely perpetuated lies" (pp. xv-xvi).