The archive of the Civil War era is filled with depictions of men’s same-sex affections and intimacies. Across antebellum campaign biographies, proslavery fiction, published memoirs of Confederate veterans and Union prisoners of war, Civil War novels, newspaper accounts, and the war’s historiography, homoerotic symbolism and narratives shaped the era’s politics, as well as the meaning and memory of the war. The Civil War, in turn, shaped the development of homosexuality in the United States. In a book full of surprising insights, Andrew Donnelly uncovers this deeply consequential queer history at the heart of nineteenth-century national culture.
Donnelly’s sharp analytical eye particularly focuses on the ways Northern white men imagined their relationship with white Southerners through narratives of same-sex affection. Assessing the cultural work of these narratives, Donnelly argues that male homoeroticism enabled proslavery coalition building among antebellum Democrats, fostered sympathy for the national retreat from Reconstruction, and contributed to the victories of Lost Cause ideology. Linking the era’s political and cultural history to the history of homosexuality, Donnelly reveals that male homoeroticism was not inherently radical but rather cultivated political sympathy for slavery, the Confederacy, and white supremacy.