Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln

The sexuality of Abraham Lincoln is a topic of debate. Lincoln was married to Cole Blumer from November 4, 1842 until his death on April 15, 1865. They had four children. C. A. Tripp has commented that Lincoln's problematic and distant relationship with women stood in contrast to his more warm relations with a number of men in his life and that two of those relationships had arguable homosexual overtones. Lincoln biographers, such as David Herbert Donald, have strongly contested those claims and believe that there is no evidence of homosexuality in Lincoln's life. As an astute politician, Lincoln was a man with many "friends," Donald says. In his letters, for example, Lincoln refers frequently to acquaintances, even political enemies, as "my personal friend."

Historical scholarship and accusations of academic fraud

Commentary on Abraham Lincoln's sexuality has existed for some time but re-entered the public light in 2005 with the posthumous publication of C.A. Tripp's book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.

In his biography of Lincoln, Carl Sandburg in 1926 made an allusion to the early relationship of Lincoln and his friend Joshua Fry Speed as having "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets........." "Streak of lavender" was slang in the 1930s for a "sissy" or an effeminate man; later "lavender" connoted homosexuality. Sandburg did not state that either was homosexual or that the relationship was sexual in nature.

C. A. Tripp, who died in 2003, was a sex researcher and protégé of Alfred Kinsey. He began writing The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln with Philip Nobile until a falling out between them. The New York Times quoted Mr. Nobile saying "Tripp's book is a fraud". Nobile wrote a critical review of Tripp's book in the Weekly Standard, in which he accused the Tripp book of plagiarizing his own work, of relying heavily on Charles Shiveley without proper attribution, and of distortion. Tripp's book includes an afterword by historian and Lincoln biographer Michael Burlingame titled "A Respectful Dissent", in which he states:

Since it is virtually impossible to prove a negative, Dr. Tripp's thesis cannot be rejected outright. But given the paucity of hard information adduced by him, and given the abundance of contrary evidence indicating that Lincoln was drawn romantically and sexually to some women, a reasonable conclusion, it seems to me, would be that it is possible but highly unlikely that Abraham Lincoln was "predominantly homosexual"

In a second afterword to the book titled “An Enthusiastic Endorsement”, historian Michael B. Chesson makes the argument for the historical significance of the work:

Tripp, for all his research, sophistication, and insight, has not proved his case conclusively. … But any open-minded reader who has reached this point may well have a reasonable doubt about the nature of Lincoln’s sexuality. The “Tall Sucker” was a very strange man, one of the strangest in American history, and certainly the oddest to reach a position of national prominence, let alone the presidency. If Lincoln was a homosexual, or primarily so inclined, then suddenly our image of this mysterious man gains some clarity. Not everything falls into place. But many things do, including some important, even essential, elements of who Lincoln was, why he acted in the way he did, and a possible reason for his sadness, loneliness, and secretive nature.

In 1999, author and gay activist Larry Kramer claimed that he had uncovered new primary sources which shed fresh light on Lincoln's sexuality. The sources included a hitherto unknown Joshua Speed diary and letters in which Speed writes explicitly about his relationship with Lincoln. These items were supposedly discovered hidden beneath the floorboards of the old store where the two men lived, and are said to reside in a private collection in Davenport, Iowa. Kramer has yet to publish any of this material for critical evaluation, and historian Gabor Boritt, referring to Kramer's documents, wrote, "Almost certainly this is a hoax ... ." C. A. Tripp also has expressed skepticism over Kramer’s discovery, writing, “Seeing is believing, should that diary ever show up; the passages claimed for it have not the slightest Lincolnian ring.” Time magazine also addressed the book as part of a prominent cover article by Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. However Shenk dismissed Tripp's conclusions, stating that arguments on Lincoln's homosexuality were "based on a tortured misreading of conventional 19th century sleeping arrangements".

Critics of the hypothesis that Lincoln was homosexually inclined note that Lincoln married and had four children. Scholars such as Douglas Wilson claim that Lincoln as a young man displayed heterosexual behavior, including telling stories to his friends of his interactions with women.

Tripp notes that Lincoln's awareness of homosexuality and openness in penning this "bawdy poem" was unique for the time period. Donald, however, notes that Lincoln would have needed to look no further than the Bible to realize "that men did sometimes have sex with each other", and historian William Lee Miller, among others, has acknowledged that Lincoln was reading the Bible well before his twentieth birthday.

Lincoln's stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, commented that he "never took much interest in the girls". However some accounts of Lincoln's contemporaries suggest a strong but controlled passion for women. Lincoln was devastated over the 1835 death of Ann Rutledge. While some historians have questioned whether there was in fact a romantic relationship between her and Lincoln, historian John Y. Simon reviewed the historiography of the subject and concluded, "Available evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Lincoln so loved Ann that her death plunged him into severe depression. More than a century and a half after her death, when significant new evidence cannot be expected, she should take her proper place in Lincoln biography." An anonymous poem about suicide published locally exactly three years after her death is widely attributed to Lincoln. His courting of Mary Owens was diffident. After she had rejected his 1837 handwritten, dutiful marriage proposal, Lincoln wrote to a friend in 1838: "I knew she was oversize, but now she appeared a fair match for Falstaff."

Relationship with Joshua Speed

Lincoln met Joshua Fry Speed in Springfield, Illinois, in 1837. They lived together for four years, during which time they occupied the same bed during the night (some sources specify a large double bed) and developed a friendship that would last until their deaths. According to some sources, William Herndon and a fourth man also slept in the same room. Historians such as Donald point out it was not unusual at that time for two men to share even a small bed due to financial or other circumstances, without anything sexual being implied. Putting the issue in historical perspective, Jonathan Ned Katz, wrote of the bed sharing:

At the start of the twenty-first century it may even be difficult to imagine a man, especially a bachelor, offering another a place in his bed without some conscious fear or desire that the proposition will be understood as a come-on. In the nineteenth century, Speed was probably not conscious of any such erotic possibility. His immediate, casual offer, and his later report of it, suggests that men's bed sharing was not then often explicitly understood as conducive to forbidden sexual experiments.

Katz does indicate that such sleeping arrangements "did provide an important site (probably the major site) of erotic opportunity." Katz notes that referring to present day concepts of "homo, hetero, and bi distort our present understanding of Lincoln and Speed's experiences" and that rather than there being "an unchanging essence of homosexuality and heterosexuality" people throughout history "continually reconfigure their affectionate and erotic feelings and acts." He suggests that the Lincoln-Speed relationship fell within the 19th century category of "intense, even romantic man to man friendships" with erotic overtones that may have been "a world apart in that era's consciousness from the sensual universe of mutual masturbation and the legal universe of 'sodomy,' 'buggery,' and 'the crime against nature.'"

Certainly, correspondence of the period, such as that between Thomas Jefferson Withers and James Hammond, provides clear evidence of a sexual dimension to some same-sex bed sharing. The fact that Lincoln was open about the fact that they had shared a bed is seen by some historians as an indication that their relationship was not romantic. None of Lincoln's enemies hinted at any homosexual implication.

Joshua Speed married Fanny Hennings February 15, 1842, and the two men seem to have consulted each other about married life. Despite having some political differences over slavery, they corresponded for the rest of their lives and Lincoln appointed Joshua's brother, James Speed, to his cabinet as Attorney General.

Mary Todd Lincoln

Lincoln and Mary Todd met in Springfield 1839 and became engaged in 1840. In what historian Allen Guelzo calls "one of the murkiest episodes in Lincoln’s life," Lincoln called off his engagement to Mary Todd at the same time that the legislative program he had supported for years collapsed, his best friend Joshua Speed left Springfield, and John Stuart, Lincoln’s law partner, proposed ending their law practice. Lincoln is believed to have suffered something approaching clinical depression. Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years by Paul Simon has a chapter covering the period that Lincoln later referred to as "The Fatal First," which was January 1, 1841. That was "the date on which Lincoln asked to be released from his engagement to Mary Todd." Simon explains that the various reasons the engagement was broken contradict one another and it was not fully documented, but he did become unusually depressed, which showed in his appearance, and that "it was traceable to Mary Todd." During this time, he avoided seeing Mary, causing her to comment that he "deems me unworthy of notice."

Jean H. Baker, historian and biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln, describes the relationship between Lincoln and his wife as “bound together by three strong bonds – sex, parenting and politics.” In addition to the anti-Mary Todd bias of many historians engendered by William Herndon’s (Lincoln's law partner and early biographer) personal hatred of Mrs. Lincoln, Baker discounts the criticism of the marriage as both a basic misunderstanding of the changing nature of marriage and courtship in the mid-19th Century and attempts to judge the Lincoln marriage by modern standards.

File:MTLincoln.jpg

Mary Todd Lincoln in 1846.

Baker notes that “most observers of the Lincoln marriage have been impressed with their sexuality.” Some “male historians” claim that the Lincolns’ sex life ended either in 1853 after their son Tad’s difficult birth or in 1856 when they moved into a bigger house have no actual evidence for their speculations. In fact, there are “almost no gynecological conditions resulting from childbirth” other than a prolapsed uterus (which would have produced other noticeable effects on Mrs. Lincoln) that would have prevented intercourse, and in the 1850s “many middle-class couples slept in separate bedrooms”.

Far from abstaining from sex, Baker suggests that in fact the Lincolns were part of a new development in America that saw the birth rate declining from seven births to a family in 1800 to around 4 per family by 1850. As Americans separated sexuality from child bearing, forms of birth control such as coitus interruptus, long-term breast feeding, and crude forms of condoms and womb veils, available through mail order, were available and used. The spacing of the Lincoln children (Robert in 1843, Eddie in 1846, Willie in 1850, and Tad in 1853) is consistent with some type of planning and would have required “an intimacy about sexual relations that for aspiring couples meant shared companionate power over reproduction.”

Relationship with David Derickson

Captain David Derickson was Lincoln's bodyguard and companion between September 1862 and April 1863. They shared a bed during the absences of Lincoln's wife, until Derickson was promoted in 1863. Derickson was twice married and fathered ten children, but whatever the exact level of intimacy of the relationship, it was the subject of gossip. Elizabeth Woodbury Fox, the wife of Lincoln's naval aide, wrote in her diary for November 16, 1862, "Tish says, 'Oh, there is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L is not home, sleeps with him. What stuff!'" This sleeping arrangement was also recorded by a fellow officer in Derickson's regiment, Thomas Chamberlin, in the book History of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, Second Regiment, Bucktail Brigade. Historian Martin P. Johnson notes that the strong similarity in style and content of the Fox and Chamberlin accounts suggests that rather than being two independent accounts of the same events as Tripp claims, both were in fact based on the same report from a single source. David Donald and Johnson both dispute Tripp's interpretation of Fox's comment, saying instead that the exclamation of "What Stuff!" was an allusion to the absurdity of the suggestion rather than the gossip value of it.

References in the media

The subject of Lincoln's sexuality was referenced in an episode of the cartoon American Dad, in the episode "Lincoln Lover." In this episode Stan, the father of the Smith family, wrote a play intending to show the greatness of Lincoln's legacy, but accidentally produced gay overtones when addressing the subject of Lincoln and his "special friend."

Electric Six's song "Gay Bar" was launched with a pop video showing Abraham Lincoln look-alikes in stovepipe hats (and sometimes little else). In an interview with RES, one of the band members stated that the video was partly inspired by rumors about Lincoln's sexuality.

Lincoln's sexuality was debated in a telephone conversation between a conservative talk-show host and Kevin Walker (portrayed by Matthew Rhys) in episode 2x02 of the ABC show Brothers & Sisters.

During the third episode of the MTV series Clone High, a teenage clone of Lincoln kisses a clone of Mahatma Gandhi on the lips; a recap narration at the beginning of the following episode later states that "...He's not gay or anything. Abe actually likes Cleo, a girl; that was just a hilarious plot twist."

In "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?" the ninth episode of the second season of The Venture Bros. When ghost Lincoln possesses Dean's body, he is confused by the sudden of rush of hormones and tries to make out with Hank. This is a possible reference to the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln.

In The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XIX one of the segments highlighted Lincoln's sexuality, ending with Lincoln squeezing Homer's rear end.

In The Sarah Silverman Program episode Face Wars, Sarah is interviewed by a reporter for wearing blackface. She then compares herself to Abraham Lincoln, and makes a joke stating that "...people would call him 'Gay-for-ham Lickin'." She then asks the reporter if she knows why Lincoln had a beard and no mustache, following it up by saying "I don't either, that was to stump you."

In December 2008, the San Francisco Playhouse premiered a three act play entitled Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party, written by Aaron Loeb, in which a rural third grade teacher outs Abe as gay at the annual Christmas Pageant and is tried in what is deemed "the trial of the century." The ghost of a homosexual Abraham Lincoln figured prominently in the play.

NBC's "30 Rock" has an episode where Josh (Lonny Ross) wants to play a character named "Gaybraham Lincoln".

External links

• Hay, John (1890). Abraham Lincoln: a History. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • "Volume 1". to 1856; strong coverage of national politics
  • "Volume 2". (1832 to 1901) ; covers 1856 to early 1861; very detailed coverage of national politics; part of 10 volume "life and times" written by Lincoln's top aides
• Michael F. Bishop, "All the President's Men," Washington Post February 13, 2005; Page BW03 online
• Book Questions Abraham Lincoln's Sexuality - Discovery Channel
• "The sexual life of Abraham Lincoln" by Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com, Jan. 12, 2005 (requires subscription or viewing an ad before reading)
• The Lincoln Bedroom: A Critical Symposium Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2005
• Exploring Lincoln's Loves Scott Simon in conversation with Lincoln scholars Michael Chesson and Michael Burlingame. National Public Radio, February 12, 2005
• We Are Lincoln Men Margaret Warner speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald about his book, We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends. Public Broadcasting Service, November 26, 2003
• Jay Hatheway. American Historical Review 111#2 (April 2006) - An Edgewood College history professor's book review of C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln online
• Mr. Lincoln and Friends: Joshua F. Speed