Think back to your history classes (for some of you this might be further back in time than others). When your class discussed the American Revolution, you covered Jefferson, Washington, Adams, etc.
You heard about Paul Revere’s ride and “the shot heard ‘round the world.” Was any time devoted to Baron Friedrich von Steuben? In my U.S. history class the Baron warranted a short paragraph and a painting of him drilling the troops. We certainly didn’t learn anything about his background or personal life. I imagine there are some classes that didn’t get even that much information about him.
It’s not as though von Steuben is entirely forgotten. German-Americans celebrate von Steuben Day every year. A host of cities and counties around the U.S. are named after him. There are statues in his honor at Valley Forge and in Washington D.C. His Blue Book was the standard training manual for the U.S. military for generations. Nevertheless, memories of von Steuben among average Americans remain fuzzy.
Washington’s Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben, written by Josh Trujilo and illustrated by Levi Hastings picks up where your social studies class left off. Trujilo and Hastings previously explored von Steuben’s life in truncated form in the Nib (RIP) with “The American Revolution’s Greatest Leader Was Openly Gay,” which also appeared in the Nib anthology Be Gay, Do Comics. This 192-page book is a great expansion on that earlier story.
Von Steuben was born in Prussia and joined the military at the tender age of fourteen. His boundless ambition allowed him to rise through the ranks of Prussian society until he gained the title Baron. Ben Franklin fudged his credentials to convince the Continental Congress to give him a role training the early U.S. Army. Despite the vital role Baron von Steuben played in the victory of the colonists against the British, his later life was fraught with difficulty. He waited years until he received his deferred pay and he was turned down from positions due to his nationality.
Aside from telling von Steuben’s life story, Trujilo and Hastings chronicle their own interest and research in the man who became the first U.S. Inspector General. They remark on how many stories of queer individuals have been erased or are being erased. Anyone who has kept up with the latest spate of book bannings and censorship knows what they’re talking about. An early section dealing with this topic is accompanied by a ghostly image of von Steuben. He’s not easy to see, but he’s there if you look. His queer identity is much the same way.
The coloring of the book, in white, gray, black, and blue, is beautiful, The story’s blue tint does two things. It creates a melancholic tone, expressing Hastings and Trujilo’s feelings about how von Steuben’s story has been buried — as well as how politicians and governments are trying to keep such stories hidden. As a cold color, blue also reminds us of the winter at Valley Forge, even before von Steuben’s arrival at that fateful locale built his reputation. Those truly were “the times that try men’s souls” that Thomas Paine wrote about.
From the title you might expect that this is a war comic, but that isn’t the case. The few battles we see follow Thomas Hobbes’ dictum about life: “Nasty, brutish, and short.” When Baron von Steuben is first wounded in battle, it hits us like a musket ball. Even the brief battle scenes do have an appropriate sense of scale because of Hasting’s skill at drawing masses of people.
The tone of Washington’s Gay General is a delicate balance. Parts of it are quite funny, for example, referring to von Steuben as our “founding daddy,” visually referencing the Distracted Boyfriend meme, or saying that von Steuben’s recruitment to the Colonial army was the first case of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But other parts are tragic or even horrific. The execution of Frederick the Great’s lover, ostensibly for desertion but likely due to his homosexuality, builds inevitably to a terrifying conclusion. This sequence is not just a reminder of how LGBTQ+ were treated historically, but a warning of what some right-wing extremists would like to return to.
In reading graphic biography or history, I’m always eager to see if a bibliography or section for further reading is included. Unfortunately, Washington’s Gay General lacks anything in those categories. The one source mentioned in the comic itself is The Life of Frederick Wilhelm von Steuben by Friedrich Kapp. I was disappointed as someone who is less than knowledgeable about this period in history that there were no suggestions on where to go to learn more. It also makes me wonder about the sources of information that Trujilo and Hastings are pulling from. My uneasiness regarding the book’s accuracy was amplified when I detected a typo on the subject of the Baron’s age. The text mentions he had a fatal stroke at 84, but actually he passed at 64. Hopefully any new printings fix this error.
Baron von Steuben was a complicated man and to their credit, Trujilo and Hastings don’t attempt a whitewash. He owned slaves. Some of his relationships were with men (boys, really) as young as seventeen. Washington’s Gay General also does not gloss over the violence done to the Native population by the white settlers, rightly calling it genocidal. The reality of slavery is also addressed. The text mentions that more slaves fought for the British empire than for the U.S., surely a shocking statistic for anybody used to thinking of America as the last word in freedom and liberty.
There’s a podcast and book I enjoy called Bad Gays, which attempts to explore the lives of complicated figures in queer history. Baron von Steuben certainly isn’t “bad” but his legacy is complicated. It deserves discussion not just among queer people but among all who live in the U.S. Without him, it’s possible there would be no United States. Yet, a discussion is only possible if the truth of his life and legacy is known. I hope that Washington’s Gay General contributes to more awareness being raised about our most fabulous founding father.
