Of all the founding fathers of the United States and all the great political figures of America, there are very few as emulated, celebrated, revered, and studied than Abraham Lincoln. No single president, celebrity, or statesman has had as many books, lectures, articles, stories, biographies written about them, and historical documentation as the 16th president. One of the greatest orators and writers of his day, much of what we know about Honest Abe was written in his own hand. Yet, a lot of mystery surrounds his personal life, including his relationships. Despite his being married to a woman and producing offspring, numerous scholars and historians question Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality—even to this day.
Before the facts are even discussed, on the one hand, the LGBT community has a personal vested interest in Abraham Lincoln being gay or bisexual, because a leader/founding father with as much clout and respect as Lincoln being bisexual helps normalize LGBT people to the heterosexual majority. The overall idea that an American so revered and respected by an entire nation could be LGBT is a concept the community would love to prove, as a result. As one of the great civil rights movements of the day, the LGBT rights movement could point to Lincoln as being another member of the LGBT minority that has greatly contributed to the United States and western society as we know it.
At the same time, there are a group of scholars who refuse to accept the other side’s argument and conclude that there is no conceivable way the 16th President of the United States could have had any homosexual experiences or tendencies, whatsoever. These researchers have concluded that any and all research and evidence pointing towards a question of Lincoln’s sexuality is entirely hearsay and biased towards the other side’s agenda. Whether they are letting religion or feelings get in the way of their judgement remains to be seen. Just as there are members of the queer community with an agenda of wanting Lincoln to be gay, there are certainly homophobic members of the community who simply just can’t stand the thought of anyone gay being one of, if not THE, best president the United States has ever seen.
Then, there are those who just don’t know and conclude that no one may ever know the truth, considering it has already been 150 years since Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and death. There are no longer any eye witnesses alive and only minimal evidence is left to validate the first two side’s arguments. Can it really be proven conclusively either way whether Lincoln was gay or not?
There needs to be a generalized consensus that there are more than two sides to the Lincoln’s Sexuality question and the reality that each has their own interests and realities at heart. Each feels their constructs and perceptions of truth will be tarnished with the acceptance of a differing opinion, so neither side has been apt to giving up their own arguments or accepting the stances of their various rivals on the subject.
It is important to proceed with an open mind, the realizations that Lincoln lived in a different time and era, and the idea that nothing you read should tarnish the reputation of the Great Emancipator. Abraham Lincoln was still vehemently against slavery, as we know from his letters. He was elected president at a time when our nation was so divided that it split in two. Lincoln saw the nation through its worst war in its history. His push to pass the 13th Amendment permanently ended slavery in the United States. His Gettysburg Address is one of the greatest speeches ever written. No matter who or what Abraham Lincoln did in his personal, romantic life doesn’t detract from the fact that he was an extraordinary leader and human being.
Some of the biggest claims of Abraham Lincoln’s homosexuality came from a book published posthumously and written by Clarence Arthur Tripp: The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. A protégé and researcher for Alfred Kinsey (Kinsey Report author and Institute for Sex Research Center founder), C.A. Tripp was also an American writer and psychologist. Tripp based most of his findings directly from the words of Abraham Lincoln himself, personal researching and surveying he performed with Kinsey, and from those accounts from people who were Lincoln’s contemporaries at the time.
Tripp, being the former Kinseyite that he was, had witnessed enough interviews of young men and conducted valid research amounts to have formed the opinion that Abraham Lincoln had reached puberty at a younger age than his contemporaries and this was one of the indicators, according to him, that marked that Lincoln was a homosexual. Through detailed surveying of male sexuality, Kinsey found that men with homosexual tendencies often peaked in puberty sooner than those who had never revealed they had a gay experience. Among his evidence, Tripp sited Lincoln’s height as proof of an early onset puberty.
The first assertions of Lincoln’s sexuality by Tripp arise when Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois at 22 in 1831. Lincoln befriended a man by the name of Billy Greene, who he met in New Salem, and started receiving grammar lessons from Greene. The two shared a narrow bed between them for potentially several years. In interviews conducted by long time Lincoln friend and law partner William Herndon after Lincoln’s murder, Greene spoke of how small the bed he shared with Lincoln actually was: "When one turned over the other had to do likewise.” Another revealing item came from Greene’s recanting details about Lincoln’s physique: “His thighs were as perfect as a human being could be." Was this simple recollection, or do these details elude to Greene being in a more intimate relationship with Lincoln?
Most of the homosexual claims made by Tripp come from the fact that Lincoln shared a double bed with his close and lifelong friend, Joshua Speed, for nearly four years, in Springfield, Illinois. In historian Ronald C. White Jr.’s A. Lincoln: A Biography, he recalls the moment Lincoln met Speed and how he ended up boarding with him. A penniless Lincoln had come to Springfield to begin his law practice and stopped at his previous employer, Abner Ellis’, general store upon arrival into town. There he asked a young Joshua F. Speed, a clerk and one of the proprietors of the store, for some bedding and a mattress. Unable to afford the $17 for the gear, Lincoln asked Speed for a credited loan. Feeling sorry for Lincoln, Speed reportedly said:
“The contraction of so small a debt, seems to affect you so deeply, I think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end, without incurring any debt. I have a very large room, and a very large double-bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.”
Though Speed knew who Lincoln was and had heard him previously speak at a candidate’s debate the previous year, the two had never met and Joshua Speed had no other reason to offer Lincoln free accommodation other than out of sympathy—or interest. It has never been uncovered whether or not Lincoln actually ever paid Speed for the accommodation for the four years they shared a bed. Could this further allude to a deeper, possibly borderline homosexual relationship between the two men? Why would either man be OK with this arrangement if there was nothing going on between the two of them?
Joshua Speed would remain one of Abraham Lincoln’s closest, if not best, friend for the remainder of his life. The two exchanged letters throughout the entire course of their lives and friendship, and Lincoln would virtually always sign letters to his friend “your friend forever.” Though, at times, the two were political opponents—Lincoln opposed slavery and Speed, a slave owner, was against full emancipation, they respected one another deeply, with Speed commenting on his affection for the then President. Both Lincoln biographers John Hay and John G. Nicolay agreed that Speed was “the only—as he was certainly the last—intimate friend that Lincoln ever had.”
“Now for me to have lived to see such a man rise from point to point, and from place to place, filling all the places to which he was called, with honor and distinction, until he reached the presidency, filling the presidential chair in the most trying times that any ruler ever had, seems to me more like fiction than fact. None but a genius like his could have accomplished so much, and none but a government like ours could produce such a man. It gave the young eagle scope for his wing. He tried it and soared to the top!”
Historian Charles B. Strozier, in his book Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed, believed that Joshua Speed was the closest friend Lincoln ever had. Even Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham’s oldest son, acknowledged and agreed with these sentiments that Speed was “the most intimate friend his father had ever had.” Joseph Gillespie, a long time Lincoln friend, once wrote that Joshua Speed “had more influence with the president than any living being.” David Herbert Donald, Lincoln historian and author of the book Lincoln, argued that it helped serve Lincoln having a “close, trusted friend like Speed as his confidant and advisor in Washington.” Their relationship was so close, so intimate, that several letters Lincoln wrote to speed after 1842 are signed by Lincoln: “Yours forever.” Lincoln signed his correspondence to nearly a half-dozen close friends that were men in this exact same way: “Yours forever”.
Abraham Lincoln, himself wrote to Speed acknowledging his affections for his friend Speed and indicated something more than just a friendship was present in 1842: “You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting—that I will never cease, while I know how to do anything. I regret to learn that you have resolved to not return to Illinois. I shall be very lonesome without you. How Miserably things seem to be arranged in this world. If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.”
Could two men who shared the same bed for four years not have at least had some kind of relations between the two? Charles B Strozier seems to think there could have been a possibility of elevated intimacy between the pair, considering how small beds were during the time of Lincoln and how large the two men were that shared it:
“In fact, there in that creaking bed together for nearly four years, there had to have been occasional touching, a rolling over in a dream, a tossed arm, a cramped leg jerking about, that introduced a familiar intimacy between them much greater than either man experienced in their wide circle ok friends in the store, on the circuit, in politics, or socializing at the Edwards house on “Quality Hill.”
Other bits of evidence also come straight from the pen of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was known for having a great sense of humor and was an established writer, even in his youth. At 20 years old, in 1829, Lincoln wrote a poem that has historians arguing its true meaning. Most agree that the poem serves as somewhat of a rebuttal for not being invited to a wedding or just simply a silly ridden meant to invoke laughter. But historians also attribute the poem as being the first reference of same-sex marriage in the United States.
“I will tell you a joke about Jewel and Mary
It is neither a joke nor a story.
For Reuben and Charles has married two girls,
But Billy has married a boy.
The girls he had tried on every side,
But none he could get to agree;
All was in vain, he went home again,
And since that he’s married to Natty.
So, Billy and Natty agreed very well
And mama’s well pleased at the match
The egg it is laid but Natty’s afraid
The shell is soft that it will never hatch
But Betsy she said you cursed bald head
My suitor you never can be
Beside your low crotch proclaims you a botch
And that never can answer for me.”
Was the poem simply a joke, or was there more of an implication that Lincoln is speaking from some kind of personal experience? Lincoln was known to friends, family, and the circles he ran in to have a hardy sense of humor. In the first line, he tells the audience the whole thing is a joke, then recants the tale as neither a story or a joke. Did Lincoln simply just have a wild imagination in which he could imagine homosexual marriages 150 years before any had actually taken place? Is this just a sing-songy poem to tickle the fancies of an audience looking for something abstract?
Or is this published poem an indication of Abraham Lincoln’s sexual proclivities? Or is there some hidden message meant to surface out of this published poem by Lincoln as a young man? We may never truly know the answer. What should be noted is the puritanical society in which Lincoln lived and that such mention of two men in relations with one another wouldn’t have been received well in a different context other than apparent humor. This poem was most likely dismissed by the society around Lincoln as merely something to make everything laugh.
“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.” This statement, written by Abraham Lincoln, was published in 1834 in the Sangamo Journey and circulated by Lincoln himself in the form of a handbill.
Lincoln historian and writer Carl Sandburg authored a Lincoln biography and painted the relationship between Joshua Speed and Abraham Lincoln as being something more than your typical friendship, even for the day’s standards. In 1926, Sandburg described the “bromance” between the two as having “a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets.” As one of the earliest biographers of the 16th president, was Sandburg alluding to Lincoln’s sexuality and a deeper relationship with Speed than had previously been thought, without black and white pointing out that he assumed they shared more than a friendship?
In his 1995 biography titled simply, Lincoln, David Herbert Donald took note of Abraham Lincoln’s anxiety in wedding Mary Todd, a woman Lincoln had already been engaged to, then called off. He wrote Speed articulating this stress in a letter to his friend, and later said he was going “to Hell, I suppose” in regards marrying Mary Todd. Joshua Speed and Lincoln stayed in touch after their weddings and into Lincoln’s presidency. Even after his death, Lincoln’s best friend, Speed, still held the deceased president in the highest regard:
“Mr. Lincoln was then…a lawyer without a client, no money, all his earthly wealth consisting of the clothes he wore and the contents of his saddlebags. For me to have seen him rise from this humble position, step by step, till he reached the Presidency—holding the reins of government in as trying times as any government ever had—accomplishing more during the four years of his administration than any man had ever done—keeping the peace with all the foreign nations under most trying circumstances—putting down the most gigantic rebellion ever known—assassinated at 56 years of age—borne to his final resting place in Illinois, amid the tears of the nation and of the civilized world, and even his former foes in arms acknowledging they had lost their best friend—seems more like a fable than fact.”
Speed later told a biographer: “Til 1842, no two men were ever more intimate. Our friendship and intimacy closed only with his life.” Lincoln apparently fell into a deep depression during the summer of 1841 when he was to have wed Mary and Joshua Speed wed and moved to Kentucky. Was this a result of his failed engagement? Or was Lincoln depressed about his friend, confident, and potential lover leaving the life they knew together, forever?
Revered American author and writer Gore Vidal, known for his historical novel entitled Lincoln: A Novel that was part of his Narratives of Empire series, gave his own opinion of C.A. Tripp’s views of Lincoln’s supposed bisexuality in The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. In this article, written for Vanity Fair, Vidal was questioning not Lincoln’s homosexuality, but rather was asking for proof of Lincoln’s heterosexuality in his Vanity Fair article in 2005:
“But more to the point, Tripp notes that although Lincoln was plainly bisexual, as demonstrated by the four children that he had with his wife, there is practically no other compelling record of his heterosexuality. There are no girlfriends in youth. Ann Rutledge (the great love that ended in her tragic death, which he forever mourned) proves to have been an invention of his law partner William Herndon, who, perhaps suspecting that the man he had practiced law with for 16 years had remained “uncomfortable” with women all his life and so needed some beefing up in the boy-girl department. In Tripp’s reconstruction of the intimate Lincoln, the fascinating discovery is not the many details about Lincoln’s homosexual side as the fact that he had, marriage to one side, so very little heterosexual side.”
In the book Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln, author Douglas L. Wilson notes that many of Lincoln’s contemporaries in his youth in Springfield, Illinois, commented on Lincoln’s lack of overall interest in women. Lincoln’s own step-mother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, once told William Herndon, Lincoln’s life-long law partner: "He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me." In an interview by Herndon conducted after Lincoln’s death with David Turnham, a neighbor and close friend, Turnham revealed: “Abe Lincoln—was not fond of the girls.” Joseph C. Richardson, another Springfield era Lincoln contemporary seemed to agree with Turnham’s statements, stating that Lincoln “never seemed to care for the girls.”
A fellow classmate and eligible bachelorette, Anna Caroline Gentry said this of Abraham Lincoln: “(he) did not go much with the girls—didn’t like crowds—didn’t like girls much—too frivolous.” When Lincoln moved to Salem, Illinois at 22, he carried with him a similar reputation. Once in conversation with N.W. Branson after the assassination, Lincoln’s good friend and confident revealed: “He didn’t go to see the girls much. He didn’t appear bashful, but it seemed as if he cared but little for them. Wasn’t apt to take liberties with them, but would sometimes. He always liked lively, jovial company, where there was plenty of fun and no drunkenness, and would just as leave the company were all men as to have it a mixture of the sexes.”
Douglas Wilson further documents a quote from A.Y. Ellis to Herndon, for whom Lincoln used to help out in his country mart. “He also used to assist me in the store on busy days, but he always disliked to wait on the ladies…he preferred trading with the men and boys as he used to say…I also remember that Mr. Lincoln was in those days a very shy man of ladies—On one occasion while we boarded at this tavern there came a family containing an old lady, her son, and three stylish daughters from the state of Virginia and stopped there for 2 to 3 weeks. And during their stay, I do not remember of Mr. Lincoln ever eating at the same table when they did. I then thought it was on account of his awkward appearance and waring apparel.”
In his 2005 New York Times article Was Lincoln Gay, writer Richard Brookhiser remarks on the two men Tripp mentions during the Lincoln Presidency who stand out as potential male love interests for the president: “Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was a flashy young drillmaster, "the greatest little man I ever met," as Lincoln put it. Lincoln recruited him to his Springfield law office, made him part of his presidential campaign and gave him a high military post as war loomed. A few weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter, Ellsworth was killed hauling a rebel flag down from a hotel in Alexandria, Va. Lincoln was shattered.”
Tripp also concluded in his book that Abraham Lincoln also had a homosexual relationship with fellow attorney Henry Clay Whitney. With limited correspondence between the two men still available today, Tripp concluded this information from a single statement made by Cook about Lincoln’s persuasiveness, saying Lincoln: “Wooed me to close intimacy and familiarity.”
Next, come the rumors about Lincoln’s supposed affair with his bodyguard, Bucktail Brigade Captain David Derickson. From 1862- 1863, while Mary Todd Lincoln was away, the then President Lincoln shared a bed with and grew exceptionally close with his personal body guard, Captain Derickson. According to an account written in 1895 by Lincoln friend and contemporary Thomas Chamberlain in his book, History of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, Second Regiment from a regimental history written by one of Derickson’s fellow officers:
“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!”
Whatever their relationship really was and whether or not the captain ever actually slept in Lincoln’s shirt will most likely be lost in the folklore surrounding the often mysteriously private president. But the rumors still exist to this day that Lincoln apparently slept in the same bed with his bodyguard, as president, while Mary Todd Lincoln was away. Later, David Derickson was promoted and transferred away from his position guarding the president in mid 1863. However, the two were so close at one point that it drew rumors in the high society circles in Washington that the Lincolns ran in.
Friend of the Lincoln Family and Washington socialite Virginia Woodbury Fox wrote an entry into her diary revealing some of the intimacy Lincoln shared with soldier and personal military guard Bucktail Captain David V. Derickson:
“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!”
Apparently while Mrs. Lincoln was off visiting their eldest son off at university, Abraham Lincoln, then president of the United States, was supposedly bed sharing and sleeping in the same bed as his body guard. From 1862-1863, for eight months, Captain Derickson and Lincoln potentially shared a bed. For how many nights, for how long, and if this is actually true, might never be known.
Richard Stockton, historian and Lincoln researcher, virtually excuses Joshua Speed and Lincoln’s bed sharing as a necessity at a time when Lincoln had very little money and few options for lodging. At the same time, he questions why the President of the United States would choose to sleep with his body guard when Lincoln could have slept in any room or any way he wanted, in his article Was Abraham Lincoln Our First Gay President:
“Sharing a bed with a dashing young soldier, however, is a somewhat different matter when you’re the President of the United States, and you can presumably sleep however you want. While Lincoln’s arrangements with Joshua Speed are understandable, his arrangement with Captain Derickson is harder to hand-wave away.”
Why would the president of the United States have any need to share a bed with anyone other than his wife when she was away? Though this wouldn’t have been uncommon for someone of lesser stature and with less money, Lincoln was the leader of the country, and one would think there wouldn’t be any need for the president to share a bed with anyone to keep warm, for example. Maybe because he was raised poor and had slept in beds with men his whole life, did he feel more comfortable with a male counterpart lying next to him when Mary was out of town. Or maybe he had an affinity for Derickson beyond that of bodyguard and person of power.
Writer and researcher Martin P. Johnson, in his article Did Abraham Lincoln Sleep with his Bodyguard? Another Look at the Evidence brings up the fact that both Lincoln and Derickson had a pen pal relationship and even helped one another advance in their careers:
“In a note of November 1, 1862, Lincoln intervened to keep Derickson and the 150th as his guard company when there was some question the unit would be transferred. In April 1862 Derickson was appointed, no doubt with Lincoln's help, the provost marshal for his home district in Pennsylvania, a position for which he was well qualified, having been an assistant U. S. marshal there before the war. In June, Derickson informed Lincoln with pride that he had been unanimously elected to be a delegate to the Baltimore convention that would nominate Lincoln for re-election, "for which compliment I am indebted to the fact that I was known to be your warm friend more than my own personal popularity." Derickson added that "It would give me much pleasure to be present and vote for your renomination."
While either of these bits of “evidence” could be dismissed as simply hearsay and or correspondence between friends, the fact that these exist at least elude to the reality that Lincoln and Derickson did have a rapport and the president probably did sleep with his bodyguard whom he shared a close relationship. And that information was circulating around in wartime Washington during Lincoln’s tenure as president. In his chronicling of Lincoln’s life, Chamberlin wrote:
"Captains Derickson and Crotzer were shortly on a footing of such marked friendship with him [Lincoln], that they were often summoned to the dinner or breakfast at the Presidential board." Then occurs the key sentence beginning, "Captain Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the President's confidence and esteem.”
Stockton goes on in his 2016 article to justify his claim of Lincoln’s potential homosexuality by pointing out the 16th president’s writing styles in regards men versus women:
“Lincoln wrote about women in a cool, detached tone, as if he were a biologist describing a not-particularly interesting species he’d discovered, but he often wrote about men he’d known in a warm, engaging tone that modern readers would take as a sign of great affection. It has to be noted, however, that Lincoln wrote like this even about men he personally and politically detested. On at least one occasion, he even described Stephen Douglas – who was not just a political rival, but also a former suitor of Mary Todd – as a personal friend.”
In an article for The Claremont Institute, The Lincoln Bedroom, scholar Edward Steers, Jr. seems to think that most of the accounts logged by Tripp are true, but that doesn’t necessarily point towards Lincoln being homosexual—nor completely heterosexual.
“And like the tail-spinners, there is just enough verisimilitude in Tripp's evidence to keep the head of his argument from sinking under the weight of its own flummery. There is, for example, sufficient evidence to believe that Lincoln's marriage to Mary Todd had difficult moments. That Lincoln was attracted to young, handsome Elmer Ellsworth and aided his career at every turn is true. That Lincoln slept for four years in the same bed with his best friend Joshua Speed is true. That he invited a young Captain of his guard, David Derickson, to share his bed at the Soldiers' Home when Mary Lincoln was away is also true. Those are the facts.”
Even highly-regarded Lincoln historian and popular 16th president biographer Carl Sandburg remarked that Abraham Lincoln had “streaks of lavender and spots soft as May violets”. Was this the author’s way of informing his audience that he suspected The Great Emancipator was homosexual? Or was this just a commentary on the soft-spoken demeanor of the Man of the People?
What does any of this mean? Is all of this purely inferred information? In the eyes of C.A. Tripp and several other historians and researchers, all of the letters to Speed, the sleeping in bed with at least three different men for lengthy amounts of time throughout his life, the disliking waiting on/serving women, his admission to wanting the respect of men, his cool candor with women, his stepmother’s admittance that her step son never favored females, his claims of intimacy with Speed, his signing of “yours forever” to only male friends through correspondence…Does all of this really conclusively dictate that Lincoln had homosexual tendencies or just an overall affinity for men and his male friends?
While there is a decent bit of information out there to potentially support a claim that Lincoln could have had bisexual or homosexual tendencies, there are just as many items of proof that lean towards other conclusions about the 16th President. Are experts ignoring the facts or basing their reviews on bias? There is ample amount of circumstantial evidence that could lead one to believing the 16th president wasn’t completely straight. But is there just as much proof to indicate that Lincoln didn’t have a queer bone in his body?
Naysayers of Lincoln’s supposed homosexuality or bisexuality point to the heterosexual evidence jugular: Lincoln was married and produced several offspring. Each of the men that Lincoln shared a bed with in his lifetime also wed and had numerous children. Obviously, reproducing is not left up entirely to heterosexuals now in our day and age. And wedding and baring children does indicate some level of heteronormative behavior. Mary Todd Lincoln, after all, gave birth just nine months after wedding Abraham Lincoln to their oldest son. Could such an immediate pregnancy indicate a strong relationship in the bedroom with Lincoln and his wife?
Lincoln experts and researchers opposed to the idea that Lincoln was anything but heterosexual note that most of the evidence for crediting Lincoln homosexual lie in circumstance and a misunderstanding of the times of Abraham Lincoln. Writer David Greenberg, in a criticism of C.A. Tripp’s The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, quotes Princeton historian Christine Stansell’s review of the book in a 2005 article for Slate:
"Travelers piled in with each other at inns; siblings routinely shared beds; women friends often slept with each other as readily on an overnight visit as they took their tea together in the kitchen—and sometimes displaced husbands to do so. Civil War soldiers 'spooned' for comfort and warmth."
Researcher and historian Richard Stockton seems to agree with this sentiment, dismissing the homosexual Lincoln claims as purely speculative and a misinterpretation of the times in which Lincoln lived. As published in his article: Was Abraham Lincoln Our First Gay President?, Stockton feels Abraham Lincoln’s history is being re-written by scholars with agendas.
“In the 21st century, it’s really tempting to read a lot into the private life of Abraham Lincoln. For many years, a kind of gay-revisionist history has been written, in which this or that historical figure is held up to intense scholarly scrutiny and declared by one activist historian or another to have been gay, transgendered, or bisexual.”
Some of this is completely fair: The true history of non-heterosexual lifestyles in Western societies is distorted by the draconian punishments that used to be inflicted on gender nonconformists. It’s inevitable that virtually all of the prominent homosexuals of the Victorian Age would go to extreme lengths to keep their affairs as private as possible, and this makes honest scholarship on the subject challenging at best. Today, an invitation from one man to another to live and sleep together would almost inevitably be assumed to be homosexual in nature.
In frontier-era Illinois, however, nobody gave a second thought to two young bachelors sleeping together. It’s obvious to us today that such a sleeping arrangement would lend itself to sexual relations, but shared sleeping was perfectly unremarkable in that time and place.”
Richard Brookhiser argues this point further, denying the claims that Lincoln was homosexual and, instead, pointing to various “proofs” of the 16th president’s heterosexuality and the men in his life:
“What does it mean to be homosexual? Not all of the men Lincoln admired were. Ellsworth seems straight as a ruler: he was engaged to a woman he passionately loved when he died. Even Derickson married twice and fathered 10 children (one son was serving in his unit while he was sleeping with Lincoln). Tripp argues that a cultural innocence -- the word "homosexual" had not yet been coined -- allowed acts of physical closeness between men that had no deeper meaning, as well as acts that did but could escape scrutiny. We know more than our ancestors, and our reward is that, in some ways, we may do less. In any case, on the evidence before us, Lincoln loved men, at least some of whom loved him back. Their words tell us more than their sleeping arrangements.”
Jean H. Baker, historian and biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln and author of the book Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography describes the relationship between Lincoln and his wife as "bound together by three strong bonds—sex, parenting and politics". And while she hints that she, too, feels that Abraham Lincoln was at least somewhat bisexual, she concedes that Tripp’s analysis of the situation may have been tainted by his own bias:
“Kinsey’s figures on the pervasiveness of the homosexual experiences of men dazzled the ever-inquisitive Tripp.”
To add further scrutiny to the argument, Martin P. Johnson seems to think the two sides of the Derickson story come from the same source: a Thomas Chamberlin who was part of the regiment that guarded Lincoln. If Chamberlin is the same source from whence the information came from, this could indicate that the gossip of Lincoln sharing a bed with his bodyguard completely hearsay:
“There is a remarkable congruity between these two quite different sources, one a contemporary private diary, the other a public history written thirty years later. The most likely explanation is that the two accounts are not independent but are in fact related. In that case, there are two possibilities: either Chamberlin knew of the Fox diary, or the two sources share the same source.”
If the information of Lincoln and Derickson’s bed-sharing came solely from one source or person, then is it possible that the story was only a rumor and that it didn’t happen at all? Or if it did happen, that there could be more sides to that story? The tale was enough to travel the rumor mills around Washington at the time. Could Lincoln’s intimate relationship with his bodyguard have all been made up to trash the president’s reputation?
Martin P. Johnson seems to believe that there is a possibility that the two did, Lincoln and Derickson, actually did sleep together in the same bed, but that this was certainly not indicative of sexual relations between the president and his guard. He argued further that none of the evidence involving Derickson and Lincoln is indicative of a sexual relationship, but that their bed sharing simply points to the two men being close to one another. He doesn’t seem to think much of their intimacy other than it being familial.
“Matthew Pinsker has emphasized that there was no doubt a "special relationship" between Lincoln and Derickson but argues that it was not sexual. David Donald agrees, explaining the unusual bond between the men by noting that "for Lincoln, this was the loneliest period of the war." Jean Baker is perhaps the most respected Lincolnist to accept a fully sexual dimension to the men's friendship, while Charles Strozier has strongly argued against any homosexual aspects of their relationship. The illustrious Lincolnists who participated in a symposium on Tripp's book at the Claremont Institute (after its publication and the death of its author) all rejected Tripp's argument, but while several denied that Lincoln and Speed were lovers, they did not mention the Derickson story. Others accepted the evidence that the men slept together but denied that this entailed any homosexual activity. There seems little chance of a conclusive end to this debate so long as it is confined to interpreting the meaning of the two key accounts depicting Lincoln and Derickson in the same bed.”
While there were accounts by Lincoln’s friends alluding to his homosexuality, there was just as much testimony pointing to the opposite. Lincoln knew a lot of people, yet was very private with his personal life. He kept his small group of close-knit friends and allies near to him, either via letter or in person. In Douglas L Wilson’s Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln, he reveals, through his own interpretation of letters and writing from the day, that Lincoln may have been somewhat of a lady’s man of the day.
“Lincoln’s close friend Jack Armstrong once joked to Herndon about Abraham Lincoln’s close relationship with Mrs. Armstrong, Hannah, saying Abraham’s son came from Mrs. Armstrong—a jest Lincoln didn’t much care for. Hannah Armstrong had her own testimony to Herndon after Lincoln’s death: “A few days before Mr. Lincoln left for Washington I went to see him—was a widow—the boys got up the story on me that I went to get to sleep with Abe. I replied to the joke that it was not every woman who had the good fortune and high honor of sleeping with a president. This stopped the sport—cut it short.”
During his time in New Salem, it was rumored that Abraham Lincoln had fathered an illegitimate child to Elizabeth Abell. In an interview conducted by John G. Nicolay, William Butler confessed: “He (Lincoln) boarded with Mrs. Abell. She washed for him and he generally lived there in a sort of intimacy.” It didn’t help detract from the rumors the fact that Elizabeth Abell’s daughter would eventually closely resemble Abraham Lincoln. The Abell’s remained close with Lincoln throughout his time in New Salem.
In his book A. Lincoln: A Biography, historian Ronald C. White Jr. wrote of one of Abraham Lincoln and his future wife’s first meetings, highlighting the special bond that Mary Todd Lincoln and Abraham shared with one another in courting and through their inevitable marriage:
“Lincoln disliked dancing, but perhaps he could not resist asking this good-looking, witty young woman. ‘Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way,’ Lincoln said. Later, Mary, with a mischievous smile, recounted the dance to her cousin Elizabeth, saying, ‘And he certainly did.’ There were other, deeper differences, yet to be discovered in this oddly matched couple. But in many ways, they were alike. Both prized education and had worked hard to achieve it. In Mary, Lincoln recognized a soul mate in intellectual curiosity and learning. Lincoln’s courtship of Mary was a romance of the mind as well of the heart. Their mutual enjoyment of ideas and politics put Abraham at ease. They both loved poetry, especially that of Robert Burns, and enjoyed reading aloud to each other.”
The supposed relationship Abraham Lincoln had with Derickson argument could be countered with the mere fact that Derickson was married twice and had a total of 10 children, an obvious display of heterosexuality. Could Derickson have been bisexual? What is known is that Lincoln and Derickson had an affinity for one another for a brief bit of time when Lincoln was in office. That is all. Lincoln’s first-born son came just nine months after wedding Mary and he go on to father three more children with his wife—If there was any greater indication that the sixteenth president was heterosexual
Was Abraham Lincoln homosexual or even bi-sexual? Do a series of coincidences, writings, and nuances from the day simply indicate that he had treasured friendships with men he valued as people he loved and cherished? Or does the ambiguity of sexuality of the day compared to what it means to be homosexual in today’s society differ so much that Lincoln very well could have simply been completely heterosexual even though he possibly might have had a few homosexual relations?
In the words of Gore Vidal from his 2005 Vanity Fair article: “What did sex have to do with his conduct of the Civil War, the emancipation of slaves?” Does it or should it really matter if Lincoln was gay, straight, bi, or something in between when there is little evidence to overtly say one way or another? The 16th president wrote more than any president in US history, yet still little is known about his personal life. Abraham Lincoln, even in the eyes of his law partner and friend Charles Herndon, was: "a profound mystery--an enigma--a sphinx--a riddle … incommunicative--silent--reticent--secretive--having profound policies--and well laid--deeply studied plans."
At the end of the day, Abraham Lincoln was possibly the greatest United States president. He was a complex man dealing with the separation of the nation, the ending of slavery, and the bloodiest war in American history. Unless more concrete evidence surfaces, the reality is that the sexuality of the 16th president will no doubt be debated for a long time to come.
In the end, we may never know if Abraham Lincoln actually had intimate sexual relations with other men. There just isn’t enough solid proof indicating nor negating the theory that Abraham Lincoln was LGBT, in the construct as we know it today. What we do know, for fact, is that Abraham Lincoln was married, produced offspring, and also shared a bed for other men for lengthy amounts of time throughout his life, while this was not at all out of the ordinary for the era for two heterosexual men to share such tight quarters without sexual contact. Whatever Abraham Lincoln’s true sexuality was may be lost with him and the people closest to. Whether the 16th president was gay, bisexual, pansexual, sexually fluid, or 100% “straight” it shouldn’t really matter with regards to discussing the impact of his president and his role in preserving the United States.
