Sex and the Civil War

Sex and the Civil War

Author: Judith Giesberg

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1469631288

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Civil War soldiers enjoyed unprecedented access to obscene materials of all sorts, including mass-produced erotic fiction, cartes de visite, playing cards, and stereographs. A perfect storm of antebellum legal, technological, and commercial developments, coupled with the concentration of men fed into armies, created a demand for, and a deluge of, pornography in the military camps. Illicit materials entered in haversacks, through the mail, or from sutlers; soldiers found pornography discarded on the ground, and civilians discovered it in abandoned camps. Though few examples survived the war, these materials raised sharp concerns among reformers and lawmakers, who launched campaigns to combat it. By the war's end, a victorious, resurgent American nation-state sought to assert its moral authority by redefining human relations of the most intimate sort, including the regulation of sex and reproduction—most evident in the Comstock laws, a federal law and a series of state measures outlawing pornography, contraception, and abortion. With this book, Judith Giesberg has written the first serious study of the erotica and pornography that nineteenth-century American soldiers read and shared and links them to the postwar reaction to pornography and to debates about the future of sex and marriage.


Book Synopsis Sex and the Civil War by : Judith Giesberg

Download or read book Sex and the Civil War written by Judith Giesberg and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civil War soldiers enjoyed unprecedented access to obscene materials of all sorts, including mass-produced erotic fiction, cartes de visite, playing cards, and stereographs. A perfect storm of antebellum legal, technological, and commercial developments, coupled with the concentration of men fed into armies, created a demand for, and a deluge of, pornography in the military camps. Illicit materials entered in haversacks, through the mail, or from sutlers; soldiers found pornography discarded on the ground, and civilians discovered it in abandoned camps. Though few examples survived the war, these materials raised sharp concerns among reformers and lawmakers, who launched campaigns to combat it. By the war's end, a victorious, resurgent American nation-state sought to assert its moral authority by redefining human relations of the most intimate sort, including the regulation of sex and reproduction—most evident in the Comstock laws, a federal law and a series of state measures outlawing pornography, contraception, and abortion. With this book, Judith Giesberg has written the first serious study of the erotica and pornography that nineteenth-century American soldiers read and shared and links them to the postwar reaction to pornography and to debates about the future of sex and marriage.


The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell

The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell

Author: Thomas P. Lowry

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0811711536

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Explores the secret life of the men in blue and gray.


Book Synopsis The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell by : Thomas P. Lowry

Download or read book The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell written by Thomas P. Lowry and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the secret life of the men in blue and gray.


Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War

Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War

Author: Thomas P. Lowry

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2006-10-12

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1462816584

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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 fo


Book Synopsis Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War by : Thomas P. Lowry

Download or read book Sexual Misbehavior in the Civil War written by Thomas P. Lowry and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 fo


Sex Wars

Sex Wars

Author: Marge Piercy

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2005-11-22

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 0060789832

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Post–Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books. In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.


Book Synopsis Sex Wars by : Marge Piercy

Download or read book Sex Wars written by Marge Piercy and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2005-11-22 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post–Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books. In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.


Divided Houses

Divided Houses

Author: Catherine Clinton

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0195080343

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Divided Houses is the first book to show how the Civil War transformed gender roles and attitudes toward sexuality among Americans. This unique volume brings together a wide spectrum of critical viewpoints by newly emerging scholars as well as distinguished authors in the field to show how gender became a prism through which the political tensions of antebellum America were filtered and focused. Through the course of the book, many fascinating subjects are explored, from new "manly" responsibilities both black and white men had thrust upon them as soldiers, to women's roles in the guerrilla fighting, to the wartime dialogue on interracial sex. In addition, an incisive introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson helps place these various subjects within an overall historical context. Divided House sheds new light on the entire Civil War experience, demonstrating how themes of gender, class, race, and sexuality interacted to forge the beginnings of a new society.


Book Synopsis Divided Houses by : Catherine Clinton

Download or read book Divided Houses written by Catherine Clinton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided Houses is the first book to show how the Civil War transformed gender roles and attitudes toward sexuality among Americans. This unique volume brings together a wide spectrum of critical viewpoints by newly emerging scholars as well as distinguished authors in the field to show how gender became a prism through which the political tensions of antebellum America were filtered and focused. Through the course of the book, many fascinating subjects are explored, from new "manly" responsibilities both black and white men had thrust upon them as soldiers, to women's roles in the guerrilla fighting, to the wartime dialogue on interracial sex. In addition, an incisive introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson helps place these various subjects within an overall historical context. Divided House sheds new light on the entire Civil War experience, demonstrating how themes of gender, class, race, and sexuality interacted to forge the beginnings of a new society.


How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

Author: Leigh Ann Wheeler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0190206527

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'How Sex Became a Civil Liberty' shows how we came to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, thanks to the work of ACLU leaders and attorneys who forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution.


Book Synopsis How Sex Became a Civil Liberty by : Leigh Ann Wheeler

Download or read book How Sex Became a Civil Liberty written by Leigh Ann Wheeler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'How Sex Became a Civil Liberty' shows how we came to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, thanks to the work of ACLU leaders and attorneys who forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution.


Civil War as a Crisis in Gender

Civil War as a Crisis in Gender

Author: LeeAnn Whites

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2000-03-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0820322091

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Gender is the last vantage point from which the Civil War has yet to be examined in-depth, says LeeAnn Whites. Gender concepts and constructions, Whites says, deeply influenced the beliefs underpinning both the Confederacy and its vestiges to which white southerners clung for decades after the Confederacy's defeat. Whites's arguments and observations, which center on the effects of the conflict on the South's gender hierarchy, will challenge our understanding of the war and our acceptance of its historiography. The ordering principle of gender roles and relations in the antebellum South, says Whites, was a form of privileged white male identity against which others in that society were measured and accorded worth and meaning--women, wives, children, and slaves. Over the course of the Civil War the power of these men to so arbitrarily construct their world all but vanished, owing to a succession of hardships that culminated in defeat and the end of slavery. At the same time, Confederate women were steadily--and ambivalently--empowered. Drawn out of their domestic sphere, these women labored and sacrificed to prop up an apparently hollow notion of essential manliness that rested in part on an assumption of female docility and weakness. Whites focuses on Augusta, Georgia, to follow these events as they were played out in the lives of actual men and women. An antebellum cotton trading center, Augusta was central to the Confederacy's supply network and later became an exemplary New South manufacturing city. Drawing on primary sources from private family papers to census data, Whites traces the interplay of power and subordination, self-interest and loyalty, as she discusses topics related to the gender crisis in Augusta, including female kin networks, women's volunteer organizations, class and race divisions, emancipation, Sherman's invasion of Georgia, veteran aid societies, rural migration to cities, and the postwar employment of white women and children in industry. Whites concludes with an account of how elite white Augustans "reconstructed" themselves in the postwar years. By memorializing their dead and mythologizing their history in a way that presented the war as a valiant defense of antebellum domesticity, these Augustans sought to restore a patriarchy--however attenuated--that would deflect the class strains of industrial development while maintaining what it could of the old Southern gender and racial order. Inherent in this effort, as during the war, was an unspoken admission by the white men of Augusta of their dependency upon white women. A pioneering volume in Civil War history, this important study opens new debates and avenues of inquiry in culture and gender studies.


Book Synopsis Civil War as a Crisis in Gender by : LeeAnn Whites

Download or read book Civil War as a Crisis in Gender written by LeeAnn Whites and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender is the last vantage point from which the Civil War has yet to be examined in-depth, says LeeAnn Whites. Gender concepts and constructions, Whites says, deeply influenced the beliefs underpinning both the Confederacy and its vestiges to which white southerners clung for decades after the Confederacy's defeat. Whites's arguments and observations, which center on the effects of the conflict on the South's gender hierarchy, will challenge our understanding of the war and our acceptance of its historiography. The ordering principle of gender roles and relations in the antebellum South, says Whites, was a form of privileged white male identity against which others in that society were measured and accorded worth and meaning--women, wives, children, and slaves. Over the course of the Civil War the power of these men to so arbitrarily construct their world all but vanished, owing to a succession of hardships that culminated in defeat and the end of slavery. At the same time, Confederate women were steadily--and ambivalently--empowered. Drawn out of their domestic sphere, these women labored and sacrificed to prop up an apparently hollow notion of essential manliness that rested in part on an assumption of female docility and weakness. Whites focuses on Augusta, Georgia, to follow these events as they were played out in the lives of actual men and women. An antebellum cotton trading center, Augusta was central to the Confederacy's supply network and later became an exemplary New South manufacturing city. Drawing on primary sources from private family papers to census data, Whites traces the interplay of power and subordination, self-interest and loyalty, as she discusses topics related to the gender crisis in Augusta, including female kin networks, women's volunteer organizations, class and race divisions, emancipation, Sherman's invasion of Georgia, veteran aid societies, rural migration to cities, and the postwar employment of white women and children in industry. Whites concludes with an account of how elite white Augustans "reconstructed" themselves in the postwar years. By memorializing their dead and mythologizing their history in a way that presented the war as a valiant defense of antebellum domesticity, these Augustans sought to restore a patriarchy--however attenuated--that would deflect the class strains of industrial development while maintaining what it could of the old Southern gender and racial order. Inherent in this effort, as during the war, was an unspoken admission by the white men of Augusta of their dependency upon white women. A pioneering volume in Civil War history, this important study opens new debates and avenues of inquiry in culture and gender studies.


Sexuality and War

Sexuality and War

Author: Evelyne Accad

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1992-05

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0814706150

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In this text, the author explores what she argues is an indissoluble link between war and sexuality. She explores the connections among sexuality, war, nationalism, pacifism, violence, love and power as they relate to the body, the partner, the family, political ideologies and religion.


Book Synopsis Sexuality and War by : Evelyne Accad

Download or read book Sexuality and War written by Evelyne Accad and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1992-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this text, the author explores what she argues is an indissoluble link between war and sexuality. She explores the connections among sexuality, war, nationalism, pacifism, violence, love and power as they relate to the body, the partner, the family, political ideologies and religion.


Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

Author: Charles A. Mills

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 9780945598091

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Book Synopsis Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War by : Charles A. Mills

Download or read book Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War written by Charles A. Mills and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


War and Sex

War and Sex

Author: John V. H. Dippel

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2011-09-27

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1616143134

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Dippel reviews social circumstances leading up to conflicts from the American Civil War through the Vietnam War and the current clash with Islamic fundamentalists, and explores how tensions over gender roles affect men's willingness to go to war.


Book Synopsis War and Sex by : John V. H. Dippel

Download or read book War and Sex written by John V. H. Dippel and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dippel reviews social circumstances leading up to conflicts from the American Civil War through the Vietnam War and the current clash with Islamic fundamentalists, and explores how tensions over gender roles affect men's willingness to go to war.