Baron von Steuben

[Tank_Guy#3]

I'm having a bit of an argument with a friend of mine on the sexual orientation of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben. I've read and even seen it mentioned on the History Channel that he was homosexual.

Is there any proof of this? If anyone has any information, please post it.

For those that have no idea who he is:
http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/served/steuben.html

 

[LightSpectra]

He was accused of being a homosexual and pedophile in his lifetime by the rivals in his profession, but I know of no evidence that he was either.

 

[madviking]

Wasn't he kicked out of the Prussian army for his homosexuality?

 

[LightSpectra]

Wasn't he kicked out of the Prussian army for his homosexuality?

No. He was passed up for a promotion on several occasions, allegedly because of the rumor that he was. Thus, he voluntarily quit.

 

[BuckyRea]

Is there any proof of this? If anyone has any information, please post it.

I believe he showed up at Valley Forge with a special "drummer boy" in his entourage. After the war he took up residence in New York--I believe he had a farm either further up Manhattan or one in the Bronx--and cohabited with a series of young gentlemen favorites. When John Adams's youngest son Thomas became one of them, his father had to threaten to disinherit him to get him to quit the association, return home to Quincy, and marry a nice girl.

You need to go to the John Ferling biography of Adams for this. You won't find this, I don't think, in the McCullough haggiography of Adams. Of course there's no actual documentation of the buggery involved, if it ever even happened. We can only go by logical inferences about why John objected to Thomas's association with the man who made the Continental Army a world class fighting force.

 

[bombshoo]

Well I'd rather have von Steuben than Buchanan as America's historical homosexual hero.

 

[Karalysia]

He left his estate to General Benjamin Walker and Captain William North, who had served as his aides-de-camp during the war, and with whom he had had an "extraordinarily intense emotional relationship ... treating them as surrogate sons".[7]

Well there's this.

He agreed to fight for the Americans (despite the inability of Franklin to guarantee a commission or to pay for his traveling expenses) because a rumor was circulating that the authorities wanted to charge Steuben with the crime of homosexual sodomy. It is not known if the accusations were truthful, and the sexual orientation of this bachelor is something that historians still debate.

Alone of all the men mentioned in these pages, Steuben was accused of engaging in homosexual acts. In 1777 a friend of Steuben's wrote to his former employer, the Prince of Hechingen:

It has come to me from different sources that M. de Steuben is accused of having taken familiarities with young boys which the laws forbid and punish severely. I have even been informed that that is the reason why M. de Steuben was obliged to leave Hechingen and that the clergy of your country intend to prosecute him by law as soon as he may establish himself anywhere.

The reply of the prince, for whom Steuben served as court chamberlain, has not been found. Steuben's inability to find a position in Germany prompted him to go to France, and there he caught the enthusiasm, as did L'Enfant, for the American Revolution. Innuendo as to his sexuality evidently followed him to America. An article written in 1796, two years after his death, mentions an abominable rumor which accused Steuben of a crime the suspicion of which, at another more exalted court of that time (as formerly among the Greeks) would hardly have aroused such attention.

http://bobarnebeck.com/baron.html

 

[GamezRule]

I doubt the story about the "drummer boy" because I did a report on him and found nothing of the sort.