Civil War prostitution gave rise to any number of euphemisms that speak to the morality of the times. In addition to the courtesans and mistresses there were: horizontal refreshment; riding the Dutch girl; waiter girls; femmes de pavé, femmes du monde; filles de joie; fallen angels, daughters of eve, gay young ducks, public women, painted Jezebels and unclean birds. The cities they gravitated to were: sordid places, pestiferous holes, Sodom and Gomoroah’s and meccas of filth. They appeared whenever and wherever the soldiers did; Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital had more prostitutes than Paris or New Orleans combined, according to one observer, and New York was “the most profligate city in all Christendom,” according to a noted diarist. 2
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