Sex in the Civil War

By Stefanie Testa

As we learned by the documentary “Sex in the Civil War”, by Thomas Lowry, many of the stories about the soldiers were left untold. We know these soldiers to be honorable, dependable, and high with integrity, but we didn’t know until much later, that the sexuality and moral discrepencies among these troops was much more widely spread than society today would care to believe. Historians who specialize on this particular time in American history found many secret and titilating journals, letters, and old sexual novels belonging to these same soldiers. When the explicit novels didn’t do its justice, there were always pornography floating a round by the dozen.  Not to mention that prositution rose during this time as well. Prostitutes were sometimes grouped with the other camp followers, which are those who followed the troops as they moved from base to base. [1] Some believe these “camp followers” was the result of women suffering from depression after their husbands went off to war, and the necessity to support the family alone. [2]

Prostitution was infamous in Nashville, Tennessee where over 1500 women were claimed to be in the industry on Smokey Row. And, of course with prostitution, and seldom use of birth control and other contraceptative devices, sexually transmitted diseases also swept the nation. In the same titled book as the film by Lowry, he explains that “among the white Union soldiers there was a total of 73,382 syphilis cases and 109,397 gonorrhea cases.” [3] Prostitution even became legal for a short time where the known prostitutes would have a license and be examined by a physician each week to try to reduce the number of spreading cases of these venereal diseases. 

It is clear to see that the Repressive Hypothesis of Sexuality, which is the belief sexuality was more conservative in the earlier eras of our country, is just that, a false belief. [4] Human sexuality has been as radical and comprehensive as anything else in our modern society. We learned from somewhere, didn’t we?  

1 Moore, Crystal. “Sex in the Civil War”. Lecture. History of Sexuality. University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, March 18, 2014.

2 Lowry, Thomas. "Stories the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War." History Channel 2002. DVD.

3 Lowry, Thomas. Stories the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Stackpole Books, 1994.

4 Moore, Crystal. “The Role of Sex and Gender in the History of Sexuality”. Lecture. History of Sexuality. University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, January 9, 2014.