The bloodiest war in U.S. history was fought on our own soil, pitting Americans against Americans in four years of horrific combat. Though most of us have grown accustomed to depictions of nineteenth century American men and boys heroically slaughtering each other, the idea of them having sex with each other ironically seems to produce far more discomfort among students of the period.
Though the words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” did not exist until some thirty years later, men of that era who were, to quote Bruce Catton, “flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone” no doubt had the same biological impulses that modern men do. Americans of that period did not frequently record matters of the flesh, but some strong evidence of homosexuality does exist.
Walt Whitman
Legendary poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman is thought by many scholars to have been gay or bisexual. Many of his poems (particularly his “Calamus” series), laud the bonds of male “lovers.” Whitman spent much of the Civil War visiting the military hospitals around Washington, D.C., caring for sick and wounded soldiers. His diaries record numerous accounts of men, often soldiers, with whom he “slept” during this period. Shortly after the war, Whitman began an intense, lifelong friendship with Confederate veteran and Irish immigrant Peter Doyle. Doyle recalled, “We were familiar at once–I put my hand on his knee–we understood…from that time on we were the biggest sort of friends.” When Oscar Wilde met Whitman in 1882, he returned convinced of the poet’s proclivity for same-sex love. “I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips,” he declared.
Confederate Generals William W. Loring and William E. “Grumble” Jones>
Even Southern gentlemen are not always above the drama of gay romance. In his book, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War, Thomas P. Lowry cites an 1852 letter from William E. Jones to William W. Loring. Former comrades on the frontier, the two would later serve as generals in the Confederate army:
I hope you had a good time of it. I have seen no wife. Your stomach may have been satisfied with one of those one-night fellows. I have seen a dark-complected boy said to be yours…if you remember you had a love scrape about this time with one of your captains…you and this captain quarreled…you again wanted me to take sides against your sweetheart.
Is this what it sounds like? Though it is sometimes difficult, from a modern perspective, to interpret the words of nineteenth century Americans, there seems to be some obvious, timeless connotations here.
Drummer Boys in Drag
Lowry also recounts a ball put on by soldiers of a Massachusetts regiment stationed in Brandy Station, Virginia. Since there were far more men in attendance than ladies, the more fair-faced males put on women’s clothing and did their best to play the part. While this was not that uncommon back then, and certainly did not imply homosexuality, the account of one soldier in a letter—to his wife, oddly enough—does raise some interesting questions:
We had some little Drummer Boys dressed up and I’ll bet you could not tell them from girls if you did not know them…. Some of them looked almost good enough to lay with and I guess some of them did get laid with….I know I slept with mine.
Philip Clayton Van Buskirk
This Massachusetts man was not the only Civil War soldier to be tempted by younger boys. Philip Clayton Van Buskirk, a Confederate private, kept meticulous journals throughout his life. His accounts of his experiences as a pre-war Marine musician are rife with instances of Marines and sailors going “chaw for chaw,” that is, engaged in mutual masturbation. Van Buskirk himself seemed to avoid sexual contact with his comrades, but he kept a thorough log of his lusts and infatuations with them. When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in the Confederate army, deserted, and then worked as a tutor for a teenage boy named Lewis Price, for whom Van Buskirk fell madly in love. Years later, reflecting on his love for Price and another boy, Charlie Peyton, Van Buskirk recalled that neither ever rejected “the vagabond soldier…almost pederast…I am not scorned for having been (as their memories must now testify) puerile in the days of our intimacy…they heap no reproach on me.”
Abraham Lincoln
Undoubtedly the most hotly debated claim of Civil War era homosexuality centers around none other than “Honest Abe” himself. The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, by sex researcher and Alfred Kinsey associate C.A. Tripp, brought the subject into public discourse in 2005. Tripp and other scholars have claimed that Lincoln had sexual relationships with friend Joshua Speed and bodyguard Captain David Derickson. Speed and Lincoln shared a bed for four years, during which time they developed an intimate friendship. Though this seems like a smoking gun, critics of Tripp’s theory have pointed out that it was actually not at all uncommon for men to share beds during the nineteenth century. Regarding Derickson, Elizabeth Woodbury Fox, wife of Lincoln’s naval aide, wrote in her diary in 1862, “Tish says, ‘Oh, there is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L is not home, sleeps with him. What stuff!’” Did Lincoln have sex with men? We’ll never know for sure, but a humorous poem he penned suggests he was in the very least familiar with the concept:
For Reuben and Charles have married two girls,
But Billy has married a boy.
The girls he had tried on every side,
But none he could get to agree;
All was in vain, he went home again,
And since that he’s married to Natty.
Image URLs:
Soldiers bathing: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3482/3220940464_2605c072c0_z.jpg?zz=1
Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Whitman-Walt-Doyle.jpg
William Loring: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/William_W._Loring_as_Pasha.jpg/399px-William_W._Loring_as_Pasha.jpg
Drummer boys: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3b40000/3b46000/3b46900/3b46925r.jpg
Abraham Lincoln: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3093/3252917783_e81308e684.jpg
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this was very interesting!