At the outset of the American Civil War, a teenager paid a tailor to make a soldier's uniform. Harry T. Buford fought as an officer in the battle of First Bull Run, was wounded at Shiloh, then served as a secret agent for the Confederacy. But Buford harbored a secret for which he could have been court-martialed or worse: his real name was Loreta Janeta Velazquez. By 1863, Loreta was working for the Union. Loreta was a woman not only ahead of her time, she was ahead of ours – the American military has only recently cleared women for combat yet Loreta was one of the estimated thousand women who secretly soldiered during the American Civil War over a hundred and fifty years ago.