After reading Larry Kramer's speech that I posted the other day, I started to research the rumors about Abe Lincoln being a "man's man." After reading lot of the evidence, It's pretty obvious to me that Abe liked men. Did he have sex with them? That's impossible to prove, but do you have to have gay sex to be considered gay, you be the judge?
It all began when Abe was still a teenager living in Kentucky, he caused a minor scandal with a poem about gay marriage. I can't imagine what the folks at church social had to say about this! Here's an excerpt:
"I will tell you a joke about Jewel and Mary
It is neither a Joke nor a Story
For Rubin and Charles has married two girls
But Billy has married a boy
The girlies had tried on every side
But none could he get to agree
All was in vain he went home again
And since that is married to Natty
So Billy and Natty agreed very well
And mama's please at the match"
Carl Sandburg was the first to put anything in writing that alluded to Lincoln's sexual preference.
Sandburg wrote of Lincoln's relationship with Joshua Fry Speed that it had "A streak of Lavender, and spots as May violets." Sanburg used such flowery language when outing and Lincoln and Speed!
Looking at this portrait of the young Joshua Fry Speed, all I have to say is, "You go Abe!"
I could go on and on about all of this, but I'm lazy and the author Keith Stern says it all so much more eloquently. This is a great read!
Keith
Stern, author of Queer History: The Comprehensive Encylopedia of Historical
Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals writes about Abraham Lincoln.
On April 15, 1837, an impoverished
Abraham Lincoln, twenty-eight years old, arrived in Springfield, Illinois to
set up his first law practice. One of his first stops was at the general
store, where he thought he might buy a bed. Standing behind the counter was a
twenty-two-year-old man, the shopkeeper Joshua Fry Speed. Speed totaled
up the cost of the bed, mattress, blankets, pillows etcetera to be a whopping
seventeen dollars. Well, that was a lot
of money back then and Abe simply didn’t have it. As Speed later recalled, when he looked
across the counter, "I never saw a sadder face." Lincoln asked if he might buy the bed on
credit.
But Joshua had a better idea. Taking Lincoln by the hand, he led him up the
steps to his living quarters above the store, showed him the small room with a
bed in the corner and said, “Why don’t you just sleep here with me.” And the two men continued to live and sleep
together for nearly four years in that bed in that room.
Some historians note that it was
common for men to share beds in those days, there was a shortage of beds. But they fail to recognize that many of those
men were also lovers.
It’s true, there was a shortage of
beds, and as men traveled around they might arrive at a roadside inn where
there was lack of space, so they might be forced to share a room or even a bed
with one or two other men. There were
many jokes about what went on in those shared beds too.
But it was unusual for two adult men
to happily sleep together at home for so long the way that Abe and Josh
did. And it’s not like Joshua Speed
couldn’t afford an extra bed--after all, he was a bed salesman! He was practically the Sealy Posturepedic of
Springfield, Illinois.
Nearly four years later, on January
1, 1841, Abe learned that Josh was leaving him and going back to his native
Kentucky. Abe was devastated and suffered symptoms of what today we would
call a nervous breakdown, an episode known to historians as Lincoln’s
"fatal first." January 1, 1841.
Well, New Year’s Day is not one of my favorites either. By
the way, there is not a shred of evidence to support the contention of some
historians that Lincoln also broke off an engagement with Mary Todd or suffered
any of the other myriad setbacks that some have postulated to explain what
upset him on that fateful day, other than the well-documented impending
separation from Speed.
Lincoln was depressed, perhaps even
suicidal, and wrote,
"I am now the most miserable
man living. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forbode I
shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears
to me.”
At that time, Lincoln was 31 and
Speed was 25, so this was no childhood phase.
As Abe grew older he continued to have intimate relationships with men.
Even as president, Lincoln formed a
close attachment to a soldier, Captain David V. Derickson, who was the
commander of his guards. In 1862 and 1863, they shared a bed in the White
House and a getaway cottage at the outskirts of town. Believe me, there were plenty of extra beds
in the White House.
Lincoln's same-sex relationships did
not go unnoticed by contemporaries and early biographers. Virginia Woodbury
Fox, a well-connected Washingtonian, wrote in an 1862 diary entry:
"Tish says, '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!"
Even thirty-three years later,
Thomas Chamberlain, one of Lincoln’s bodyguards, remembered the relationship of
the two men when he wrote a history of the regiment:
"Captain Derickson, in
particular, advanced so far in the President's confidence and esteem that, in
Mrs. Lincoln's absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping
in the same bed with him, and -- it is said -- making use of His Excellency's
night-shirt!”
Scandalous stuff. Some historians like to say these observers
were not implying a sexual relationship, only that the two men were good
friends, and it was perhaps slightly improper for a common soldier to become so
close to the President. But the fact
that people of the time invariably noted the men slept together only when Mrs.
Lincoln was not around, indicates to me that they had an inkling what was going
on -- they were aware that the relationship was somehow hidden from and perhaps
a substitute for Lincoln’s terrible marriage to Mary Todd.
One of the more notable aspects of
Lincoln's personality was his discretion. He maintained an air of
mystery, even secrecy, such that no one ever claimed to know what he was really
thinking. On the other hand, he felt compelled to know every detail about
the circumstances surrounding him. These traits, which may have been
related to his need to hide his sexual orientation, served him well as the
hands-on commander-in-chief during the Civil War.
We will likely never know for sure if
Abraham Lincoln had sexual relations with those men. But it seems clear
he had a passionate desire for intimacy with men to an extent that attracted
notice among the people who knew him.
No comments:
Post a Comment