I Read a Book about America's Founding Daddy, Baron von Steuben, and I Have Thoughts

Baron Von Steuben statue at Valley Forge, October 2024

Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben by Josh Trujillo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Baron Von Steuben and the issue of his queerness has been one of my Special Interests for a while. This biography is accessible, interesting, and brings up one of my related Special Interests, the impossibility of understanding sexuality, particularly queerness, in any historical context, along with the importance of trying to bring forth, discuss, and interpret historical queerness anyway.

One of the many complicating aspects of writing a biography outing von Steuben is that historical expressions/perceptions of homosocial relationships aren’t our contemporary expressions/perceptions. It’s a great example of the fact that gender, sexuality, and really even sex identity are cultural constructs. And because a certain cultural concept of heteronormativity was prescribed and assumed in all of the cultural contexts that von Steuben experienced, nobody thought it necessary to put into writing (that has survived, at least) exactly what the rules were for maintaining that heteronormativity, nor what rules could possibly be bent/broken and still maintain one’s heteronormativity. And because of the prescriptive nature of heteronormativity, people certainly weren’t writing down what rules they transgressed and exactly what that looked like and the extent of the transgression in terms of their contemporary society! So while I think it’s pretty clear that Baron von Steuben would have met our current contemporary society’s definition of gayness, there’s no evidence that he, himself, ever put it into words in such a way that we know for a fact that’s how he saw himself. And although it’s FAR more likely than not that his personal assistants/adopted sons Walker, North, and Mulligan, in particular, had some sort of sexual/romantic relationships with him, and in some cases some of them with each other, as well, Walker and North, for one, went on to have completely heteronormative marriages, and we have no idea how their male-male relationships impacted their self-concepts, nor how these relationships would have been viewed within whatever unwritten rules of sexuality that we also know nothing about.

AND our current concept of power dynamics and the taboo of power differentials within a relationship are very correct, but also very contemporary to us, so there’s no way to evaluate the morality of von Steuben’s strongly implied relationships with subordinates within his own contemporary culture. He absolutely had some relationships that we’d all consider criminal today… but were they then? We know there must have been some concept of some way to misuse the power dynamic between authorities and their subordinates and between older and younger people, because that gossip was used to discredit von Steuben back in Prussia… but did von Steuben’s behavior really meet that definition of misuse, or was the gossip about his relationships with teen boys back in Europe simply lies to discredit him? And later in America, when he did the same types of things and it was apparently fine… was it really fine, or did nobody simply care to protest? What were these younger assistants’ feelings about these relationships, and how did they experience them within their own contemporary views of work and emotional life? How would these experiences compare to, say, the experience of an underage wife to a higher-class husband, or really any wife to any husband, considering that women had no legal, property, or monetary rights, and sexual assault wasn’t an act considered possible between a husband and his wife, since the husband always had the “right” to sex with his wife? I haaaate strings of rhetorical questions in essays, and yet here I am, because we have no way of knowing what the reality really was, and it’s so frustrating that we don’t have time travel yet!

All that is to say that’s why tl;dr I’m distraught that this graphic novel biography doesn’t have a bibliography or even endnotes/footnotes. I want the sources that give the first-person statements that led the authors to their conclusions, and not even so I can try to argue with them, but so I can enjoy them, build context, and delve more deeply. Like, Baron von Steuben held a dinner party using his own funds for the entirety of the Valley Forge encampment, including the poorest, lowest-class soldiers, and the only cost of admission was that everyone had to be in their undies or naked? Please tell me where I can drink that tea straight from the source, please! The book notes that “John Mulligan’s written recollections and cataloging of von Steuben’s papers inform the first full biography written about the baron in the 1800s, after his death.” So… what is the title of that book?!? What would be some other authoritative but more current biographies to read? Or articles, even? Something peer-reviewed, perhaps? Hell, I’ll even take a PhD thesis! Since the book does bring up the problem of defining historical sexuality, I’d also expect to see some references or a bibliography or a recommended reading list for this. I did find a Valley Forge program (“The General Von Steuben Statue: Interpreting LGBTQ+ Histories of the Revolution”) in which Dr. Thomas Foster of Howard University drops a number of relevant book titles--The Overflowing of Friendship: Love Between Men and the Creation of the American Republic, Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America, Sex and the Founding Fathers, and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity among others--so I’ve got a few to look up, but I’d rather have gotten relevant resources in an Appendix in this book.

Tangentially, but in light of that NPS program that thoughtfully discussed von Steuben and the relevance of interpreting LGBTQ+ histories, I was super disappointed when I went to Valley Forge earlier this year and did not see a single display, note, exhibition label, sign, icon, or ANYTHING that referred to von Steuben’s sexuality. Obviously, I get that the problematic nature of how sexuality was perceived in the 1700s makes it problematic to define von Steuben’s sexuality one way or another, but we all know that if you don’t bring up the possibility that a historical figure was queer, you’re basically giving everyone the impression that they definitely weren’t. And it’s not even just that they didn’t have signage, but I didn’t see any books on any kind of LGBTQ+ histories in the gift shop. I’ll even let you omit Washington’s Gay General from the shelf, since it has no bibliography, but there was nothing! I was so sad for all the queer young people dragged to Valley Forge as yet another boring stop on their boring family vacation who would have been SO excited to see some representation. Hell, I’m a 48-year-old bisexual woman in a heterosexual relationship, and *I* would have been excited to see some representation! 

I would have bought the snot out of a T-shirt with Baron Von Steuben’s face on it and the slogan “America’s Founding Daddy” and I would have put it on and worn it out of the store.

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