Writing Right with Dmitri: What Not to Do
Created | Updated May 8, 2016
Writing Right with Dmitri: What Not to Do
The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War
Thomas P Lowry, MD
Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA
1994
A few weeks ago, I visited a local museum. Museums have little shops: they're godsends to the financially-strapped institutions, who often don't sell enough tickets to pay for all the needed maintenance and improvements. So I make a point of buying stuff there. I'm a sucker for tchotchkes like the jaw harp, wooden puzzle, and old-timey child's toy I bought. I'm also a sucker for a good book. I didn't exactly luck out there.
It was my own fault: I fell for the nekkid lady on the cover. (There are more nekkid ladies inside.) But it wasn't mere prurience, I protest hastily, that made me buy Sex in the Civil War. I hoped the author had something to say about human behaviour that I didn't already know.
I hoped in vain.
I soon realised that the book was 'History Lite': a collection of titbits, in this case titillating titbits. There were some nice quotations and excerpts from original source documents thrown in, however, which I appreciated. After all, I can check on those things myself. And the author's (admittedly scanty, as well as scantily-clad) collection of naughty period cartes de visite was interesting, if not particularly tasteful, and even if the information supplied on the history of such photography was sparse at best. The book's approach was scattershot, and the author had no real thesis at all. His premise, stated in the introduction, was that everyone pretends there was no sex in the Civil War. (Who?) But surprise, an awful lot of babies were born, they must have been up to something. So the discussion's kind of on that level.
I was also leery of this author from the outset. Early in his tale, he strayed into an area I actually know something about: word and phrase origins. When he averred that the term 'baggage' as applied derogatively to women came from the Revolutionary War, and was traceable to the fact that camp followers were listed as 'baggage' on British ships' manifests, I went on strike. His later attempt to insist that Union General Joe Hooker was the reason Xaviera Hollander called herself a 'happy hooker' was a bridge too far. Oh, well, I thought. He's out of his field. After all, the author is obviously a doctor. It says so on the cover. I don't expect doctors to know how to debunk folk etymologies.
As a historian, though, Dr Lowry didn't impress me much. He talked around a lot of subjects without saying anything in particular. The primary documents were intriguing, but that was all. Here's an example. In his chapter on gays in the Civil War, Lowry writes of the idea that Lincoln might have had 'a physical attraction to men':
Is this concept merely some flight of fancy, cooked up on today's cauldron of revisions, muck-raking, and radical political correctness, some apotheosis of "outing", or is it a theory that might have some merit, that might explain a facet of one of America's most complex and remarkable heroes?
p. 115.
(I should have been warned by the phrase 'apotheosis of "outing".') Lowry then goes on for three more pages, summing up the conventional arguments about Lincoln's sexuality, both for and against the idea that he didn't like women that much, and finally concludes that:
Following the principle of Occam's Razor, a Lincoln attraction to men, perhaps only manifest as relative ease in male company, is the least complex key to the distance that Lincoln put between himself and the women in his life.
p.118.
He adds that it's impossible to prove or disprove this statement. Fair enough, and I have since found out that the writer is a retired psychiatrist. But that was an unnecessary journey: I didn't learn anything, and the author didn't present any new evidence.
My judgement after reading this book was that if the author claimed X was an indisputable fact, I would want three more sources that said the same thing. I decided that although he was an engaging writer for the most part, there was more sparkle than substance to his book. I was leery of the fact that he drew no real conclusions, instead summing up arguments and occasionally telling you what he'd like to believe. In other words, History Lite with a caveat lector.
However, the pictures were sort of interesting. I don't expect books offered for sale in house museums to be weighty tomes: it's not economically feasible for the museums to offer them. Nobody on holiday is going to impulse-buy a $50 study by a noted expert. I usually prowl the shelves for the locally-printed hearsay-and-legend stuff, because it's often fascinating, and will send you out on your own voyage of discovery. Such books are almost always worth the 12-15 bucks you shell out.
It is remarkable what you can figure out about a writer's approach, though, just by reading with attention. After I'd finished, I decided to find out more about Dr Thomas P Lowry. I found out the following:
- Lowry wrote a lot of other books, with titles like Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools: The Courts-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels, Irish and German – Whiskey and Beer: Drinking Patterns in the Civil War, and Love and Lust: Private and Amorous Letters of the Civil War. (Scandal sells.)
- In 2011, this happened. I make no statements about this affair: I wasn't there and don't know anybody involved. The link gives you the National Archives' version of the story, and Dr Lowry signed a confession (which he later recanted).
Maybe someday, somebody in a museum shop will pick up a book entitled Scandal in the Archives: Historians in the Early 21st Century. And maybe it will be well-researched.
Writing Right with Dmitri Archive
