Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies) Read Online Free

a crowded boat in rough waters; only the tousled American flag behind him
stands taller than he in the fierce wind. He is resolute and powerful, leaving
no doubt about who is in charge. Small wonder, then, that this painting has
been used in so many accounts of the nation's difficult birth and Washing ton's emergence as its hero. We have seen it so many times that we sometimes
fail to really see it, just as we lose sight of its mythic properties.

    In 2006, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of General Washington's
early military campaign in the Revolution dazzled Americans with its
heroic story. The attractive book cover, featuring a version of Leutze's
famous nineteenth-century painting Washington Crossing the Delaware
(Figure 1.2) painted by one of his students, Eastman Johnson, captures
in vivid color the richness of the story.' The central figure of the general
standing at the front of a small boat illustrates the valiant image of Washington that is described within the book's pages. The painting itself is a
national treasure. Eastman's version of Leutze's masterpiece is an interesting choice; it alters a variety of aspects of the original, including a detail
that most might not know-the omission of Washington's ornamental
watch fob, which in the original painting is gold and red, dangling closely
to his crotch (Figure 1.3). Presumably, for Eastman and for contemporary
audiences, the object risks taking attention away from the man and the
gravitas of the moment and instead bestows it on something trivial and
irrelevant, even unseemly.
    Eastman Johnson's copy is perhaps more in circulation today than
Leutze's original. A 2011 special issue of Time magazine devoted to the life of
George Washington contains a centerfold reproduction of the famous painting, again with the fob missing.' Georgia school administrators might have
saved themselves a headache had they been able to ensure that the publisher
of their textbooks went with the Johnson version instead of the original
Leutze: In 1999, a Georgia school district instructed teacher's aides to erase
the image of the fob by hand-painting twenty-three hundred fifth-grade
textbooks. In another county, they tore the page from thousands of copies
of the book. In 2002, several editions of an American history high school
textbook that contains the image of Leutze's nineteenth-century masterpiece
were also altered because administrators feared that it would draw attention
to this private area of Washington's body or, worse, might actually appear to
be his manhood, exposed.'
    It might strike some readers as odd for me to begin a book on sex and the
Founders with a chapter on George Washington. The depiction of Washington as a desexualized statesman is certainly familiar to Americans. He
does not come to mind immediately when one tries to think of anecdotes
related to sex and the Founding Fathers-certainly not in the same breath
as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. Yet inquiry into the private life
of Washington is centuries old, and the discussions highlight how sex has
long been a component of American masculinity. Moreover, while the stories themselves are interesting, they also reveal to us the long-term interconnectedness of sexuality and national identity in public memory of the Founders.

    Sex Scandals of the Eighteenth Century
    Sexual interruptions to Washington's stately image did not originate in the
twenty-first century's sex-saturated media-driven culture, in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, in the Victorian era, or even in the early nineteenth
century. In his own lifetime, Washington was no stranger to sex scandals.
    Born in Virginia in 1732, Washington was a surveyor and planter before
becoming a lieutenant colonel in the French and Indian War. After the war,
he resumed his life as an elite planter and married the wealthiest widow in
Virginia, Martha Custis. During the American Revolution, he served as general of the