Lewd, wicked, scandalous: American pornography comes of age -- Storming the enemy's breastworks: Civil War courts-martial and the sexual culture of the U.S. Army camp -- True courage: Anthony Comstock and the crisis of the war -- Outraged manhood of our age: the postwar antipornography campaign
Summary
Civil War soldiers enjoyed unprecedented access to obscene materials of all sorts, including mass-produced erotic fiction, cartes de visite, playing cards and stereographs. A perfect storm of antebellum legal, technological and commercial developments, coupled with the concentration of men fed into armies, created a demand for, and a deluge of, pornography in the military camps. With this book, Judith Giesberg has written a study of the erotica and pornography that 19th-century American soldiers read and shared and links them to the postwar reaction to pornography and to debates about the future of sex and marriage
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-132) and index
