The United States has always been a country of make believe. Russia in many ways is also America’s cousin. They are both havens for Christian thought. One is Orthodox and the other is Protestant.
Much like how Ancient Rome was founded by the descendants of Aeneas fleeing the city of Troy and its sacking by the Greeks, America was made by religious refugees seeking freedom and prosperity in the New World. It was new land of opportunity and glory was to be had by all. Much like the new spritual frontier which was opened by Emperor Constantine’s moving of the capital to Constantinople and shaking off the myopic obsession of Rome, America seemed like a place that was able to shake off all of humanity’s past to create something new. Being creatures of novelty and innovation, human beings often have a tendency to also get stuck in their own animalistic natures that been staying in our brains since the time of the our earliest ancestors.
America already had incredible generals, inventors and artists right from when it began. However, human beings are not perfect beings. The day-to-day existence of a human being is always testing our morality and humans, finding sometimes their existence is boring and needing novelty, often rely on needing outlets to satisfy their Cro-magnon instincts. The American people, especially before Abraham Lincoln presidency were no different to this rule. The Americans always thought highly of themselves but unlike the Pagan Romans, were interested in hiding away human passion under the curation of human experiences that best repersent us. This is why in America, you hardly hear about the evils of men and women; they are often put into a ghetto, safely within true crime or other entertainment. In Ancient Rome, such fragilities of humanity were part of one’s daily life and thinking. Not so in the United States.
When it comes to prostitution in the United States, you have to understand that Americans have always been very hypocritical people on the topic of sexuality. Unlike the Ancient Romans, who may have had hypocrisies in their own society, were at least willing to engage the issue without creating utopian visions of a future society, a more prefect union, in order to push the issue into some ambiguous situation where everything that is confusing man today will be solved by science. America, being the land of make believe and magical thinking, regardless of its enlightenment mentality is not a country that is immune to fragilities of human nature and his institutions.
America has always been a two-faced society unlike the Ancient societies it modeled itself on.
The incredible heights of morality and virtue set by Washington and Jefferson were simply too high for the American people to maintain. Even in their own age, they were not able to live to their own images. However, the American people up until recently, have been an optimistic people in spite of humanity’s many shortcomings and inability to emphasize with all humanity, especially those of who have issues with our opinions.
In the American Civil War, the Republic which was full of so much idealism in spite of societal inequalities between classes and the bondage of Blacks in the South, was becoming entrenched in a war that costing many lives in the process. While there is a narrative that the Southerners were simply demons who were struck down by Angelic Union soldiers, (This is the narrative driven by post 1960s cinema which has some nuance to it but the media portrays it in this way), the Union was not an organization with clean hands. Many people do not understand that the individual’s experience of a war will not be the same as that of someone who lives many generation in the future. As time passes, the threat of one’s family and clan being attacked in that situation passes and people start to create myths about their ancestors, adding gloss to embellish the stories in order to exaggerate the deeds of their clan and to make the crimes of their enemies seem worse than usual. As much as Voltaire and Rosseau believed that man was somehow the cusp of becoming some kinda of rational creature that would conquer all his Cro-Magnon instincts.
We are aware that is not the case, no matter what modern man tries to assert. Even in the 19th Century, there were many who were still naively believing in such ideals, even though the Conquests under Napoleon were showing that rationalism were simply just another facade for a man’s vanity and willingness to conquer.
The Civil War shows that America was like any other nation, even if it was special, it was still a human nation, and not some real-life creation of King Arthur’s Kingdom where honor and glory are superhuman ideals. The existence of Prostitution during the Civil War was just one aspect that was showing how Americans were not building utopia and that it was subject to all the issues that are effect humans.
Prostitutes in Civil War-Era America as shown on Mercy Street 2016
There have been some books that have been written on the topic of Prostitution in the Civil War but books are generally not as relevant as they once were. It is in movies that people shape their opinions about the past and allow it to shape their views of what they view as the future of man. Of course, the average person, especially in recent years is increasingly becoming more dependent on televisual images instead of actual written sources to understand their own history.
Mercy Street is a series that premiered on PBS in 2016 and 2017. It is a series that tells the story of a Northern nurse who works at an Alexandria hospital while meeting a great variety of characters who have allegiances to both North and South. The story was largely made in a section in the country that is generally more Pro-Union and especially more recently, more ideological about it. Considering the changes in the politics in the country since 2015 and the overt politicization of our country, Mercy Street came at the earlier phase of this era and was still not entirely a propaganda piece, it has mannerisms that one can attribute to the Union idealism narrative that has been running strong in America since the 1960s.
While the Confederate narrative that came about in aftermath of the Civil War was not correct, the Union triumphalism one is also an exaggeration on the virtues of the Union beyond the usual complaints about the immortality of slavery and also the idea of succession from the Union. This war has become nothing more than a prop to be used by political sides for their own gain.
Mercy Street’s opening season seems to try to steer away from stereotypes about its Southern characters, who are in the view of Western Enlightenment values, are sticking to old economic systems that are not ethically viable anymore. Of course, such criticisms seem to gloss over the North’s emphasis on wage slavery in its many factories and mills in places such as Massachusetts or Pennsylvania where the oil industry was beginning to grow.
The issue of prostitution and wage slavery in the Civil War tends to be overlooked by historians. Generally speaking, the issue of Prostitution is often used as way to emphasize that the ancestors were not more moral, but this is often an exaggerated in order to make the moderns seem better than people in the past, which always irked me in a way. The issues of prostitution have not gone away, it’s just that this country tends to talk about such issues in a way that is not supposed to offend the middle class and their sensibilities.
In one of the early episodes of Mercy Street, there is a scene in the makeshift hospital in Alexandria, Virginia where prostitutes are seen. The characters are only side characters which do not impact the plot as much as the Northern woman or Southern belle character, but their presence represents something important in its depiction of American culture in that time.
Prostitution, which was already somewhat rampant profession in the United States among the fringes of American society after the market revolution during Andrew Jackson’s presidency and onwards became more and more prevalent during the Civil War. The traditional patriarchy which generally speaking was the regulatory system that kept their kin in check in the Anglosphere was weakening as result of market forces giving people more opportunities beyond their small communities.
The scene in particular takes place in Episode 5. While the hospital at Mercy Street remains busy with Union and Confederate soldiers being helped by various nurses. One soldier complains about a pair of prostitutes who are conversing with each other in the hallway of Mercy Street. The soldier singles out one prostitute and calls her names.
This scene is not rather complex but it is important revelation into prostitution in how it was being seen in that time.
While America is not in the same sociopolitical situation as it was in the Civil War, Americans are generally speaking, have a hypocritical approach to intimacy or relations between men and women. American society relies on selling visions of a society that will be equal, essentially slow-walking reforms in order to maintain the establishment’s privileges.
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