The American Civil War lasted from April of 1861 to May of 1865. It was by far the deadliest war in American history, with over 750,000 soldiers killed in battle. More than half of them dying of, on the battlefield, from diseases or festering wounds.
So it's understandable that, while on the battlefield, many soldiers decided to explore their sexuality for fear of their own impending mortality.
The best example of this is seen in the writings of Walt Whitman, who joined the Union Army as a soldier at the age of 42. During his life, Whitman was one of the most famous gay poets of all time, and during the war he was no different.
He wrote highly erotic poems about other men soldiers and, after they were published, we got to see a glimpse of just how gay the Union army was.
But it's not just how prevalent being gay was in the military. It was also widely accepted.
With soldiers getting killed in such high numbers, the generals and leaders didn't really care if soldiers partaken in same sex activity at night because they knew they couldn't lose any soldier off of the battlefield.
And sometimes those generals were the ones who participated in gay relationships as well, because they were in just as much danger everyday.
(See post on Revolutionary War General, Baron von Steuben)
During the war, women started dressing up as men in order to enlist in the military and help with the war efforts, because women were still not allowed to enlist in the military back then.
But women who dressed as a man, were almost always allowed to enlist, even though the generals knew exactly what was going on.
As LGBTQ historian Michael Bronski writes, quote, “still, other women, most, probably a small percentage, spent most of their lives passing as men, and listing was simply the logical course of action for them."
Albert Cashier was a Union soldier who fought in over 40 battles. Not until years later did anyone discover that he was biologically a woman, having been born Janine Irene Hodgers in Ireland, around 1844.
Hodgers emmigrated to the United States as a child and, after passing as a man for some time, joined the Union Army in 1862 as Albert Cashier. After the war, Cashier continued living as a man.
Albert Cashier even lived as a man until 1913, when he was admitted into a hospital for the insane. When it was discovered that he was biologically a woman, he was forced to wear a dress until his death in 1915, which must have been two horrible years.
And even though his secret was made public, his tombstone described him as, quote, "Albert DJ Cashier, coach E 95 Illinois infantry."
More to the point, the memoirs of Union General Sheridan tells of a pair of women who enlisted as male soldiers, started an intimate relationship with one another as lesbians, and only after they got drunk together and fell in a river was their secret exposed to the general about being lesbians and dressing up as a man.
But the general didn't mind them being lesbian, so being LGBTQ in the Civil War was pretty commonly accepted.
Interestingly here, because the war highlighted the vulnerability of the male body, after the war ended, the discussion on same sex, sexual desire and images of male nudity became increasingly more accepted into society.
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