Same-Sex Desire in the Civil War
The Civil War included soldiers with same-sex desires. For example, in his memoirs Union General Sheridan tells of a pair of women–two “Amazons”–who somehow enlisted as soldiers. While in the army “an intimacy had sprung up between them.” They “secured a supply of 'apple-jack,'” “got very drunk,” fell in a river, and nearly drowned. During resuscitation “their sex was disclosed.”[1]
About an all-male soldier dance, an infantryman reported, “For ladies we had boys in ladies clothes . . . I guess some of them did get layed with. I know I slept with mine.”[2]
Sources
1. Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), 227.
2. Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001), 136.