At the outset of the American Civil War, Loreta Janeta Velazquez, an educated Cuban-born teenager, fought as an officer in the battle of First Bull Run, was wounded at Shiloh, and served as a secret agent for the Confederacy. By 1863, Velazquez was spying for the Union. She chafed against the gender and race restrictions of her time, and her 1876 memoir, A Woman in Battle, caused a sensation.
