Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Angel on a Freight Train: A Story of Faith and Queer Desire in Nineteenth-Century America by Peter C. Baldwin (review)

2023; Volume: 104; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nyh.2023.a918272

2328-8132

Jordan Biro Walters,

Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes

Reviewed by: Angel on a Freight Train: A Story of Faith and Queer Desire in Nineteenth-Century America by Peter C. Baldwin Jordan Biro Walters (bio) Angel on a Freight Train: A Story of Faith and Queer Desire in Nineteenth-Century America By Peter C. Baldwin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020. 198 pages. $95.00 hardcover, $31.95 paperback. Urban and social historian Peter C. Baldwin analyzes "the previously unexamined journals" of Samuel Edward Warren (1831–1909) to write Warren's partial biography about the intersections of his Christian identity, professional life as a teacher and college professor, and private male romantic friendships (3). Warren kept a journal from the age of fifteen until a few months before his thirty-first birthday. Some of these diaries were either lost or destroyed, but the six surviving volumes offer rare autobiographical writing about queer sexual practices and emotions within the mainstream nineteenth-century context of Christian churches and educational institutions. Even Warren reconsidered his candidness later in life, and he attempted to erase evidence of his same-sex attractions by tearing out pages, removing particular words and names, and rewriting shorter entries. Through a close reading of Warren's journals and the technological recovery of some passages, Baldwin argues that Warren's experiences illustrate the social boundaries of queer intimacy for men in nineteenth-century New York and Massachusetts. Baldwin contextualizes his argument in the culture of emotionality in an era when American Protestantism made greater space for sentimentalism and reimagined manliness in ways that contested hypermasculinity. While not widely accepted, Warren found ways to navigate his queer desires and "heart religion" within affluent northeastern circles. By the time he reached his mid-twenties, however, access to sharing intense emotional and physical bonds with other men shrank. Warren, according to Baldwin, aged out of his ability to express passion for other men at twenty-six years of age. Angel on a Freight Train is organized into four thematic chapters. Each tackles a different mode of social interaction—friendship, teaching, evangelism, and fatherhood. The first three chapters overlap and deal with all of Warren's friendships. Warren sought both a romantic male partner and a Christian friendship. He looked for a like-minded friend who adhered to evangelical moralism and who was open to the cultivation of emotional connection. Talking about faith provided much of the relationship backdrop that allowed [End Page 417] Warren's romantic friendships to manifest. Warren, in his journals, also provides evidence that some of his attachments were physically intimate. While attending the West Newton Model School, "Warren developed the most important friendship of his life" with Richard "Dicky" C. Derby (25). The two boys, who had a three-year age difference, fostered a physical bond; they "slept in each others' arms" and "had gotten into the habit of kissing" (33–34). The first three chapters uphold the work of other historians who have argued that young people possessed the freedom to explore passionate same-sex friendships as part of youth culture. Scholars continue to debate if these friendships were erotic. Throughout the book, Baldwin includes a few erotically charged quotations from Warren's journals. A reader is left wondering if there are more such references in the source material. Baldwin is transparent in showing how he reconstructed and inferred information from the erasures of the diaries, but he is less transparent about the frequency of sexual passages, an important element in the scholarly work on romantic friendships. The last chapter shows a transition from Warren's pursuit of romantic partners to his embrace of a "fatherhood" role, where sensuality had no place. Warren made this alteration after a failed amorous attachment to "sweet Willie," who was seven years his junior. Journal entries reveal that the friendship may have gone physically too far for Willie's comfort, prompting Warren to change his behavior. From that point forward, Warren redirected his affection toward young men into surrogate parenthood. Baldwin does not provide enough analysis of the imbalances of power that can characterize age-disparate relationships, especially given that Warren primarily longed for younger men and that the age gap of the objects of his attraction grew larger...