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International Gay Lesbian Review The Story the Soldiers Wouldn t Tell Sex in the Civil War
"The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War
by Thomas P. Lowry, M.D."
"Dr. Thomas P. Lowry has mined government records at the National Archives, and personal letters in numerous libraries, to write the untold story of the role of sex in the American Civil War. While many soldiers' letters and diaries commented on erotic matters, the sexual content has typically been censored or destroyed by relatives, archivists, or the veterans themselves. This is especially true, says Dr. Lowry, for stigmatized sexual behavior like homosexuality.Dr. Thomas P. Lowry has mined government records at the National Archives, and personal letters in numerous libraries, to write the untold story of the role of sex in the American Civil War.
While many soldiers' letters and diaries commented on erotic matters, the sexual content has typically been censored or destroyed by relatives, archivists, or the veterans themselves. This is especially true, says Dr. Lowry, for stigmatized sexual behavior like homosexuality. Nevertheless, some mention has survived, and the author devotes Chapter 11 to same-sex references. For example, he quotes a Massachusetts soldier in Virginia in 1864 who wrote about a dance that the soldiers held, in which the young drummer boys dressed as women: “Some of the real women went, but the boy girls were so much better looking that they left…. 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” (pp.112-113). On May 13, 1862 the RICHMOND DISPATCH newspaper denounced the prevalence of “the imprudence and familiar vulgarity of many of the shame faced of the prostitutes of both sexes” (p.110) in the Confederate capital. Poet Walt Whitman confided in his private notebooks the ease with which he picked up teenage boys and young men, both in Washington and New York, to take them home to “sleep with them.” The author quotes Edward Carpenter, who reported that as a young man Walt Whitman performed fellatio on him (pp.110-111). "
America s Gay Confederate and Union Soldiers The Bilerico Project
"Chapter 11 of Lowry's book opens the closet door on gender-bending and same-sex trysts. And Lowry reveals that during the Civil War conventional gender roles and sexual behavior could not be strictly tethered to a heterosexual paradigm. With men outnumbering women, especially at social events like balls, drummer boys - children as young as nine and ten-years-old, dressed in drag. And in some occasions, the intimacy between soldiers and drummer boys reached beyond just a public waltz."
Using young boys in the military as glorified sex slaves was common. The young curly haired boy in the movie "Master and Commander" was undoubtedly a 'peg boy' and used for that purpose as it's hard to imagine a legitimate naval need for prepubescent boys onboard ships of war. This was standard practice in US fleets as well during the Civil War.
"Were ships’ boys sometimes used for sexual purposes by their elders? We have sworn testimony that they were."
Buggery and the British Navy Is it true the ships had peg boys - Washington City Paper
"The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War
by Thomas P. Lowry, M.D."
"Dr. Thomas P. Lowry has mined government records at the National Archives, and personal letters in numerous libraries, to write the untold story of the role of sex in the American Civil War. While many soldiers' letters and diaries commented on erotic matters, the sexual content has typically been censored or destroyed by relatives, archivists, or the veterans themselves. This is especially true, says Dr. Lowry, for stigmatized sexual behavior like homosexuality.Dr. Thomas P. Lowry has mined government records at the National Archives, and personal letters in numerous libraries, to write the untold story of the role of sex in the American Civil War.
While many soldiers' letters and diaries commented on erotic matters, the sexual content has typically been censored or destroyed by relatives, archivists, or the veterans themselves. This is especially true, says Dr. Lowry, for stigmatized sexual behavior like homosexuality. Nevertheless, some mention has survived, and the author devotes Chapter 11 to same-sex references. For example, he quotes a Massachusetts soldier in Virginia in 1864 who wrote about a dance that the soldiers held, in which the young drummer boys dressed as women: “Some of the real women went, but the boy girls were so much better looking that they left…. 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” (pp.112-113). On May 13, 1862 the RICHMOND DISPATCH newspaper denounced the prevalence of “the imprudence and familiar vulgarity of many of the shame faced of the prostitutes of both sexes” (p.110) in the Confederate capital. Poet Walt Whitman confided in his private notebooks the ease with which he picked up teenage boys and young men, both in Washington and New York, to take them home to “sleep with them.” The author quotes Edward Carpenter, who reported that as a young man Walt Whitman performed fellatio on him (pp.110-111). "
America s Gay Confederate and Union Soldiers The Bilerico Project
"Chapter 11 of Lowry's book opens the closet door on gender-bending and same-sex trysts. And Lowry reveals that during the Civil War conventional gender roles and sexual behavior could not be strictly tethered to a heterosexual paradigm. With men outnumbering women, especially at social events like balls, drummer boys - children as young as nine and ten-years-old, dressed in drag. And in some occasions, the intimacy between soldiers and drummer boys reached beyond just a public waltz."
Using young boys in the military as glorified sex slaves was common. The young curly haired boy in the movie "Master and Commander" was undoubtedly a 'peg boy' and used for that purpose as it's hard to imagine a legitimate naval need for prepubescent boys onboard ships of war. This was standard practice in US fleets as well during the Civil War.
"Were ships’ boys sometimes used for sexual purposes by their elders? We have sworn testimony that they were."
Buggery and the British Navy Is it true the ships had peg boys - Washington City Paper
