VICIOUS AND IMMORAL
Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh
by John Gilbert McCurdy
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
376 pages, $34.95
MOST PEOPLE think the Irish appeared in America in the 19th century, when famine forced millions of people to flee Ireland for the New World. But the truth is that the Irish were here long before that, and they belonged to a very distinct social class called the Protestant Ascendancy: the Anglo-Irish who comprised the British Army, keeping order in the colonies. The 18th Regiment was even called The Royal Irish and was stationed for the most part in a large barracks in downtown Philadelphia, where they wore handsome uniforms, lived with their wives and children, went to the theater, and got along well with the local colonists, who footed the bill for their presence.
In the 1770s, being in Philadelphia was a lot better than being sent to the frontier. Illinois, for example, was so inhospitable for the Anglo-Irish that they considered it as bad as Senegal. But in Philadelphia, at that time the largest city in the colonies, they could enjoy life a bit more, though all this did not prevent the boredom that pushes many a peacetime army to cause trouble. They also had to deal with alcohol, poverty, and venereal disease (without penicillin). In his new book Vicious and Immoral, John Gilbert McCurdy reports on at least one case of child abuse whose details are still sickening to read about. And then there were the class resentments that the “subalterns” (anyone below the rank of captain) felt vis-à-vis the officers who outranked them. As one of the sergeants said about the City of Brotherly Love: “The men were always Murmuring.”
Andrew Holleran’s latest novel is The Kingdom of Sand. His other novels include Grief and The Beauty of Men.
