10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

October 21, 2011

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www.GayPeoples Chronicle.com

Von Steuben

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powerful superpower of the time, England. Some of his accomplishments include instituting a "model company" for training, establishing sanitary standards and organization for the camp and training soldiers in drills and tactics such as bayonet fighting and musket loading. According to the New York Public Library's "Papers of Von Steuben," his achievements include:

February 1778: Arrives at Valley Forge to serve under Washington, having informed Congress of his desire for paid service after an initial volunteer trial period, with which request Washington concurs.

March 1778: Begins tenure as inspector general, drilling troops according to established European military precepts.

1778-79: Writes "Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States," which becomes a fundamental guide for the Continental Army and remains in active use through the War of 1812, being published in over 70 editions.

1780-81: Senior military officer in charge of troop and supply mobilization in Virginia.

1781: Replaced by Marquis de Lafayette as commander in Virginia.

1781-83: Continues to serve as Washington's inspector general, and is active in improving discipline and streamlining administration in the army.

Spring 1783: Assists in formulating plans for the postwar American military.

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Washington rewarded Von Steuben with a house at Valley Forge (still in existence and open for visits) which he shared with his aide-de-camps Capt. William North and Gen. Benjamin Walker. Walker lived with him through the remainder of his life, and von Steuben, who neither married nor denied any of the allegations of homosexuality, left his estate to North and Walker. His last will and testament, which includes the line “extraordinarily intense emotional relationship," has been described as a love letter to Walker.

Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, by Albert Jaegers in Lafayette Park, D.C.

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The nation that von Steuben help found has memorialized him with numerous statues, including those at Lafayette Square near the White House and at Valley Forge and Utica, N.Y., where he is buried. GermanAmericans celebrate his birthday each year on Sept. 17, hosting parades in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Washington

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trum in revisionist categories, but Washington was a diligent, even obsessive recorder of every detail of his life down to minutiae of his personal, military, political and even agricultural experiences. His own records of his life stand for themselves.

It's impossible to overstate the impact Washington had on both the founding of the nation and, of course, the winning of the Revolutionary War. Part of Washington's genius as a strategist was his ability to rally troops literally. All the documentation from the era states without equivocation that Washington inspired tremendous loyalty in all levels of his military. By all accounts a man's man, Washington was superb at all kinds of sport. Considered the best horseman of his time Jefferson wrote extensively about Washington's prowess

and one of the strongest men any of his compatriots had ever met, his feats of strength were regularly recorded.

That personal strength combined with a strength of purpose and integrity; he had values and he didn't waver on those. This is what drew other men to him and what made him a great leader.

Washington's letters state that he was less than thrilled with marital life ("not much fire between the sheets") and preferred the company of men particularly the young Alexander Hamilton, who he made his personal secretary to that of

women, as his letters attest. His concern for his male colleagues clearly extended to their personal lives. This was especially true of Hamilton, who he brought with him to Valley Forge, giving Hamilton a cabin to share with his then-lover, John Laurens, to whom Hamilton had written passionate love letters which are still extant.

Historians assert that passionate samesex friendships were normative in the 18th century. At the same time, however, sodomy and open homosexuality were punishable by imprisonment, castration and even death, both in and out of the military.

Renowned gay historian Randy Shilts makes the case for Washington's ever-pragmatic as well as compassionate approach to same-sex relationships in Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military.

Shilts details how Washington merely signed the order for discharge of a soldier caught in flagrante with another soldier, and suggests that if Aaron Burr had not forced the issue, the soldier might have remained at Valley Forge instead of being the first documented case of a discharge for homosexuality in the Continental Army on March 15, 1778 at Valley Forge.

The soldier was court-martialed by Burr, but that was the extent of it. Washington did not flog him, imprison him or, as Jefferson had required as part of Virginia law as punishment for sodomy, have him castrated. Washington could also have had the soldier executed. He did none of these things. The soldier just walked away.

What makes this so stunning and an irrefutable proof of Washington's leniency on homosexuality in the military is the context. (Bear in mind Washington's earlier dictate about those of lower station.)

When Lt. Gotthold Frederick Enslin was drummed out of the corps for homosexuality, it seems that Washington signed the order for discharge more because the case involved fraternization below rank.

According to military documents, Enslin was caught having sexual relations with Pvt. John Monhart by, Ensign Anthony Maxwell.

If George Washington was the father of the nation, then von Steuben, a gay man, was the father of the United States military. ✓

Mark Segal is founder and publisher of Philadelphia Gay News, the country's oldest LGBT newsweekly.

At Valley Forge, soldiers of like rank shared cabins. Maxwell went to Burr, his commanding officer, with the accusation. Enslin denied it and accused Maxwell of slander. Burr then court-martialed Maxwell for the slander of a senior officer, but in the course of the proceedings, determined it was Enslin who was lying, not Maxwell. Maxwell was found not guilty and, 11 days later, Enslin was court-martialed and found guilty of sodomy and perjury against Maxwell.

Monhart was neither court-martialed nor discharged.

That Washington looked the other way with same-sex couples is most obvious in his dealings with Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian military genius he enlisted to help him strategize at Valley Forge. Von Steuben arrived at the encampment two weeks before Enslin's discharge and arrived with his young French assistant, Pierre Etienne Duponceau, who was presumed to be his lover, in tow, making Enslin's subsequent discharge ironic and reinforcing the theory that it was Burr, not Washington, who compelled the action.

It's not revisionist to assert that Washington's pattern of ignoring same-sex relationships at Valley Forge was both indicative of his pragmatic nature (without von Steuben, Hamilton, Lafayette and others, America might still be a colony of the British) and of his seeming lack of concern over homosexuality.

Washington obviously considered morale in what was inarguably the most horrific battle station in U.S. military history, the winter at Valley Forge, needed to be upheld. Allowing men their one solace each other

made sense from a general's point of view. The less miserable the soldiers, the better they would fight. If keeping each other warm in the bone-crush cold and abject misery made life somewhat more bearable, then Washington had no issue with ignoring homosexuality in his ranks.

It's also a matter of record that Washington himself honorably discharged a passing woman, Deborah Sampson, who served in the Continental Army disguised as a man, Robert Shurtlieff. Sampson, who was alleged to have had relationships with other women during her time in the Continental Army, was wounded several times. In order to maintain her "male" identity, she carved a musket ball out of her own thigh with a penknife and sewed the wound herself with her sewing kit rather than have her gender revealed to an Army medic. (Her grandson, ironically named George Washington Gay, later arranged for a statue memorializing her in Massachusetts.)

Prior to her service in the Continental Army, Sampson had been arrested in church for dressing like a man—and was arrested for the same "crime" after war. So Sampson's case and Washington's involvement was particularly telling.

Washington's treatment of gay soldiers and this passing woman is irrefutable proof-in Washington's own records and that of others-that the Father of Our Country was gay-friendly toward his key military personnel at the most pivotal point in American history. Washington didn't think morale suffered with gay soldiers serving under him or even, in the case of von Steuben and Hamilton, being his key strategists. Rather, he saw these men for their value to him and to the nation-a fact that should be added to every American history textbook.

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Victoria A. Brownworth is an awardwinning journalist, syndicated columnist and author.