The American Civil War is arguably the most written about topic in American history. Yet for all that has been researched and published, sexuality during the Civil War has been difficult to uncover. This is not due to lack of interest; instead, it is the product of the silences surrounding sexuality during the era. As even pioneering historian Bell Irvin Wiley noted, Civil War soldiers and civilians rarely wrote about sex and sexuality, deeming the topic taboo. A handful of historians have attempted to shed light on sexuality during the war by researching prostitution and syphilis, and Judith Giesberg’s recent Sex and the Civil War explores the problem of pornography in camp. However, another unorthodox avenue to get a more intimate view of Civil War soldiers’ sexuality and desires is in their dreams.
Civil War soldiers enjoyed sex dreams during the war and recounted them to loved ones to maintain intimacy during their prolonged absence while soldiering. As Jonathan White notes in his new book, Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams in the Civil War, soldiers and civilians frequently wrote to each other, narrating and analyzing their dreams.1 Dreams could serve as a link between battlefront and homefront, and men saw dreams as a way of communing with far off wives and family. Occasionally, soldiers were candid about the sexual nature of those dreams, demonstrating their love and reaffirming the importance of sexual intimacy, even when separated.
Life in a Civil War camp was a lonely and womanless existence, aside from the presence of laundresses, camp followers, and officers’ wives. “Occasionally a woman passes camp and it is a three days wonder,” Edwin H. Fay wrote his wife. “But women only serve to remind me of you and our separation and I don’t care to see them.”