John Gilbert McCurdy’s Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh traces the life of British military and Anglican chaplain Robert Newburgh. Accused by British officers of being a “buggerer,” Newburgh defended himself and his actions using Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary rhetoric. Analyzing court records and visual sources, McCurdy writes an outstanding microhistory of Newburgh’s legal troubles. Vicious and Immoral is a significant and original contribution to the history of LGBTQ+ people and the history of the American Revolution.Robert Newburgh was an Anglican clergyman from Ireland. He studied at Trinity College and was commissioned as a chaplain in the British Army, serving in the Royal Irish Regiment. Prior to his arrival in North America, the officers in Newburgh’s regiment accused him of being a buggerer, having heard rumors that he had sexual relations with men and shared a bed with his foster brother and servant. The accusations against Newburgh and his decision to defend himself exacerbated divisions that already existed in the regiment. Newburgh’s accusers also attacked him because of his choice of clothing, his request for larger accommodations in the barracks, and his friendships with soldiers and their wives.Newburgh’s legal troubles and trials epitomized the divisions that were separating the colonies from the British empire, and he defended himself by employing ideals associated with the Enlightenment and the revolution. Newburgh’s experience highlighted diverging American and British views about sexuality, discipline, and order. Economic, cultural, and demographic influences shaped colonial American attitudes toward sexuality. Although both Britain and American colonies prohibited sodomy, Americans who violated these prohibitions were punished by whipping not by being put to death. The need for laborers may have accounted for this difference between the colonies and Great Britain. Religious diversity in the colonies also shaped the punishments meted out to men convicted of sodomy. Native American and African cultural attitudes about gender and sexuality also impacted colonial views about these subjects. A decrease in large families and a stress on nonprocreative sex in the colonies also affected ideas about sexuality. Newburgh’s compassion towards and the support he received from subalterns, enlisted men, and women contradicted the hierarchy, order, and discipline expected by British officers. McCurdy stresses, “Nearly all the men and women who had supported Newburgh became Patriots, while his accusers and opponents remained loyal subjects of George III. In many ways, this case of homosexuality foretold the American Revolution” (248–49). Newburgh’s defense incorporated Enlightenment and revolutionary ideals that stressed a common humanity and equality. He asserted that people should be able to dress and live where they wanted and that they could have their own opinions and preferences.McCurdy’s microhistorical approach relies on a close reading of trial transcripts, incorporates visual sources, and investigates gender. He includes a list of the historical actors involved in the court cases and provides a chronology of Newburgh’s life and trials. McCurdy expertly analyzes macaroni, “a term of derision for a man deemed inappropriately masculine” (204), and the competing masculinities displayed by Newburgh’s accusers, his defenders, and by Newburgh himself. One of Newburgh’s enemies, Captain Benjamin Chapman described him as “a Maccaroni Dishabille” to criticize his clothing and to question his manliness. His critics’ sense of duty, heterosexuality, homophobia, and devotion to the crown comprised “the aspirational form of manhood that was typical of the eighteenth-century Anglo-Atlantic” (267) while his supporters became Patriots, pursued their fortunes on the frontier, and pledged their allegiance to the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party. Unlike his detractors and his champions, Newburgh ended up in France, unmarried, and childless. McCurdy concludes, “Robert Newburgh’s manhood was queer, and it followed a separate path” (272).Vicious and Immoral is a groundbreaking contribution to LGBTQ+ history and the history of the American Revolution. While acknowledging that his study is limited to “male-male intimacy” (6), McCurdy’s study of Newburgh highlights how the Enlightenment impacted “sexual liberalism” and documents “LGBTQ+ people at the founding of the United States” (5). Like other LGBTQ+ people, Newburgh experienced discrimination and chose to challenge it. McCurdy writes that “when he was accused of buggery, he was able to access a rhetoric of rights and attract the support of friends that might not have been available . . . had not the American Revolution been growing around him. . . . At its creation, the United States inherently included a place for LGBTQ+ people” (282).McCurdy’s book will find an audience among scholars of LGBTQ+ history and the history of the American Revolution. Newburgh’s trials took place in the mid-Atlantic region and his regiment’s barracks were in Philadelphia; historians of revolutionary Pennsylvania will be interested in this information. McCurdy’s book belongs on reading lists for undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of the American Revolution. It might be assigned alongside studies of Baron von Steuben.
Karol Kovalovich Weaver (Thu,) studied this question.