"Taking [the] part of women": Masculinity and Transgressive Behavior in the Post-Civil War Western Army

Over the last several decades, historians of the American West have challenged the masculine image of the West on numerous fronts. We now have a fuller awareness of women's participation in Western development, as well as a deeper understanding of how Western expansion was a gendered enterprise. Yet only recently have scholars begun to expand their conception of “gender” to examine how masculinity itself was articulated and performed within principally male Western spaces, such as logging camps, cattle drives, or mining districts. Despite its martial atmosphere, predominantly male composition, and significant role in fostering Western expansion, the U.S. Army has drawn little attention in this discussion of masculinity. This paper will use memoirs, official Army correspondence, personnel files, and records of courts-martial to explore the construction and performance of masculinity in the late-nineteenth-century frontier Army. Elite officers and working-class enlisted men defined and enacted masculinity differently, and their interpretations frequently clashed as military officials sought to impose martial discipline. At times, enlisted soldiers deliberately transgressed masculine gender norms by dancing with each other, bunking together, and in their sexual behavior. This transgressive behavior subverted and flouted gender distinctions that officers relied upon to maintain discipline and class hierarchy. Yet enlisted men had to take care to keep this subversion within limits. Soldiers might tolerate a more fluid or ambiguous understanding of male friendship and sexuality amongst themselves, but when officers passed judgment on enlisted behavior they invoked different, more rigid standards of masculinity and sexuality.