A Guerra Civil Americana durou de abril de 1861 a maio de 1865. Foi de longe a guerra mais mortal da história americana, com mais de 750.000 soldados mortos em batalha. Mais da metade deles, morrendo de, no campo de batalha, de doenças ou feridas purulentas.
Portanto, é compreensível que, enquanto estavam no campo de batalha, muitos soldados decidissem explorar sua sexualidade por medo de sua própria mortalidade iminente.
O melhor exemplo disso é visto nos escritos de Walt Whitman, que se juntou ao Exército da União como soldado aos 42 anos. Durante sua vida, Whitman foi um dos poetas gays mais famosos de todos os tempos, e durante a guerra ele não era diferente.
Ele escreveu poemas altamente eróticos sobre soldados de outros homens e, depois que eles foram publicados, pudemos ver um vislumbre de quão gay era o exército da União.
Mas não é apenas o quão prevalente era ser gay nas forças armadas. Também foi amplamente aceito.
Com soldados sendo mortos em números tão altos, os generais e líderes realmente não se importavam se os soldados participassem de atividades do mesmo sexo à noite, porque sabiam que não poderiam perder nenhum soldado fora do campo de batalha.
E às vezes esses generais também participavam de relacionamentos gays, porque corriam o mesmo perigo todos os dias.
(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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