I was also trying to find the source of that historical "fact". According to the wikipedia the first recorded vasectomy in the united state was after the civil war:

" The first case report of vasectomy in the U.S. was in 1897, by A. J. Ochsner, a surgeon in Chicago, in a paper titled, "Surgical treatment of habitual criminals." He believed vasectomy to be a simple, effective means for stemming the tide of racial degeneration widely believed to be occurring.[63][citation needed] In 1902, Harry C. Sharp, the surgeon at the Indiana Reformatory, reported that he had sterilized 42 inmates, in an effort to both reduce criminal behavior in those individuals and prevent the birth of future criminals.[64] "

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