New and Noteworthy---Love and Lust in the Archives

Love and Lust: Private and Amorous Letters of the Civil WarThomas P. Lowry, BookSurge Publishing, 228 pages,paperback, $16.95, October 2009.
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Tens of thousands of Civil War letters still exist, mostly asking about family health, and telling of long marches, sore feet, bad food, diarrhea, malaria, and the occasional battle. Largely lost are those letters telling of physical love, of the private moments of amorous life. Yet some letters have survived, speaking vividly and unashamedly of pre-war passionate embraces, wartime longings for absent lovers, and hope for blissful reunions in the marital bed. One soldier wrote of looking forward to bondage and disciple games in the bedroom, wearing their “favorite uniform” – bare skin. Another man wrote to his wife begging her to write him sexually explicit letters, telling her how much he would treasure such words. A Rhode Island infantryman wrote a few passionate pages, then noted his physical arousal and changed the subject. Single young men, without wives or regular sweethearts, corresponded at length, comparing the prostitutes of Maine, New York, Washington, DC, and Louisiana, and adding cautionary notes about syphilis, gonorrhea, and the painful treatments therefore. One man, home on disability leave, had recovered enough to make daily efforts to seduce every girl he met. A Nashville prostitute cut her hair and joined a Michigan regiment. The mails were flooded with ads for pornographic novels, images, and devices. Another man, perhaps overlooked by the postman, wrote home asking for some “fancy” reading material to revive his dormant sexual feelings. The mail also contained hundreds of family letters of far grimmer content: children dying of diphtheria, measles, smallpox, and tuberculosis, and families turned out in the snow for inability to pay the rent. Some soldiers were sentenced to death for going home to help their starving families. Other letters and court documents tell of a great cavalcade of human mischief, error, misery, and poor judgment. A young girl is sent to prison for incest with her father. A married woman is sued for libel after she claimed a neighbor had offered her “nine pence” to lie with him. A justice of the peace ordered the sheriff to arrest two men for “getting bastards” upon two women. Civil War issues did include battles, politics, and slavery, but there was also a another aspect of life, never mentioned in high school textbooks, of love, lust, venereal disease, incest, abortion, contraception, and harsh language. Even obscene graffiti, written on the walls of Southern mansions, imitated the “art” found in high school bathrooms today. The author’s book, fully referenced and annotated, brings these documents and images, verbatim and uncensored, to a public that would like to know what life was really like in mid-Victorian America. Text From Publisher.

CWL: Dr. Thomas P. Lowry was contributed a great deal in the past decade to our knowledge of soldier life, medicine, justice and gender issues during the American Civil War: The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War, Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War, Confederate Heroines: 120 Southern Women Convicted by Union Military Justice, Confederate Death Sentences: A Reference Guide,Tarnished Scalpels: The Court-Martials of Fifty Union Surgeons, The Civil War Bawdy Houses of Washington, D.C.: Including a Map of Their Former Locations and a Reprint of the Souvenir Sporting Guide for the Chicago, Illinois, G.A.R. 1895, Reunion, Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools: The Courts-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels, and Don't Shoot That Boy! Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice, and several others. Without a doubt Lowry has explored the unexplored and spent months in archives that are usually not in the bibliographies of most Civil War books. CWL is always intrigued by Lowry's evidence and conclusions.

CWL--Sex in the (Wartime) City

Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War: A Compendium of 1,036 True Stories, Thomas P. Lowry, Xlibris Press, 2006, Chapter 1, Prostitution in Virginia, pp. 15-25.

The following letter is imaginary but accurate.

Dear Wife,
Greetings from Alexandria, Virginia!
I won’t be sending you my pay for a couple of months.
I got drunk. Then the bartender took me to a house of ill fame and I had sex with a prostitute, who talked me into leaving the army (I missed you so much) and said she would help me do it. She sold me for $25 civilian clothes provided by the bartender. When I put them on the bartender came into the bedroom with the provost guard. I was arrested for desertion. The arresting officers got a reward of $30 that they split 50-50 with the bartender who split his share with the whore. I am losing $8 of my $13 a month pay for three months. Also, I am in Old Slave Pen jail and will be moved to the Prince Street Prison for three months and at hard labor.
Your husband,
The Private.

Thomas P. Lowry has discovered military court records that chronicle that sad story, with a several variations, many times. The amount paid for the clothes changes; it ranges from $25 to $80. On occasion, the arresting officers take a bribe from the deserter, but still arrest the offender. Several times, transportation out of Alexandria is to be provided for fees ranging for around $20.

In addition, Lowry presents some fairly frank information of the methods of whores acquiring customers in Alexandria. There were a pair of Southern ladies who sold heirlooms from their home; but a whiskey still was found in their basement by the provost guard. From the Potomac River docks, women would signal passing ship. The ship would come to the dock, drop the gangplank and a woman would get on board. The ship would pull away from the dock, idle in the current for a while and then return to the dock and discharge the woman. This event occurred so regularly that the woman that small crowds would come to a particular dock to cheer the women on and off the ship. When a ferry captain asked a woman who was going aboard a U.S. provost guard ship if she was going to fire a salute she replied she was going aboard to handle a gun.

The evidence from these trial shows that the U.S. authorities tolerated prostitution. There is evidence that only one whorehouse was shut down by the provost guard in Alexandria in the course of four years. Nearly all the cases Lowry has found are records of violence, desertion or noisy behavior. When men paid for sex and not sold civilian clothes, then prostitution went unnoticed by the provost. ‘Soiled doves’, ‘nymphs du pave ‘(girls of the pavement),’ frail but fair women’, ‘Cyprians’ who worked in ‘houses of ill fame, ‘houses of ill repute’, or ‘bawdy houses’ were terms used for whores and their domiciles in Victorian times and found in courts martial records. Much less frequently used, Lowry finds, are the terms whore’, ‘whorehouse’, and ‘bordello’. The term ‘parlor houses’ was a term reserved for the rich and well-to-do when the visited a whorehouse.

CWL ---- A New Meaning for the Term 'Guard Mount': Alexandria and Richmond, Virginia in 1861

"Prostitution in Virginia," first chapter in Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War: A Conpendium, Thomas P. Lowry, XLibris Corporation, 2006.

If there was no change since the 1860 census, in May 1861 when the Union army seized Alexandria, Virginia, it found seven whores gainfully employed in two houses of prostitution in the city. The next month, women passing from Union-held Alexandria to the Confederate camps were suspected of being prostitutes by Captain Thomas Jordan, on Beauregard's staff and in charge of efforts to smuggle information out of Washington, D.C.

Thomas Radcliffe, captain in the 118th NY was dismissed from the service in late 1862 for behavior in summer of 1861; he had lived with a prostitute whom he had frequently but not consistently passed off as his wife. Hamiltion Hare, a lieutenant of the 31st NY was court-martialed for being drunk on a reconnaissance mission, exposing his penis while in camp, consorting with a prostitute in his tent while he kept the tent flaps open. Consorting consisted of singing obscene songs, quarreling and falling asleep naked.

Three men of the 16th West Virginia, in October 1862, testified against Lieutenant H.D. Davis; his behavior was that of a pimp who was associated with at least two whorehouses, one was located on Railroad Steet and employed six negro wenches. After the testimony, the provost gaurd was sent to pick up Davis. The gaurd found evidence that been to four Alexandrian houses of prostitution that day and finally located him at his 'headquarters' on King Street; he was drunk and asleep in his bunk. Both the 16th West Virginia and the 53rd New York were entirely disbanded before ten months had passed on their three year enlistment.

CWL --- The Story That Jackson Would Not Have Read: Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War

Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War: A Compendium, Thomas P. Lowry, 337 pp., index, endnotes, appendices, illus., Xlibris, 2007, $22.99.

Prostitution, rape, masturbation, homosexuality, bestiality, bad language and even a short history of illegal sexual behavior before, during and shortly after 1863 in Adams County, Pennsylvania are presented in 1,036 true stories gathered by Thomas Lowry. Delving into the National Archives, the Library of Congress and sundry other state and local libraries, Lowry has previously produced books on military justice, medical malpractice and sexual behavior. He has established a database of 90,000+ court-martial records of the Civil War era.

Reading this manuscript before its publication James I. Robertson, noted author of a biography of Stonewall Jackson, and Robert K. Krick, esteemed author of books on Stonewall Jackson's strategy and tactics, are enthralled with 'Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War. "No historical endeavor delights me nearly as one that displays rich original material," blurbs Krick and this book for him is a significant contribution to the field of Civil War history. Robertson crows that Lowry's new book is "a necessary conpendium for any serious student of Civil War history." Possibly, 'Sexual Behavior in the Civil War' is the book that Stonewall Jackson wouldn't have read. Lowry addresses prostitution and rape in 19 chapters and covers it by state and region. Masturbation, homosexuality, bestiality, bad language, and Adams County are addressed with individual chapters.

The last chapter, A Vast Miscellany, contains a truely ghastly photograph of a victim of syphilis, clever horseshoe art, detailed minie ball sculptures, and casual coin disfigurement. As with any compendium, the reader should ask, "Is this trivia or is this obscure information?" Trivia is entertaining; obscure information is a detail that speaks to a larger and pertinent truth. Taken anecdote by anecdote, 'Sexual Behavior in the Civil War' presents trivia; yet, organized as it is, 'Sexual Behavior in the Civil War' presents obscure information that reveals that passion leads men to commit acts that are unlawful, stupid, and dangerous. Working from courts-martial records and surgeon general reports, Lowry has discovered that there were 183,000 reported cases of venereal disease in the Union army and that California regiments had infection rates of about 50%. Most prostitutes died in their mid-twenties as sufferers of alcoholism, syphilis and morphine addiction.

Lowry states that "it is apparent that the author (Lowry) has offered little in the way of comment, analysis or editorializing. This book is not a book of analysis, nor would the sheer volume of material allow for such pontificating." (p. 14) What value the book gives, is directed to academicians and graduate students. He sees it as a type of Rosetta Stone, a "vast finding aid for future research, a beginning point for monogpraphs, dissertations and other learned works." Lowry quoutes Lincoln (p.7), "sexual contact is a harp of a thousand strings." This book will play many melodies for many casual readers and diligent researchers.