A Queer History of the United States (34 page)

All of which goes to prove that LGBT people are simply Americans—no less and no more. The idea of America has existed, in some form, for five hundred years. LGBT people, despite enormous struggles to be accepted and to be given equality, have made America what it is today—that great, fascinating, complicated, sometimes horrible, sometimes wonderful place that it was in the beginning.

Acknowledgments

No one ever writes a book alone, and that has been overwhelmingly true here. I am indebted to all of the historians who have spent decades uncovering and writing queer histories. I quote many of them and have been inspired by all. This book is literally unimaginable without their dedication, work, and vision. I must also thank all of my students over the past decade of my teaching LGBT studies. They have consistently taught me so much, and I hope I have given the same in return. My colleagues in the Women's and Gender Studies program at Dartmouth have been unfailingly supportive, as has the college, which presented me with the Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2009. I must especially thank Ivy Schweitzer and Tom Luxon for the comfort of their home and endless meals. My colleagues in the Harvard University Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality have been equally wonderful in their support. David K. Johnson and Beryl Satter, historians I deeply admire, gave me detailed and insightful readings of the manuscript. Their input was invaluable and pushed me to rethink so much of this material. Linda Schlossberg, Richard Voos, and Alison Pirie all read the manuscript and provided excellent editorial advice. Nick Rule and Jay Connor, for over two years, listened patiently at weekly dinners as I explained some obscure bit of historical data I had just learned. My brother Jeffrey was incredibly helpful with all computer advice. My editor at Beacon, Gayatri Patnaik, was unfailing supportive, as were her assistants, Joanna Green and Rachael Marks. Finally, this book would not have happened without the help and support of Michael Amico—a former student who now in so many ways teaches me—who read, reread, edited, critiqued, and worked with me on every chapter. His friendship, intelligence, insights, and endless encouragement have been invaluable. Words cannot express the gratitude deserved.

Notes

Chapter One: The Persecuting Society

1.
Ramon Gutierrez,
When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
[back]

2.
Will Roscoe,
Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 3.
[back]

3.
Richard C. Trexler,
Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of America
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 92.
[back]

4.
Jacques Marquette, “Of the First Voyage Made by Father Marquette toward New Mexico, and How the Idea Thereof Was Conceived,” in
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents
, vol. 59, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Burrows, 1899), 129, quoted in Jonathan Ned Katz,
Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.
(New York: Crowell, 1976), 287.
[back]

5.
“Memoir of Pierre Liette on the Illinois Country,” in
The Western Country in the 17th Century,
ed. Milo Quaife (New York: Citadel, 1962), 112–13, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
288.
[back]

6.
Pedro Font,
Font's Complete Diary of the Second Anza Expedition,
trans. and ed. Hubert Eugene Bolton, vol. 4 of
Anza's California Expeditions
(Berkeley: University of California, 1930), 105, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
291.
[back]

7.
Nicholas Biddle,
Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783–1854
, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1962), 531, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
293.
[back]

8.
Howard Zinn,
A People's History of the United States, 1492–Present
(New York: Harper Collins, 1999), 4.
[back]

9.
History Project,
Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 11.
[back]

10.
Richard Godbeer,
Sexual Revolution in Early America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 20.
[back]

11.
R. C. Simmons
, The American Colonies: From Settlement to Independence
(New York: D. McKay, 1976), 98.
[back]

12.
Thomas Foster,
Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 14.
[back]

13.
Katz,
Gay
American History,
16.
[back]

14.
“Francis Higgeson's Journal,” in
The Founding of Massachusetts,
ed. Stuart Mitchell (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1930), 71, quoted in Katz,
Gay
American History,
19–20.
[back]

15.
History Project,
Improper,
13.
[back]

16.
Godbeer,
Sexual Revolution,
48.
[back]

17.
Robert C. Winthrop,
Life and Letters of John Winthrop
(1864–7; repr., New York: DeCapo, 1971), 2:427.
[back]

18.
History Project,
Improper,
20.
[back]

19.
Familiar Letters Written by Mrs. Sarah Osborn and Miss Susanna Anthony
(Newport, RI: Mercury Office, 1807), 27, 60, quoted in Nancy F. Cott,
The Bonds of Womanhood: Women's Sphere in New England, 1780–1835
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 171.
[back]

20.
Alan Bray, “The Curious Case of Michael Wigglesworth,” in
A Queer World: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader,
ed. Martin Duberman (New York University Press, 1997), 206.
[back]

21.
Christopher Hill,
The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
(New York: Penguin, 1975), 48.
[back]

22.
Alan Bray,
Homosexuality in Renaissance England
(London: Gay Men's Press, 1982), 58.
[back]

23.
Elizabeth Reis, “Hermaphrodites and ‘Same-Sex' Sex in Early America,” in
Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America,
ed. Thomas A. Foster (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 151.
[back]

24.
Thomas Morton,
New English Canaan,
ed. Jack Dempsey (New York: Digital Scanning, 2000), 156.
[back]

25.
R. I. Moore,
The Formation of a Persecuting Society
(London: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
[back]

26.
Ibid., 101.
[back]

27.
Mary Douglas,
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo
(New York: Routledge, 1966).
[back]

Chapter Two: Sexually Ambiguous Revolutions

1.
Christopher Tomlins, “Law, Population, Labor,” in
The Cambridge History of Law in America
, eds. Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1:235.
[back]

2.
Renee L. Bergland,
The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2007)
.
[back]

3.
Louis Crompton,
Homosexuality and Civilization
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 500–28.
[back]

4.
Zinn,
People's History,
77.
[back]

5.
Royall Tyler,
The Contrast: A Comedy in Five Acts
(Irvine, CA: Reprint Services Corp., 1996), 111–12.
[back]

6.
“Familial Letters of Abigail Adams,” in
Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings
,
ed. Miriam Schneir (New York: Vintage, 1972), 2–4.
[back]

7.
Ibid., 3.
[back]

8.
Alan Bray,
The Friend
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 213–16.
[back]

9.
Diary of Sarah Ripley Stearns, Stearns Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA, quoted in Cott,
Bonds,
175.
[back]

10.
Caleb Crain,
American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 33.
[back]

11.
Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier M. de Lafayette,
Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette, Published by His Family, Volume 1
(New York: Saunders and Otley, 1837), 291.
[back]

12.
Ibid., 310.
[back]

13.
Charles Shively, “George Washington's Gay Mess: Was the Father of Our Country a Queen?” in
Gay Roots: An Anthology of Gay History, Sex, Politics and Culture,
vol. 2, ed. Winston Leyland (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1993).
[back]

14.
Susan Juster, “ ‘Neither Male nor Female': Jemima Wilkinson and the Politics of Gender in the Post-Revolution,” in
Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America,
ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 337–79.
[back]

15.
Daniel. A. Cohen,
The Female Marine and Related Works: Narratives of Cross-Dressing and Urban Vice in America's Early Republic
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 57–101.
[back]

16.
Sandra M. Gustafson, “The Genders of Nationalism: Patriotic Violence, Patriotic Sentiment in the Performances of Deborah Sampson Gannett,” in St. George,
Possible Pasts,
380–99.
[back]

17.
Zinn,
People's History,
111.
[back]

18.
Juster, “Neither,” 337.
[back]

Chapter Three: Imagining a Queer America

1.
Badger Clark,
Sun and Saddle Leather
, 3rd ed. (Boston: Gorham Press, 1919), 67–69, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History
, 511.
[back]

2.
Chris Packard,
Queer Cowboys
(New York: Palgrave, 2006), 3.
[back]

3.
Badger Clark,
Sun and Saddle Leather
(Boston: Gorham Press, 1920), 49.
[back]

4.
Owen Wister,
Hank's Woman
(New York: Macmillan, 1928), 4–5.
[back]

5.
John D'Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in
Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University
(New York: Routledge, 1992), 3–16.
[back]

6.
George Chauncey,
Gay New York: Gender Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), 179–206.
[back]

7.
Crain,
American Sympathy,
5.
[back]

8.
The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
vol. 1, eds. William H. Gilman, Alfred R. Ferguson, George P. Clark, and Merrell R. Davis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1960), 39, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
457.
[back]

9.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “American Scholar,” in
The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 43.
[back]

10.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in Crain,
American Sympathy,
170.
[back]

11.
The Journals of Henry David Thoreau,
eds. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allan (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 1:120–21, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
486.
[back]

12.
Thoreau,
Journals,
4:92–93, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
490.
[back]

13.
Margaret Fuller, “Ganymede to His Eagle,” quoted in Crain,
American Sympathy,
208.
[back]

14.
The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,
eds. Ralph Waldo Emerson, William H. Channing, and James Freeman Clark (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1851–52), 1:127–29, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
464.
[back]

15.
Emily Dickinson,
The Poems of Emily Dickinson,
ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 2:13.
[back]

16.
The Letters of Emily Dickinson
, eds. Thomas Johnson and Theodora Ward (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), letter 73, 175–76.
[back]

17.
Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,”
Literary World,
August 17 and 24, 1850, quoted in Katz,
Gay American History,
470.
[back]

18.
Samuel Howe, quoted in Gary Williams,
Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 54.
[back]

19.
Julia Ward Howe, quoted in Williams,
Hungry Heart,
10.
[back]

20.
Leslie Fiedler, “Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!” in
An End to Innocence
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 142–51.
[back]

21.
Mason Stokes,
The Color of Sex: Whiteness, Heterosexuality, and the Fictions of White Supremacy
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 132.
[back]

22.
Richard Dyer,
White: Essays on Race and Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1997), 25.
[back]

23.
Herman Melville,
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 152.
[back]

24.
Ibid., 157.
[back]

25.
Herman Melville,
Moby-Dick
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), 28.
[back]