Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War

Over three million young men left home, shouldered rifles, and set about killing one another in the 1860s. Behind, they left wives and sweethearts. The 50,000 books about the war have told us in meticulous detail about the strategy, tactics, weapons, uniforms, canteens, famous generals, religious beliefs, personality quirks, fortifications, battles, sieges, gunboats, medical care, and recruiting policies. The causes of the war have been endlessly analyzed. The surviving veterans wrote hundreds of memoirs, sometimes inflating their own heroism and importance. What rarely appears in this literature is any mention of sex, in spite of most soldiers being in their early twenties, a time of manly vigor. The late 19th century brought the ascendancy of Victorian prudishness and hypocrisy. The Comstock laws sent men to prison for mailing contraceptive advice. Just advice! Whatever willingness there might have been to reveal wartime hanky-panky evaporated in the tenor of the time and the admiring gaze of the veteran's growing grandchildren. The following scene would be unimaginable: the old veteran sits by the stove in the country store. His long white beard covers his tattered vest. A faded medal graces his chest. On the floor are the shavings from his most recent whittling. A tiny child pipes up: "Tell us about the war, grandpa." "Well, Jimmy, there was this pretty little whore in Memphis." Never happen. Material collected twenty years ago resulted in the author's 1994 book, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell - Sex in the Civil War, which presented everything that was then known on the subject. There had been no previous book on Civil War sex. Since then, the author and his wife, Beverly, have read over 90,000 court-martials and countless letters and diary entries. What emerges is that sexual activity was far more common and public than our previous research or any memoir had ever revealed. The records come from literally every corner of the country: Key West, Washington Territory, Los Angeles, and Maine. The malfeasants are both officers and enlisted men. The victims range from six-year girls to sixty-year old grandmothers. The soldiers carried with them lewd books and obscene photos. Even more striking is the universality of houses of prostitution. Every village and every city neighborhood has at least one such-and everybody knew it. They knew the addresses of the houses. They knew the names of the madams and the names of many of the "girls." Most of the witnesses for the trials had visited the houses, for the usual reasons. The military police tramped through the houses, looking for deserters. Rape, thought to be rare during the war, was not that rare. An unexpected finding was that Union soldiers, who were supposedly freeing the slaves, were quick to rape black women. An even more surprising finding was that the Confederate army had a policy of not prosecuting rapists, whether the victim was black or white. The inventor of the Graham cracker had, in 1834, written a book claiming that masturbation caused severe illness, even death. This idea had taken root in the medical profession and many army doctors testified that a defendant was not guilty because of "insanity from self-abuse." The Union army's largest hospital listed dozens men, dead from "masturbation." The famous ship Monitor had a thick iron turret. In other such ships, the sound-proof turret proved a convenient place for old sailors to rape young boys. A Union cavalry colonel was tried for sexually assaulted both men and women. Evidence for Civil War homosexuality was unknown until now. Even more astonishing stories appear in the records: sex with horses, sheep, even with chickens and turkeys. There are records of obscene tattoos, foul cursing by Winfield Scott Hancock, black and white mistresses of Confederate generals, even many records of "fornication and bastardy" in the little village of Gettysburg. Ads for abortion clinics appeared on the front pages of newspaper

Thomas P. Lowry was born and raised in northern California, far from any interest in the Civil War. In high school he was an Eagle Scout, played football (poorly), and sailed with his father. Seven years at Stanford ended in a medical doctor degree and still no interest in the Civil War. Internship in Minneapolis and three years of psychiatry training in San Francisco, followed by two years in the US Air Force Medical Corps, were educational, but still had no connection with history. Many years of private practice, a few years on the staff of San Quentin State Prison, and two years as medical director of New Mexico State Hospital, produced more memories, as well as Fellowship in the American Psychiatric Association and specialty board certification - but still no history bug. Those same years produced several medical books, which were widely ignored.

The passing years included more than one marriage and a total of four children-- all grown, all employed, all objects of parental pride. In 1980, a yellowed clipping told me that two great-uncles had served in the Union army. No names, just that they were stepbrothers of my great-grandfather. In the long search for these two soldiers, I learned much about Civil War records. I also learned that my ancestors were not famous, not officers, just two of the hundreds of thousands of unsung men who never came home. The standard book on the "common soldier" said that the sexual side of the war, for a variety of reasons, could never be studied. I am a contrarian and I began collecting material for a book on the sexual aspects of the war, which after having been rejected by 35 publishers, finally appeared in 1994. After a full-page favorable review in the New York Times, the book has sold 30,000 copies. Hardly Tom Clancy, but good for a non-fiction history book.

In 1986, I married Beverly and discovered that she loved old records even more than I. She was also better at reading old handwriting. (No typewriters in Lincoln's time!) We began to travel east, to read and index the 75,000 Union army court-martials. Beverly created a wonderful searchable computer database. Soon history overtook medicine. I retired; we sold the house in California; we moved to Virginia, and summarized not only the Union army trials, also those of the Union navy and what is left of the Confederate records. Our new friends sent us gleanings from their own work and interests. By 2005, it was clear that the records of sexual malfeasance in the Civil War were far more extensive than anyone had dreamed, indeed the America of the 1860s looked far different than portrayed in the other 50,000 Civil War books.

The resulting book shows the high points of over a thousand stories. To show each story fully would take shelves of books. For most readers, these "high points" will suit their needs. For others, the footnotes tell exactly where to find the whole story. While all this data was accumulating we developed several circles of friends: our commuter train friends, our archives friends, our neighborhood friends. We visited battlefields, unwound in Egypt and Jordan, hosted many visitors to DC, went to the Bahamas (researching their role in the war) and adopted a Jack Russell terrier. We love the four seasons. The database is far more than just sex. It has produced books on errant colonels, naughty surgeons, and female spies and smugglers. Three more books are percolating even now. Retired doctors are supposed to take up golf. I promise to do so after all the books done. But then I'll 95. It's been a good life. With luck, it will continue.