- Irish chaplain Robert Newburgh led a secret life that could be extremely dangerous if anyone found out.

Over in Prussia, Baron Friedrich von Steuben did much the same.

Today, they might describe themselves as gay, or since we don't know every single detail of their identities, queer.

But in their world, they were labeled something else.

Criminals.

Though they would never meet, both men would soon find themselves in America on opposing sides of the Revolutionary War.

But whether things could be different for queer people in the newly established America, well, that hadn't been fully decided yet.

I'm Joel Cook, and this is "Rogue History."

Now, before we get to America, it's important to understand that queer men in 18th-century Europe weren't exactly out and proud.

Like I said, the risks were high.

So how exactly did the private lives of our two queer friends become public knowledge in the first place?

For Robert Newburgh, it all started with a snitch.

After finishing a liberal education that exposed him to the Irish Enlightenment, as well as Greek and Roman portrayals of queer men, Newburgh became a deacon in the Church of Ireland.

But pretty soon, it all started to unravel.

While serving as a traveling preacher, in 1769, Newburgh rented a room with two beds: one for him and one for his manservant.

But when a maid went to make the beds, she discovered that only one was being used.

Now, this could have just stayed with her.

Minding your business wasn't a new concept in 1769, but the maid chose to spill the beans to everyone.

By the time he enlisted in the Royal Irish Regiment three years later, the word was out.

Robert Newburgh was a buggerer.

Now, I know the word buggerer might sound kind of funny, but you have to understand the context.

Buggery was used as a catchall term, not just for consensual homosexual relationships, but for non-consensual acts with humans or animals as well.

In effect, it was a slur.

The term unfairly framed queer men as equivalent to predatory men, and conviction for it carried a death sentence.

In May 1773, on the cusp of sailing overseas to join his regiment in the American colonies, Robert Newburgh heard that rumors about his sexuality had already arrived in Philadelphia.

Over in Prussia, things were going a little differently for Baron von Steuben, in part because his godbrothers King Frederick the Great and Prince Henry were very likely queer men themselves.

In 1746, the same year Steuben joined the army, King Frederick suspended the death penalty as a punishment for homosexuality.

But Steuben's connections to Prussian royalty didn't mean that he was safe from persecution.

He had a great run as a soldier, but a conflict forced him out of the army in 1762.

Over 10 years later, he was willing to fight in any army that would give a middle-aged man one last shot at glory, but things took a complicated turn in 1777, when an anonymous letter accused the Baron of having taken familiarities with young boys.

Outside of this one anonymous letter, there were no other rumors of impropriety about the Baron, but as I mentioned, queer men were already lumped in with predatory men.

So one rumor was all it took.

Baron von Steuben understood that his honor and possibly his life were now in jeopardy.

Desperate to escape, he offered his military skills to the American rebels for the absolutely incredible price of free 99.

No pay, no rank, not even the cost of travel to cross the pond.

For both Robert Newburgh and Baron von Steuben, Revolutionary America offered an opportunity to regain their dignity.

While the Baron laid low in Boston waiting for his new life to begin, Robert Newburgh was having an HR nightmare in the Royal Irish Regiment over in Philadelphia.

After his arrival, he rented a room a mile away from the barracks, likely to avoid tension with the regiment, but even with the distance between them, the officers of the regiment were infuriated by what they saw as an unavoidable problem.

Robert Newburgh was hot.

You see, chaplains were expected to be proper and dignified both in their demeanor and in their dress.

But to the British officers, Robert Newburgh with his trunks full of flashy clothes was the polar opposite.

He was a Macaroni.

Now, if you've heard the song "Yankee Doodle," you've probably heard about Macaronis, but I'm gonna step aside and let our friend from across the pond, J Draper, explain them to you.

- Thanks, Joel.

In the 1760s, a new kind of men's fashion starts to circulate, which brings about the death of civilization as we know it.

These snappy dressers were called the Macaronis.

Yes, as in "stuck a feather in his cap and called it Macaroni."

Mainstream men's fashion before Macaronis looks like this: you wear a three-piece suit, which is breeches, a waistcoat, and a coat, and it's either plain or it has a brocade pattern.

The coat flares out at the waist, and it goes all the way down to your knees.

You've got a wig, which is flat on top with big curls at the sides.

So how would a Macaroni be different?

The Macaroni wig is kind of high and pointy.

There are a lot of satirical cartoons about Macaronis where the hair is really silly, but you can also find normal portraits of them where it's a little bit more realistic looking.

Their sleeves and their breeches are cut tight, and their coats are shorter than normal.

You can see they stop just above the knees.

But the real distinguishing feature of the Macaroni is his accessories.

Again, no one Macaroni is gonna have all this stuff at once, but you wanna look out for big ostentatious square buckles on shoes, spyglasses, bouquets of flowers in their lapels, swords that are almost like jewelry, shoes with red heels, tiny tricorns, and jeweled snuff boxes.

But the main problem people have with Macaronis is that they're not manly enough.

Men are in crisis, and you can tell 'cause they're wearing tiny hats.

- Thanks, J. It was fine if some Yankee Doodle wanted to dress like that, but this was the British Army.

Newburgh's fellow officers felt that his identity threatened not just the tough-guy image of the Royal Irish Regiment, but the masculinity of the army overall.

In early 1774, Newburgh moved into a small single room in the Philadelphia barracks, despite his expectation that he would have two rooms.

Many ignored him completely, while others made homophobic jokes at his expense.

When he tried to have the officers prosecuted for slandering him, the trial just turned into a gossip session about his personal life.

Newburgh's commander offered him an out: leave the regiment and return to Ireland.

The deflated chaplain considered it.

He was isolated by the officers, and even children mocked him openly.

But in the end, his few friends convinced him to stay and fight for his honor.

Over in Valley Forge, things were going very differently for Baron von Steuben.

Because he left Europe so quickly, he arrived in America ahead of the accusations against him.

It also may have helped that thanks to a little fudging from Benjamin Franklin, the Americans thought he was a big-time general.

Instead of having to defend himself, he arrived in Valley Forge as a legend.

One soldier described first meeting him as "seeing the ancient fabled god of war."

General George Washington trusted him immediately and appointed the Baron Inspector General of the Army.

This meant that the Baron was now responsible for organizing and training the entire American army.

If he failed, the Americans would lose the war and the revolution.

The survival of the first modern democracy in the world was now dependent on the leadership of a queer Prussian officer, and lead he did.

Baron von Steuben treated his soldiers as equals and also had a great sense of humor.

Because he had a poor grasp of the English language, when he wanted to curse at the troops, he called an aid over to "come and swear for me in English."

And thanks to the Baron's training program, the Americans were far more prepared when they faced the British again in the 1778 Battle of Monmouth.

Steuben stepped in to help Washington stabilize the army and fight the British to a draw.

His actions that day made him an American hero.

But whether his new status meant full acceptance wasn't exactly clear.

When rumors about the Baron's sexuality finally made their way across the pond to government officials, nothing changed in the way he was treated because he was too useful to their cause.

And after he helped defeat the British once and for all at Yorktown, the Baron was granted money and lands as a reward for his service.

But despite these gifts, the nation he helped establish still maintained the laws that could persecute him simply for who he chose to love.

And over in the British Army, Robert Newburgh had already learned what that kind of persecution felt like.

By the time the Baron became a war hero, the British Army had already found Robert Newburgh guilty of multiple charges.

Officers in the Royal Irish Regiment continued to use other accusations like disobedience or insubordination to litigate Newburgh's sexual orientation indirectly.

With the risk of unemployment, loss of honor, and maybe even execution, Robert Newburgh felt that he had to do something drastic.

He convinced a soldier in the regiment to accuse him directly of buggery so that he could be charged with homosexuality once and for all and put the issue to rest.

The Royal Irish officers would be forced to testify in front of men who could end their careers if they lied under oath.

But unfortunately for our swanky little chaplain, his plot was discovered.

Instead of fighting a buggery charge, he was now facing a general court-martial for perjury due to his "vicious and ungentleman-like behavior."

But what was most fascinating about the 1774 court-martial of Robert Newburgh was the way in which he defended himself.

Though he remained a loyal British subject, Newburgh defended his position as a queer man with revolutionary thought.

When the fashion poli- I mean, prosecution, accused him of being a Macaroni, Newburgh argued that he had a right to freedom and privacy so long as his character and ethics were good.

He was found guilty of falsehood and impropriety in his conduct.

But the generals also noted that there was no proof to support the accusations of buggery.

Though he was eventually pardoned, he still suffered the indignity of having his personal life put on trial.

And even for all of his efforts, there was no major cultural shift because of the trials of Robert Newburgh.

Back in America, Baron von Steuben was able to choose a quieter form of resistance.

Throughout his time with the American Army, Steuben developed close ties to men who would fall under the spectrum of what we consider queer today.

His first two American aides were Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, who some historians suspect had a romantic relationship.

The two soldiers the Baron eventually defined as his chosen family, William North and Benjamin Walker, likely had an intimate relationship as well.

He legally adopted both men, which allowed him to leave an inheritance to them, despite the illegality of queer relationships at the time.

He also opened his home to any former soldiers who needed a temporary place to stay.

For Baron von Steuben, there may have been a romantic aspect to these relationships, but at the very least, it seems that he was a known and trusted elder for queer men in the army.

While Newburgh was forced to challenge the system directly, Steuben opted for the quieter, but equally necessary workarounds that allowed safe spaces for queer people to live authentically.

Despite their positions on opposing sides of the war, both Robert Newburgh and Baron von Steuben fought for revolutionary principles in different ways, but neither man was able to see those principles realized.

Over in Ireland, Newburgh died before the death penalty was repealed for homosexuality, and queer relationships weren't decriminalized until 1993.

Though Steuben was integral to the American victory, the new nation continued to punish relationships severely as well.

Only in the 1790s did some states begin to repeal their execution laws for homosexuality, replacing them with harsh prison sentences instead.

The last, South Carolina, repealed the death penalty in 1873.

It wasn't until over 200 years after a queer Prussian Baron helped save our revolution that the 2003 "Lawrence v. Texas" and 2015 "Obergefell v. Hodges" rulings finally decriminalized the relationships and the loved ones he cherished so deeply.

(lively music)