As modern historians become more comfortable with the details, Friedrich Baron von Steuben is revealed as a Revolutionary War hero with a preference for younger men. Largely ignored in biographies and historical articles about him until recent memory, the latest generation of researchers are more willing to admit that a life-long bachelor that lived with a few of his junior officers after the war, did indeed have an active interest in his own gender. Also, that it served as his catalyst to emigrate from Europe. The desperate colonists were willing to overlook the issue, as long as he assisted them with building a military capable of standing up to the British.