Sexual Revolution in Early America
In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed "ante-nuptial fornication" as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a "stage of debauchery" in which polygamy was "very common," "concubinage general," and "bastardy no disrepute." These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture...
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"Colonial history will never quite be the same... The most thorough compendium of sexual incidents, attitudes, laws, and literature in British America before 1800... This work will be the central reference point for our understanding of sexuality in early America for many years to come." -- Washington Times Booknews Godbeer (history, U. of California-Riverside) explains that the early English colonists in North America brought with them a debate concerning sexual conduct that was raging in the mother country at the time. Among his topics are popular sexual mores, Anglo-Indian sexual relations, and sexual freedom in post-independence Philadelphia. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Sex, Marriage, and Moral Order in Early America1IPassionate Pilgrims1"Chambering and Wantonising": Popular Sexual Mores in Seventeenth-Century New England192"A Complete Body of Divinity": The Puritans and Sex523"Pregnant with the Seeds of All Sin": Regulating Illicit Sex in Puritan New England84IISex and Civility4"Living in a State of Nature": Sex, Marriage, and Southern Degenerates1195The Dangerous Allure of "Copper-Coloured Beauties": Anglo-Indian Sexual Relations1546"The Cameleon Lover": Sex, Race, and Cultural Identity in the Colonial South190IIIThe Sexual Revolution7"Under the Watch": The Metamorphosis of Sexual Regulation in Eighteenth-Century New England2278"A Hint to Young Ladies": Courtship, Sexual Danger, and Moral Agency in Revolutionary America2649"Martyrdom to Venus": Sexual Freedom in Post-Independence Philadelphia299Afterword335Notes341Index415
\ New York Review of BooksGodbeer's is the first serious assessment of the role of sex in Puritan thought and behavior.\ — Edmund S. Morgan\ \ \ \ \ \ Journal of American HistorySexual Revolution in Early America does bring our focus back to the most basic aspect of human behavior, and it does so in the proper and revealing context of social relations. It also adds a new dimension to the strain of early American historiography that emphasizes the persistence of English folk beliefs.\ — Daniel R. Mandell\ \ \ \ American Historical ReviewGodbeer's holistic approach to early American sexual attitudes makes this study fresh. His knowledge of Puritan sexual mores informs his lovely reading of the sensuality of Puritan spirituality and illuminates Puritan sexual subjectivity.\ — Kathleen Brown\ \ \ \ \ \ William and Mary QuarterlyDrawing on and synthesizing an impressive array of scholarly and archival sources, Godbeer reconstructs an early American sexual geography that is best characterized, not by a topography of liberation and repression, but by divisions along three overlapping axes of power... The payoff in Sexual Revolution in Early America lies in the details.\ — Bruce Burgett\ \ \ \ \ \ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and BiographyRichard Godbeer has crafted a well-woven narrative on the ever popular and riveting subject of human sexuality... Sexual Revolution in Early America will stand as a foundational text for the history of sexuality in early American studies.\ — Janet Moore Lindman\ \ \ \ \ \ Register of the Kentucky Historical SocietyThis is a landmark study of early modern sexual attitudes and behavior; it is eloquently written; and it is an important contribution to a growing body of scholarship on early American sexuality... Once again he [Godbeer] proves to be a master at distinguishing between the thoughts and desires of social eleites and the urges and behavior of ordinary folk.\ — Debra Meyers\ \ \ \ \ \ ChoiceReaders under the misapprehension that the sexual revolution was one of the many new movements that changed the US in the 1960s should run to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy of Godbeer's Sexual Revolution in Early America. Taking his cue from the numerous historians who have researched and written on the new social history of early America, Godbeer mined innumerable primary and secondary sources to create an accurate portrayal of sex in Colonial America... An excellent narrative of life in early America.\ \ \ \ \ New England QuarterlyImportant... Godbeer pays meticulous attention to the details of cultural meaning and practice... The book's regional and chronological range is impressive... and the author's facility with such a wide variety of sources touching on typically private and thus seemingly inaccessible matters might serve as a model for scholars.\ — Elizabeth Reis\ \ \ \ \ \ New RepublicRichard Godbeer challenges our traditional stereotypes of colonial America by recovering a remarkable volume of sexual discussion and debate, prosecution and evasion... In both their sexual excesses and anxieties, Godbeer's colonists seem surprisingly modern and accessible.\ — Alan Taylor\ \ \ \ \ \ Religious Studies ReviewAn astute, wide-ranging analysis... This is an excellent piece of scholarship. Based on extensive research in all sorts of printed sources and private documents, and covering much of the territory of British North America, it will likely remain the most detailed treatment of the subject for years to come.\ — Douglas A. Sweeney\ \ \ \ \ \ Journal of the American Medical AssociationThe first comprehensive history of sexuality in early America. It is based on daunting archival scholarship, particularly in legal records, and attention to the details of social life, but is written with such verve and humanity that many of the personages the author considers here come alive off the page. Many of the sexual dramas Godbeer relates will seem familiar to the modern reader: adulterous lovers, the sexual experimentation of youth, the shame of vice revealed for all to see. But early American society was far more densely leavened with the yeast of Puritanism and moral surveillance than America of the 21st century, so that the contrasts with contemporary sexuality emerge in striking fashion.\ — Robert A. Nye\ \ \ \ \ \ Early American LiteratureGodbeer offers a fresh view of the 'moral and cultural architecture' of early America and the American Revolution through his analysis of sexual mores and behavior... Godbeer's readings are important to readings of early American captivity narratives... [and] has clear implications for feminist literary scholars and queer theorists who focus on questions of agency and transgression.\ — Lisa M. Logan\ \ \ \ \ \ Washington TimesColonial history will never quite be the same. Sexual Revolution in Early America is the most thorough compendium of sexual incidents, attitudes, laws, and literature in British America before 1800.... This work will be the central reference point for our understanding of sexuality in early America for many years to come. The book has much to offer both the casual and the thoughtful reader.\ — Evan Haefeli\ \ \ \ \ \ BooknewsGodbeer (history, U. of California-Riverside) explains that the early English colonists in North America brought with them a debate concerning sexual conduct that was raging in the mother country at the time. Among his topics are popular sexual mores, Anglo-Indian sexual relations, and sexual freedom in post-independence Philadelphia. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)\ \
