By DINITIA SMITH
New York Times

Published: December 16, 2004


Was Abraham Lincoln a gay American?

The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C. A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away.

In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, Mr. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all. The author, who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America's greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man.

But his book has not stopped the debate. During the 10 years of his research, Mr. Tripp shared his findings with other scholars. Many, including the Harvard professor emeritus David Herbert Donald, who is considered the definitive biographer of Lincoln, disagreed with him. Last year, in his book "We Are Lincoln Men," Mr. Donald mentioned Mr. Tripp's research and disputed his findings.

Mr. Tripp was the author of "The Homosexual Matrix," a 1975 book that disputed the Freudian notion of homosexuality as a personality disorder. In this new book, he says that early biographers of Lincoln, including Carl Sandburg, sensed Lincoln's homosexuality. In the preface to the original multi-volume edition of his acclaimed 1926 biography, Sandburg wrote: "Month by month in stacks and bundles of fact and legend, I found invisible companionships that surprised me. Perhaps a few of these presences lurk and murmur in this book."

Sandburg also wrote that Lincoln and Joshua Speed had "streaks of lavender, spots soft as May violets." Mr. Tripp said that references to Lincoln's possible homosexuality were cut in the 1954 abridged version of the biography. Mr. Tripp maintains that other writers, including Ida Tarbell and Margaret Leech, also found evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality but shied away from defining it as such or omitted crucial details.

Mr. Tripp cites Lincoln's extreme privacy and accounts by those who knew him well. "He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me," his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, told Lincoln's law partner William Herndon. In addition, Lincoln was terrified of marriage to Mary Todd and once broke off their relationship. They eventually had four children.

But in "We Are Lincoln Men" Mr. Donald wrote that no one at the time ever suggested that he and Speed were sexual partners. Herndon, who sometimes slept in the room with them, never mentioned a sexual relationship. In frontier times, Mr. Donald wrote, space was tight and men shared beds. And the correspondence between Lincoln and Speed was not that of lovers, he maintained. Moreover, Lincoln alluded openly to their relationship, saying, "I slept with Joshua for four years. " If they were lovers, Mr. Donald wrote, Lincoln wouldn't have spoken so freely.

Mr. Tripp charts Lincoln's relationships with other men, including Billy Greene, with whom Lincoln supposedly shared a bed in New Salem, Ill. Herndon said Greene told him that Lincoln's thighs "were as perfect as a human being Could be."

Lincoln's fellow lawyer Henry C. Whitney observed once that Lincoln "wooed me to close intimacy and familiarity."

Then there is Lincoln's youthful humorous ballad from 1829, "First Chronicles of Reuben," in which he refers to a man named Biley marrying another man named Natty: "but biley has married a boy/ the girles he had tried on every Side/ but none could he get to agree/ all was in vain he went home again/and sens that he is married to natty."

Mr. Tripp tries to debunk the popular opinion among scholars that Lincoln's lifelong depressions were caused by the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge. He writes that at the time she was supposedly involved with Lincoln, she was engaged to John McNamar and that her name appears nowhere in Lincoln's letters.

I can prove that there were more people around 10 million years ago than there are now. You have 2 parents, they had 2 parents, those had 2 parents, and so for every person living today, and the further one goes back, the more people there were. Lincoln was not gay!! A question. Why is it that the GLBT community always tries to show that anyone, that was famous, was, or is, gay?

From reading a much longer version of this article, I don't know that there's any way anyone can say definitively, one way or the other. The behavior standards of the day were so different than they are now that his actions are hard to interpret. It's interesting speculation though.

It is generally conceded that at least one U.S. president, Buchanan, was gay, however.

Oh my God The founder of the Republicans

Oh my God I am a Republican

Log Cabin that is.

Old news. Bush is GAY

Considering he slept with men and wrote sensual poems about them, I wouldn't be surprised a bit if he were gay. Maybe he was bisexual.

Apparently it was socially acceptable for men to "share a bed" back in those days.

However, the line about the "perfect" thighs makes you wonder

All this proves is that you have no concept of time, or logical argument.


You're right. He obviously slept with Mary Todd Lincoln, or they wouldn't have had sons. Technically speaking, he was bisexual.


Question. Why does that make you uncomfortable - especially when they are often correct?

As for why the LGBTQ community looks for role models, it is because we need them. Any group of individuals needs its role models, and the LGBTQ community is no different.

We can't look to our parents, most often they are straight. So we look to others of importance in our life - and we find them. Often they have hidden as well as possible during their lifetimes, or come from a time when the whole point was so moot it didn't bear scrutiny. When we find the proof of who they really are - we share that information with the world BECAUSE WE ARE PROUD OF THEM. So are you, which is why your homophobia makes you so mad when you learn the truth.

Lincoln was a great president. Lincoln was a great queer American. Get over it.

Great President I agree. The rest, you will have to show me some evidence. I have not seen any yet.

Considering we're talking about 150 years ago, I think any hard evidence is unlikely. The author lays out a strong circumstantial case, and certainly if a guy behaved today like Lincoln did then, he would be considered gay or bi. However, times were really different then, so it's hard to put things in context with any certainty. At the least though, I think there is ample evidence to make one wonder about Lincoln's sexual orientation and accept that he *might* have been gay/bi. Buchanan was from the same time frame, and historians generally consider him to have been gay. (He was the only unmarried president.) Perhaps same-sex relations were more socially acceptable in those days???

One can look at anyone in history and question their sexuality, does not mean they were gay. Jesus loved everyone, was he gay? Bi?

As hard as that may be to see, I'm beginning to agree. The historical information about both women and men in the past indicate society did not pry into the private sleeping arrangements of people nearly as much as they do now. What a hoot!?!

We have such a conservative reactionary christian orthodox society going for us right now - I'm wondering if future historians will be looking back at us and comparing us to the times of Victorian England, the Salem Witch Trials, or the Inquisition. I mean, except for the 1950's and 60's, I don't believe there's every been a harsher environment for the LGBTQ community in America.

As much as I like to view our modern day society as advanced, mature, willing to reach for the stars, I have to admit that there has been greater freedom and acceptance in other places and other times. In some ways, we are so behind the rest of the world - it's becoming embarrassing.

How long have you been waiting to plant this bombshell? This is a question designed to create controversy, divisiveness, and ugly emotional reactions. I, for one, will ignore it - as I hope everyone else will. The only reason for asking this question is to create chaos and spread hatred.

In the case of Lincoln, there's a lot more evidence than you would find on most historical figures. Not enough to absolutely *prove* it, but more than enough to raise questions. In the end, people will believe what they want to believe.

Nice way to avoid my point!!

What point? What point are you trying to make exactly? It seems you want me to concede that no one you don't already know about has ever been queer.

That's ridiculous. There are many people out there that you don't realize are LGBTQ. As a matter of fact, we have a higher percentage of high achievers precisely because we are gay. Just like left handers have a greater percentage of high achievers. Has to do with overcoming obstacles, coping with challenges, being adaptable.

I see your anger, but I don't understand it. What skin is it off your nose if Lincoln liked male company in bed better than female? Certainly didn't hold him back any as a leader of our nation. Perhaps it even helped. So what's your beef with the historians? Why do you have trouble accepting the original documents that have been discovered and researched? Do you always have this reaction to new discoveries about people in history?

I am not angry. I just require proof. So far no one has provided any evidence that Lincoln was gay, and I know that you can't. You cite original documents, well show me some. If someone is gay, I have no problem with that, but at least prove it.,

I think things are better than ever right now as far as being *out* and gay goes. (Well, unless maybe you want to go *waaay* back to some ancient civilizations.) But back in the old days (say 50+ years ago), people were much more willing just to look the other way and not worry about other people's business.

Nowadays, people have to know everything about everything. Just this week, look at the reports on Kerik's sexual exploits. Those would not have even been considered newsworthy 50 years ago, but a gross invasion of privacy.

If Lincoln was gay or bisexual, does it take away from his accomplishments? GWB could well have the same orientation - based on what I have read to date - and he is a total disaster.

Ernst Rohm, the leader of Hitler's SA (his brownshirts) was a homosexual. Hitler didn't fret much about it until the S.A. made it clear they wanted to usurp the Wehrmacht... "the Night of the Long-knives" followed soon thereafter.

I used to be very anti, but I now realise that the values and morays of society, allow the influential to manipulate those who are vulnerable, easy to pick on and set up for a fall. (Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie were very much involved in JFK's assassination. Guess what! They were both gay, as was Jack Ruby... (and J. Edgar Hoover!!!)

So orientation does not define good/evil/character... how others can play with it does.

His accomplishments were what they were, that does not matter. I am not gay, but I would not like to be considered gay by anyone. All I say is if Lincoln were gay, prove it.

I guess some people will be upset about it because Lincoln is an icon. Nobody seems to care that Buchanan was gay (he was a lousy president, too, sadly).

It'll be interesting to see what the reaction is to this book when it's released. I imagine it will be thoroughly trashed by the right. Yet, if there were this same evidence about FDR, they'd say he was queer in a heartbeat.

But unless some photos turn up of old Abe in a compromising position, I guess folks just won't be convinced

LeIbNiZ, by saying you're not gay, people might think you are! How many people have got married and had kids, just to prove they aren't gay?

I'm not gay either, but if I was, why not say so? As long as people believe they can be controlled by some sort of exposure, they will act out of fear, not what is right.

Finally, will proving Lincoln was a homo take away from his place in history? Every life is as unique as a fingerprint. Nowadays, I deal with people based on personal experience, not media-based stereotypes.

What business of ours is it whether Lincoln was gay or not? Will it make this a more powerful country if he had been gay? Will it teach the republicans something? I for one don't care who sleeps with who.

Well a Sophist can say whatever they want, does not make it so.

And since photos were rare and very constructed occasions - that's not going to happen. How convenient for the homophobes. If we can't absolutely PROVE it - it must NOT be true... And what's up with this "Bring me the truth," stuff? The documents are described in the books, but unless you read the books you're still unconvinced. And then, of course, truth becomes a lie if you simply refuse to read the evidence presented. That's the way Bushco manipulated this whole country - knowing most people are too intellectually lazy to do their own research, and they'll easily accept whatever is their personal 'fear factor'. Talk about solipsism.

And if the glove does not fit...you must acquit.

Why is it that people who so vehemently deny they are gay, will in the same breath state they are not anti-gay? LOL It's like they don't even realize that they're screaming, "It's a bad thing to be gay! I'm not gay! And neither is anyone else I admire!! You queers stop saying they are!!"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Found this on James Buchanan while doing a little Googling. Buchanan was the president right before Lincoln, and King was VP in the administration right before his.



Exerpts from James Loewen's book, ``Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong''


In life, Buchanan was not very far in the closet. For many years in Washington, he lived with William Rufus King, Senator from Alabama. The two men were inseparable; wags referred to them as "the Siamese twins." Andrew Jackson dubbed King "Miss Nancy," and Aaron Brown, a prominent Democrat, writing to Mrs. James K. Polk, referred to him as Buchanan's "better half," "his wife," and "Aunt Fancy . . . rigged out in her best clothes." When in 1844 King was appointed minister to France, he wrote Buchanan, "I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation." On May 13, Buchanan wrote to a Mrs. Roosevelt about his social life:

I am now "solitary and alone," having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

King and Buchanan's relationship, though interrupted from time to time by their foreign service, ended only with King's death in 1853. While Buchanan was born and raised in Pennsylvania, William Rufus King was a Southern slaveholder. Buchanan's pro-slavery politics may have stemmed in part from their 23-year connection. Buchanan certainly thought highly of King: "He is among the best, purest, and most consistent public men I have ever known, and is also a sound judging and discreet fellow," as well as a "very gay, elegant looking fellow."

I agree with several earlier posts that people in the past had more class than to pry into other peoples private lives!

Unfortunately with Calvanism tainting modern Christianity, AND the Global Village brought about by technology, the gossips, and voyeurs among us are given FAR too much attention!

What speaks volumes to me on this matter, is the allegations of omission by Lincoln's earlier biographers...

They were afraid to talk about it. Either because of the times they worked in, or because they were afraid of the intense criticism they would take.

Or maybe they just had too much class to pry into such a private subject! Why is that any more unlikely than any other reason?

A view from north of the border.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...tacodalogin=yes
==========================================

Dec. 23, 2004. 01:00 AM

And what's that stovepipe hat all about, anyway?


SLINGER

If Abraham Lincoln had been gay, would it have changed history?

Would he have emancipated the homosexuals instead of the slaves? But somebody would have come along sometime who would have given the slaves their freedom. They wouldn't still be slaves. Would they?

On the other hand, homosexuals still lack the full freedoms they claim as their entitlement in the country he was the 16th president of and under the party, the Republicans, he founded.

And what does it matter, anyway?

Here's what: Given today's obsession with finding a skeleton in every prominent closet, and even better, given the flavour of the times, one with a limp wrist, Lincoln's sexual inclinations are about to get a strenuous airing.

The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by a psychologist named C.A. Tripp will be published next month.

Tripp, who was gay and had once been a researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, subjected every word ever written by or about Lincoln to "minute analysis," according to the New York Times.

This left him with no choice but to conclude Lincoln was gay.

Not many men who become lightning rods, and whose private lives fly against the "normal" wind, escape the charge no matter how robust a family they father. There were rumours about Pierre Trudeau. Napoleon — those tiny hands, those elegant little feet. Was Josephine a beard? Why Churchill, with his silk underwear — Clementine was astonished, hers was plain cotton from Marks & Sparks — hasn't been outed is a mystery.

Maybe, as Tripp (now deceased) and others who buy into the Lincoln theory might suggest, it's been papered over, in the name of decency.

This historical speculation goes back to Lincoln's arrival as a beginning lawyer in Springfield, Ill. The only bed he could afford was in the room above the store belonging to Joshua Speed, general merchant. It happened to be the bed Speed himself slept in, and they slept in it together for four years.

Carl Sandburg, in his biography, heated the pot when he noted that in both Speed and Lincoln he detected "streaks of lavender."

One of the funniest scenes any historian ever painted is David Herbert Donald's description of the years Lincoln travelled with the Eighth Circuit Court. Inns were few and wretched and if two beds were available they counted themselves fortunate. David Davis, the esteemed judge, weighed 136 kilos (300 pounds, back then) — when he bought trousers, he wasn't measured, he was "surveyed" — so he got one to himself. The rest of the court, prosecutors, defenders, including Lincoln, and clerks, piled like sawed logs into the other.

One lawyer recalled that Lincoln's thighs were "as perfect as a human being's could be." Ooh! Neglecting to mention, as Lincoln would have, that the rest of his legs were perfect, too, reaching, as they did, all the way to the ground.

The plain fact is that on the frontier boys grew up sleeping in a heap of brothers and, often, male cousins. Anything else was abnormal. Cabins had no room for more beds.

As for his marriage, which Tripp leaps on as proof of less-than-hetero compatibility, anybody who could get along with Mary Todd to begin with had to be nuts. A shopaholic (the Lincolns were really poor), social-climbing snob with deeply held Southern sympathies, Lincoln's wife is one of the most difficult women history ever produced.

Mostly, though, there was the complete lack of subterfuge. Homosexuality was far from condoned, but Lincoln happily discussed the beds he shared and the men he shared them with; it made good jokes.

It's impossible to imagine the secessionists passing up an opportunity to accuse him of grotesque depravity.

His first presidential campaign was even nastier than the Bush-Kerry shambles we've just witnessed, and the worst thing anybody whispered about Lincoln was that he was — gasp! — a secret Catholic. If they'd had a love-that-dares-not-speak bombshell to hit him with, they would have, and there wouldn't be enough of him left to make a footnote.

By picking information carefully and editing it closely, we can make anybody look like anything. According to some assessments, Paul Martin is decisive and George W. Bush is smart. :o

Maybe Lincoln was gay. I'm okay with that. But since nobody pays much attention any more to "the better angels of our nature" that he called upon, I think it's worth offering, here on the threshold of 2005, a caveat: Let the reader (and TV viewer), as always, beware.

CSPAN2, 11:58AM ET this morning

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?
command=dprogram&record=181491688

Call-In
In Depth: Harold Holzer
C-SPAN
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 182110 - 06/06/2004 - 2:57 - $39.95

Holzer, Harold, Co-Chair, Lincoln (Abraham) Bicentennial Commission

Mr. Holzer participated in a three-hour discussion about his life and work. He responded to viewer telephone calls and electronic mail. A number of video clips and still pictures were shown throughout the program. Mr. Holzer is the author of more than twenty books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era. He is also the vice president for communications and marketing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Prior to joining the museum staff in 1992, Mr. Holzer worked as a weekly newspaper editor, a political campaign press secretary, a government speechwriter, and public affairs director for PBS station WNET. His 1993 appearance on Booknotes inspired C-SPAN's re-creation of all seven 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois in 1994. Mr. Holzer served as historical consultant and on-air commentator for the re-enactments.

This is a moot issue. Lincoln was a complex man who faced and managed one of the most difficult periods in our history. His sex life is so irrelevant as, IMHO, is that of anyone's in public office. Mary Todd Lincoln was not exactly a peach of a wife to deal with. She had mental problems (manic/depression) that were exacerbated by the illness/loss of her child. Anyway, as much as I can appreciate gays wanting a hero (and why not?), the debate here is difficult to "prove." I believe, actually, that we all have streaks of lavender in us. If we look to biology, we start out as androgynous creatures. So tolerance and understanding are what we should practice, not finger pointing.

I think it's all a crock. It's also not fair to spread rumors about someone who is dead and isn't around to give his side of the story. Flowery language was used back then by men, and they all wrote poetry too. You'd be surprised. They all went to church too, at lest the Catholics did, and Catholicism was different back then so don't anybody start saying they abused young kids then either.

I look forward to seeing what the book has to say (it hasn't been released yet; there have just been advance stories). Because of the long period of time that has passed, plus the differences in the times, I doubt that a definitive case can be made.

But even if there is no "proof," I think the book should be worthwhile. History is always worth another look, and it may provide valuable insights into Lincoln the man.

No!

It amazes me that quite a number of people react so vehemently to even the suggestion that Lincoln *might* have been gay. It is unlikely we will ever *know*, but what's wrong with just considering the evidence and the possibility? Would being gay diminish his stature and accomplishments? Perhaps we are not as open-minded as we think we are