150th Anniversary of the American Civil War: 2011-2015

A Timeline and Bibliography on the Occasion of the Civil War Sesquicentennial

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1861, April 12

Secessionist forces fired on the U.S. Army's Fort Sumpter, near Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War. John King, a Confederate soldier held as a Union prisoner, recalled prison balls at which a number of men "would be selected to represent ladies," and tie blankets around their waists.

1861, April 18

Six days after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumpter and initiated the Civil War, Walt Whitmann vowed in his diary to initiate a new bodily regime: "To inaugurate for (myself) a (pure) (perfect) sweet, cleanblooded (robust) body by ignoring all drinks (but) water and pure milk -- and all fat meats [and] late suppers -- a great body -- [a] purged, cleansed, spirtualized invigorated body."

1862, March 25

Walt Whitman received a suggestive, romantic-sounding letter from "Ellen Eyre" who, research suggests, was a man.

See: Ellen Eyre: to Walt Whitman, March 25, 1862

See also: 1862, July 8

1862, May 13

The Richmond (Virginia) Daily Dispatch, in the Confederate capital, reported a large increase in "prostitutes of both sexes," including "loose males of the most abandoned character". Does this refer to men who sold their sexual services to men (and perhaps to women), or simply to men associated with female prostitutes? Perhaps future research will tell.

1862, May 29

Walt Whitman's diary tersely records his meeting the "rather feminine" Daniel Spencer, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street: "told me he had never been in a fight and did not drink at all." Spencer had joined the Second New York Light Artillery, deserted, and then returned to his regiment. Three months after Whitman's and Spencer's first meeting, beside the date "Sept 3d," in the margin of his diary, the poet recorded: "slept with me."

1862, July 8

Walt Whitman's diary records that he discussed Ellen Eyre (see above: 1862, March 25) with one of the strangers (all men) he picked up in New York City's streets: "Frank Sweezey -- brown face, large features, black mustache (is the one I told the whole story to about Ellen Eyre." The "whole story" of Eyre, recounted by the talkative Whitman, created a shared intimacy between himself and Sweezey, who, Whitman recorded, "talks little." Sharing the "whole" Eyre story only with Sweezey, apparently, Whitman made this passing stranger a confidant. The Ellen Eyre story, whatever it was, cemented the intimacy between men. Whitman's telling Sweezey a tale of a romantic or sexual adventure with Eyre may well have been his way of raising the subject of sex with this working man and stimulating his erotic imagination."

See also: 1862, March 25

1862, August 24

The history of the Civil War includes "individuals who defy classification, like this one from a Pennsylvania muster roll: 'Sgt. Frank Mayne; deserted Aug. 24, 1862; subsequently killed in battle in another regiment, and discovered to be a woman; real name, Frances Day.'”

1862, October 11

Walt Whitman recorded a Brooklyn, NY, meeting, on a Saturday, with "David Wilson -- night of Oct. 11, '62, walking up from Middagh -- slept with me -- works in blacksmith shop in Navy Yard -- lives in Hamoden st. -- walks together Sunday Afternoon &c night -- is about 19." In this case Whitman was definitely not just providing a homeless young man a place to stay for a night, for Wilson "lives in Hampden st.," within easy walking distance of Middagh, where they met.

1862, October 22

Walt Whitman's diary records his meeting with Horace Ostrander, "about 28 yr's of age," from Otsego County, New York, sixty miles west of Albany. Ostrander "was in the hospital" visiting a friend. Ostrander told the poet that, when he was about twenty-one, in about 1855, he had sailed "on a voyage to Liverpool" and related "his experiences as a greenhand." (Herman Melvile's novel, Redburn, the tale of a young American's virgin sail to Liverpool, inlcudes hints of various exual encoutners, which may suggest some of the experiences Ostranger shared with Whitman. Whitman met Ostranger again on November 22, and a few weeks later reported: "slept with him Dec. 4th '62."

1862, December 16

Walt Whitman and his family read a newspaper report suggesting that brother George Washington Whitman, a Union solder, had been wounded at the battle of Fredericksburg. Whitman immediately left Brooklyn for the South, to try to locate and aid his sibling. After locating George and finding his wound safely healing, Whitman stayed in the South, dedicating himself to wartime volunteer work, visiting hospitals and comforting wounded soldiers.

1862, December 22

At the Lacy House, an army hostpital in Virginia, one of the first sights Walt Whitman encountered, "at the foot of a tree, immediately in front," was "a heap" of amputated :feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickinging." In the garden near," he saw "a row of graves . . . a long row of them."

1863

General Philip H. Sheridan: Two she-dragoons in the Union Army, 1863

1863, March 19

Walt Whitman writes from Washington, D.C., about striking up a friendship with a young Mississippi captain, wounded at Fredericksburg. Whitman had by this time probably also developed affectionate feelings for two other wounded soldiers, Thomas P. Sawyer and Lewis Kirk Brown.

1863, July 25

Fincher's Trades Review: An Advocate of the Rigihts of the Producing Classes, publishes "A Curious Married Couple," discussing the "Thirty-four years of pretended matrimony" of Mary East/James How and her "wife."

1863, August 10

Civil War nurse, Amanda Akin, wrote to her sister complaining about something she found odd in Walt Whitman's attention to the wounded soldiers in her hospital.

1863, September 5

Walt Whitman wrote to his New York friend Nathaniel Bloom about his affection for the wounded soldiers he was visiting in Washington, D.C.

1863, October 9

Walt Whitman wrote in his diary about meeting Jerry Taylor and says that Taylor "slept with me last night". Whitman adds: "weather soft, cool enough, warm enough, heavenly."

1863, November 7

A wounded soldier, Elijah Douglas Fox, wrote to Walt Whitman that he missed him.

1863, December ?

Soldier Alonzo S. Bush wrote to Walt Whitman from Maryland about their mutual friend Lewis K. Brown "The fellow that went down on your BK, both So often with me. I wished that I could See him this evening and go in the Ward Master's Room and have Some fun for he is a gay boy."

1864, January 5

Walt Whitman wrote in his diary that the wounded soldier, Lewis K. Brown, had had his leg amputated, and that Whitman had sat with him through the night, trying to comfort him.

1864, March 20

Union soldier John J. Willey, of Massachusetts, quartered in Brandy Station, Virginia, wrote to his wife about an all-male ball at which some soldiers dressed as women, and at which a Major fell in love with a boy . . . who was the bell[e] of the evening."

1864, April 3

From another military camp near Brandy Station, Virginia, a Union soldier, Oscar Cram wrote to a woman correspondent of a ball with "boys in ladies clothes & some of them looked almost good enough to lay with & I guess some of them did get layed with. I know I slept with mine."

1865, April 21

William Anderson, a sailor, and Henry Smith, a petty officer on the USS Shamrock, docked in North Carolina, were charged with "holding improper indecent intercourse."

1865, April 23=

John C. Smith and Louis Jerus, on the USS SHamrock, were charged with "improper and indecent intercourse with each other."

1865, June 24

A month after the end of the Civil War, Union soldier Nicholas Palmer wrote to Walt Whitman, wondering how he (Palmer) was going to make a living. Palmer, in effect, offered his sexual services to Whitman.

1865, August

A letter from an anonymous "Private of the 5th Pa. Cavalry" to U.S. Attorney General James Speed, charged that a commission investigating "the conduct of the war" had publicized "a scandalous and most infamous" example of "the 'cruelties' of the Confederates towards our [Union] prisoners." Speaking of Union prisoners in Andersonville, the writer claimed that "Sodomy was the cause of their disgusting condition . . . ."

1865, October 30

Captain George M. Danson, of the ship Muscoota, docked at Key West, Florida, sent seaman Henry Williams and ordinary seaman William Stewart to trial for "an unnatural crime" (unspecified).

Bibliography

Blanton, De Anne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. Paperback: Vintage, September 9, 2003. ISBN-10: 1400033152, ISBN-13: 978-1400033157

Genoways, Ted. Walt Whitman and the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality. See Chapter 9, "A Major Fell in Love with a Boy," pages 133-146, and Chapter 10, "I Got the Boys", pages 147-163 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Notes

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