NF The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War:

Non-Fiction
A

aphillbilly

Guest
Has anyone read Lowry's book? Is it any good? Supportable?
 
I second that, Neil. Talk about an eye-opener!

Dr. Lowry is a fellow member of the Society of Civil War surgeons, and he's done a lot of research into the seamier side of the war. One of his books is about court martial proceedings on surgeons. He and his sometime co-author Dr. Jack Welch do good work.

Yours with MEDICAL interest only in all those racy pictures...

Zou
 
Haven't read the book but here are some stats:

The Union Army Medical Dept. reported in 1861 that 1 out of 12 soldiers had venereal disease, an almost incredible rate. The Federal rate for the war was 82 cases per 1,000 men.

In July, 1861 an official report on a dozen Confederate regiments with a strength of about 11,000, showed 204 new cases of gonorrhea and forty-four of syphillis. In the next 3 months, among larger bodies of troops, there were 572 new cases of the diseases.

Not only were both armies followed by large parties of women, but both reported several cases of women who disguised themselves as men, often dispensing their favors widely before being detected and banished.

Source: The Civil War: Strange and Fascinating Facts, Burke Davis, Fairfax Press.
 
Hey Steve!

Long time, no see! Been away or just lurking on the board?

As I remember, the History Channel show actually used the book as a reference and had the author on too.

Unionblue
 
I got this book from my local public library, and found it a great read. The author writes clearly and he is not judgemental. He has a fine sense of humor. Author Thomas P. Lowry listed seven types of books about the Civil War and for each type, he offered his own imagined title of the type (only a couple of these imaginary book titles are added here):

1. Memories of famous officers
2. Regimental histories
3. Controversy and second-guessing
4. Technical analysis ("The Suspender Shortage as a Factor at Gettysburg")
5. General Histories
6. Collections of Letters ("A Boy in Blue Writes Home")
7. Diaries

He notes that only the last two might have much discussion of sexual matters. Letters home would not likely include salacious details of the soldier's life, and if they did, we can be sure that the soldier, now a respected citizen and veteran, would edit out a good deal, and I loved this phrasing: "But even more prone to the censor's wrath were those letters and diaries edited for publication by the (usually) unmarried daughter of the now-deceased veteran, whose hallowed memory was hardly to be defamed by imprudent recollections of whores, clap, dysentery, and farting in the tent." ( p 9, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell)
 
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