Southern Women As Soldiers

Loreta Janeta Velazquez was a women who disguised herself as a man in order to fight as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War. Not many women actually fought in the war, but a significant number hid their gender long enough to participate in many key battles. Although many "first-hand" accounts by women soldiers are considered fiction, several soldiers were discovered as females when they were injured or killed. Other women acted as spies for the Confederacy, passing secret information from the North to the Southern leaders. In either case, these women took great risks to their own safety by fighting or spying and thus defying the gender norms of the time.