Thomas P. LowryCritiques

Excellent book. The author looks at Federal military court records in the National Archives and discovers that the border states: Missouri, Maryland, Tennessee, etc. contained numerous women who the Army captured and tried for smuggling, spying, and cutting telegraph lines. Often depositions and statements by the women tell their stories in their own words.

Interesting BUT. I already knew that they drank a lot!!

Dr. Thomas P. Lowry’s 1994 book, “The story the soldiers wouldn't tell : sex in the Civil War” is still, as far as I can see, the primary book on its topic. That is not bad for a 21 year old history text, but then it is about sex, a topic Americans seem to deny exists. Lowry is a great writer, he controls the scholarly temptation to rely on a multitude of polysyllabic verbiage and keeps it simple and direct. He even manages to keep it light sometimes he is almost funny. He also is a good historian and I expect a good medical doctor. The book is well organized, he makes sure to show us what we need to know before we need to know it. the first two chapters, “Our Founding Fathers” and “The Birds and the Bees” set the stage by showing us what the relationship was between the male armies of the Revolution and the females of the era and then what Americans knew or thought they knew about sex.

General Braddock starting out on his march to Fort Dunquesne limited his army to six women per company and the British arrived in America with one woman for each ten men. Officially the woman were not there to serve the carnal desires of the officers and men but to cook and clean to remove men from those duties. Some were wives of the men or officers. The number of women following the troops as they moved from encampment to encampment and battle to battle grew. Wives and families who still depended on their men for sustenance and protection, women needing paid work who would cook and clean. Doing what men and women do they formed relationships and had sex. Some of the camp followers were willing to have sex for money.

Lowry assumes that people’s behavior and biology don’t change much is a few hundred years so he says that he expects that what Kinsey discovered in the 1940s and 50s was true in the 1840s and 50s. Then he goes to the sources to show us that maybe the people of the 19th century were the reason that Americans are still so ashamed and afraid of their biology. The Church of the Latter Day Saints and their “sister wives”, John Humphry Noyes’ Oneida Colony and its “Complex Marriage”, then there was Sylvester Graham’s views on sex, I will never look at a graham cracker the same way.

Using the soldier’s own words from letters written to home and to friends Lowry shows that the young men in the U. S. Civil War behaved like young men always have but, using statistics on the ratio of couples marrying while already expecting a child he does show that during times of unrest “illicit” sexual activity, sex outside of marriage, increases. Regardless of the praise Mark Twain and other writers gave to the originality of 19th century cursing the remaining letters and court transcripts prove otherwise.

Some of the most interesting revelations Dr. Lowry uncovered concerned venereal diseases, the medical topic that brought him to this subject. In two occupied southern cities the military officer in control set up systems of licensing prostitutes who agreed to submit to weekly medical checks. If they were found to be sick they received free treatment and were isolated from their occupation until a doctor cleared them. Both cities saw a remarkable drop in the rate of disease among the troops and the working women. I am not a student of the U. S. Civil War but apparently the Army of the Pacific, the federal troops from the Pacific area who fought against tribal nations during the war performed very poorly. Apparently many military historians have speculated why that was but Dr. Lowry may have come across the answer, very nearly half of the troops, and officers, suffered from VD during their deployments. As Lowry points out the symptoms of syphilis and gonorrhea do not make riding and fighting any easier.

Lowry gives a full chapter to love and romance, looking at the letters of longing between soldiers and their partners at home. He examines evidence of rape, officers, and clerics, who were not gentlemen, possible transvestites, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality, a term that was not invented until a generation after the war although the term “sodomy” had been in use since the late 13th century. He examines the question of Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality and comes up with what I feel has to be the final answer on that question, there is evidence to support both sides of the argument but nothing to prove either.

“The story the soldiers wouldn't tell” was an interesting and entertaining read and with it Lowry opened a window into a seldom investigated are of American history. This is one of the better books I have read so far this year and may be the best.

Leaves you with mixed feelings on how well it is written overall, but very interesting none the less.½

Full review available on my blog: http://authorjanebnight.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/review-of-the-story-the-soldier...
In ten years when you ask me about this book the only thing I expect to remember from it is that urine was at one time used to make gun powder. A very cool fact indeed.

This book had some very fun to read chapters. I especially loved Chapter 5 “And the Flesh Was Made Word”. This chapter focused on the naughty songs that soldiers sang. Some of them are quite funny. I also enjoyed the sections on abortion and pornography.

This book also has some very interesting pictures. The two that most stood out to me were first a lovely nude woman posed provocatively and second a soldier stricken by end stage syphilis. I don’t think in modern times we understand the full level of horrors venereal diseases carried. These days, there are only a few venereal diseases that are incurable. And even those can be treated with medication. During the civil war there really wasn’t much that could be done if you got a VD. And some of the cures for the ailments were awful in and of themselves. The picture in this book of terminal syphilis are sickening. The guy literally looks like his leg is rotting away. I think if I lived during that era seeing a picture like that would be enough to convince me that I really didn’t ever need to lose my virginity thank you very much.

It is as I thought. In spite of what all those teeth-gnashing, breast-beating prudes say about the sin and corruption in modern society, books like these verify my theory that people have ALWAYS been filthy-minded, lazy and generally less than ideal. Thomas Lowry has a good track record for his writings about the quirkier aspects of Civil War history, and this book is more of the same. Another of his that I want to check out is The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War.

Certainly this was an interesting mix of stories, which would doubtless be fascinating to Civil War buffs. I enjoyed it, but I liked the later Tarnished Scalpels: The Court-Martials of Fifty Union Surgeons better because in that book, Mr. Lowry included his own opinions in a paragraph or two at the end of each case account. He didn't do that in this one. But they are both good books and can be read together, or separately. You don't have to be a Civil War buff to enjoy Lowry's work.

Anyone interested in medical history or Civil War history will find this book very engrossing. The author, who has written several books on Civil War related topics, briefly summarizes the court-martials of fifty surgeons from the Union Army during the war. He explains the charges, the evidence and testimony, the verdict, and what happened to the doctor afterward, then he provides insightful comments about the case at the end of each summary.

The book has revealed some colorful characters, some truly heroic physicians and some buffoons. One doctor was charged with, among other things, using the regiment's ambulance to escort a known prostitute to the theater. Twice. Another was charged with desertion after he briefly left his regiment in the middle of winter to use his own money to buy lumber with which to make a roof and floor for the regimental hospital, which had neither.

I learned a great deal about Civil War conditions and also medical thought at the time, and gained new insight into just how difficult a war surgeon's job is. My interest in this book was such that, although I could not remove it for the library, I went back to read it on site several times over the course of about three months until it was finished.