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==Historical scholarship and debate== ==Historical scholarship and debate==
===Suggestions of homosexuality or bisexuality===
Commentary on President ]'s sexuality has been documented since the early 20th century. Attention to the sexuality of public figures has been heightened since the gay rights movement in the late 20th century. In his 1926 biography of Lincoln, ] alluded to the early relationship of Lincoln and his friend ] as having "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets". "Streak of ]" was period typical slang for an ] man, and later connoted homosexuality.<ref name=Pollock1935>A. J. Pollock, ''Underworld Speaks'' (1935) p 115/2, cited in ''Oxford English Dictionary.''</ref> Sandburg did not elaborate on this comment.<ref name=Nobile>Philip Nobile, ", ''GMU History News Network'', June 2001</ref>

In 1999, playwright and activist ] claimed that he had uncovered previously unknown documents while conducting research for his work-in-progress, ''The American People: A History''.<ref name=Nuremberg>Kramer, Larry. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110725041539/http://www.glreview.com/issues/13.5/13.5-kramer.php |date=2011-07-25 }}, ''The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide''. September–October 2006.</ref> Some were allegedly found hidden in the floorboards of the old store once shared by Lincoln and ]. The documents reportedly provide explicit details of a relationship between Lincoln and Speed, and currently reside in a private collection in ].<ref name=Lloyd1999>Carol Lloyd , ''Salon'' Ivory Tower May 3, 1999</ref> Their authenticity, however, has been called into question by historians such as ], who wrote, "Almost certainly this is a hoax."<ref name=Boritt2001>Gabor Boritt, ''The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon'', Oxford University Press, 2001, p.xiv.</ref> ] also expressed his 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."<ref name=Tripp2005>C.A. Tripp, ''The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln'', pg xxx, Free Press, 2005 {{ISBN|0-7432-6639-0}}</ref>

In 2005, C. A. Tripp's book, ''The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln'', was posthumously published. Tripp was a sex researcher, a protégé of ], and was gay. He began writing ''The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln'' with ], but they had a falling out. Nobile later accused Tripp's book of being fraudulent and distorted.<ref name=Smith2005>Smith, Dinitia , December 16, 2004, ''New York Times''</ref><ref name=Nobile2005>Nobile, Philip , ''Weekly Standard,'' Vol 10, Issue 17, 17 January 2005</ref>

'']'' magazine addressed the book as part of a cover article by Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of ''Lincoln's Melancholy: How ] Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness.'' Shenk dismissed Tripp's conclusions, saying that arguments for Lincoln's homosexuality were "based on a tortured misreading of conventional 19th century sleeping arrangements".<ref name=truelincoln2005>{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1077281,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050628235051/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1077281,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 28, 2005|work=Time|title=The True Lincoln|date=June 26, 2005|access-date=May 23, 2010}}</ref> But historian Michael B. Chesson said that Tripp's work was significant, commenting that "any open-minded reader who has reached this point may well have a reasonable doubt about the nature of Lincoln's sexuality".<ref name=Tripp>Michael B. Chesson, "Afterword: 'The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln'," p. 245, Free Press, 2005, {{ISBN|0-7432-6639-0}}</ref> In contrast, historian and Lincoln biographer ] has said that it is "possible but highly unlikely that Abraham Lincoln was 'predominantly homosexual.'"

In 2009, Charles Morris critically analyzed the academic and popular responses to Tripp's book, arguing that much of the negative response by the "Lincoln Establishment" reveals as much rhetorical and political partisanship as that of Tripp's defenders.<ref name=Morris2009>Charles E. Morris III, "Hard Evidence: The Vexations of Lincoln's Queer Corpus", in ''Rhetoric, Materiality, Politics,'' ed. Barbara Biesecker and John Louis Lucaites (New York: Peter Lang, 2009): 185-213</ref> In an earlier 2007 essay, Morris argues that in the wake of playwright ]'s "outing" of Lincoln, the Lincoln Establishment engaged in "mnemonicide", or the assassination of a threatening counter-memory. He put in this category what he called the methodologically flawed but widely appropriated case against the "gay Lincoln thesis" by David Herbert Donald in his book, ''We Are Lincoln Men''.<ref>"My Old Kentucky Homo: Abraham Lincoln, Larry Kramer, and the Politics of Queer Memory", ''Queering Public Address: Sexualities and American Historical Discourse,'' ed. Charles E. Morris III (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007): 93-120</ref>

Lincoln's stepmother, ], commented that he "never took much interest in the girls". However some accounts of Lincoln's contemporaries suggest that he had a strong but controlled passion for women.<ref name="Katz">Jonathan Ned Katz, ''Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. On Lincoln and Speed, see chapter 1, "No Two Men Were Ever More Intimate", pp. 3-25. For more on Lincoln and sexuality see the notes to this chapter.</ref> Lincoln was devastated over the 1835 death of ]. While some historians have questioned whether he had a romantic relationship with her, historian ] reviewed the historiography of the subject and concluded that "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."<ref name=historycooperative> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060622095854/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/11/simon.html |date=2006-06-22 }}, John Y. Simon</ref>

In her book ], historian ] argues:

{{quote|Their intimacy is more an index to an era when close male friendships, accompanied by open expressions of affection and passion, were familiar and socially acceptable. Nor can sharing a bed be considered evidence for an erotic involvement. It was a common practice in an era when private quarters were a rare luxury... The attorneys of the Eighth circuit in Illinois where Lincoln would travel regularly shared beds. (58)}}

Critics of the hypothesis that Lincoln was homosexual emphasize that Lincoln married and had four children. Scholar ] writes that Lincoln as a young man displayed robustly ] behavior, including telling stories to his friends of his interactions with women.<ref name=Wilson>Douglas Wilson ''Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln,'' Vintage Publishing, 1999, {{ISBN|0-375-70396-9}}</ref>

Lincoln wrote a poem that described a marriage-like relation between two men, which included the lines:

{{quote|For Reuben and Charles have married two girls,<br/> But Billy has married a boy.<br/> The girls he had tried on every side,<br/> But none he could get to agree;<br/> All was in vain, he went home again,<br/> And since that he's married to Natty.|}}

This poem was included in the first edition of the 1889 biography of Lincoln by his friend and colleague ].<ref name=Herndon2000>Herndon, W. H., ''Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life.'' Scituate, MA: Digital Scanning, 2000.</ref> It was expurgated from subsequent editions until 1942, when the editor Paul Angle restored it.

Tripp states that Lincoln's awareness of homosexuality and openness in penning this "bawdy poem" "was unique for the time period."<ref>C.A. Tripp, ''The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln'' pg 40-41 Free Press 2005 {{ISBN|0-7432-6639-0}}</ref>

====Relationship with Joshua Speed====





], who shared accommodation with Lincoln in ], ], for four years.]]
Lincoln met ] in ], in 1837, when Lincoln was a successful attorney and member of Illinois' House of Representatives. 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.<ref name=Donald2003>Excerpt from D. H. Donald's ''We are Lincoln Men'' Simon & Schuster 2003 {{ISBN|0-7432-5468-6}}</ref> According to some sources, William Herndon<ref name=Sandburg>Sandburg 1:244</ref> and a fourth man also slept in the same room.<ref name=Prairie1926>''Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926)'' 1:244<br />{{cite web |url=http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/9548.html |author=Richard Brookhiser |work=NYT Book Review |date=Jan 9, 2005 |title=Richard Brookhiser's NYT Book Review of C.A. Tripp's Gay Lincoln Biography |via=History News Network}}<br />David H. Donald's ''We are Lincoln Men'', op.cit.</ref>

Historians such as David Herbert Donald point out that it was not unusual at that time for two men to share a bed due to myriad circumstances, without anything sexual being implied, for a night or two when nothing else was available. Lincoln, who had just moved to a new town when he met Speed, was also at least initially unable to afford his own bed and bedding.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Keneally|first1=Thomas|title=Abraham Lincoln: A Life|date=2002|publisher=Penguin|at=Chapter 4|isbn=978-0670031757}}</ref> A tabulation of historical sources shows that Lincoln slept in the same bed with at least 11 boys and men during his youth and adulthood.<ref name=Sotos2008>{{cite book|author=Sotos, JG|title=The Physical Lincoln Sourcebook|location=], ]|publisher=Mt. Vernon Book Systems|year=2008|url=http://www.physical-lincoln.com/}}</ref>

There are no known instances in which Lincoln tried to suppress knowledge or discussion of such arrangements, and in some conversations, raised the subject himself. Tripp discusses three men at length and possible sustained relationships: ], William Greene, and Charles Derickson. However, in 19th-century America, it was not necessarily uncommon for men to bunk-up with other men, briefly, if no other arrangement were available. For example, when other lawyers and judges traveled "]" with Lincoln, the lawyers often slept "two in a bed and eight in a room".<ref>Randall, Ruth Painter. Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953. pp 70-71.</ref> ] recalled for example, "I have slept with 20 men in the same room".<ref name="DHD1948">Donald, D.H. Lincoln's Herndon. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1948, pg.&nbsp;46</ref>

In the nineteenth century, most men were probably not conscious of any erotic possibility in bed-sharing, since it was in public. Speed's immediate, casual offer, and his later report of it, suggests that men's public bed-sharing was not then often explicitly understood as conducive to forbidden sexual experiments.<ref name=Katz/> In such public arrangements, they would not be alone.

Nevertheless, Katz says that such sleeping arrangements "did provide an important site (probably the major site) of erotic opportunity" if they could keep others from noticing. Katz states that referring to present-day concepts of "homo, hetero, and bi distorts our present understanding of Lincoln and Speed's experiences."<ref name=Katz/> He states that, rather than there being "an unchanging essence of homosexuality and heterosexuality," people throughout history "continually reconfigure their affectionate and erotic feelings and acts".<ref name=Katz/> He suggests that the Lincoln-Speed relationship fell within a 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'".<ref name=Katz/>

Some correspondence of the period, such as that between ] and ], may provide evidence of a sexual dimension to some secret same-sex bed-sharing.<ref name=Duberman1826>Martin Duberman, "Writhing Bedfellows: 1826 Two Young Men from Antebellum South Carolina's Ruling Elite Share 'Extravagant Delight{{'"}}, in Salvatore Licata and Robert Petersen, eds., ''Historical Perspectives on Homosexuality'' (New York: Haworth Press & Stein & Day, 1981), pages 85-99.</ref> The fact that Lincoln was open about sharing a bed with Speed is seen by some historians as an indication that their relationship was not romantic.<ref>Donald, pg.&nbsp;38. In speaking of an incident when Lincoln openly referred to the four years he "slept with Joshua", Donald wrote, "I simply cannot believe that, if the early relationship between Joshua Speed and Lincoln had been sexual, the President of the United States would so freely and publicly speak of it."</ref> None of Lincoln's enemies hinted at any homosexual implication.<ref>Donald, pg.&nbsp;36. Donald states, "Though nearly every other possible charge against Lincoln was raised during his long public career – from his alleged illegitimacy to his possible romance with Ann Rutledge, to the breakup of his engagement to Mary Todd, to some turbulent aspects of their marriage – no one ever suggested that he and Speed were sexual partners."</ref>

Joshua Speed and Lincoln corresponded about their impending marriages, and ] regarded their letters to each other as having evinced a degree of anxiety about being able to perform sexually on their wedding nights that indicated a homosexual relationship had once existed between them.<ref> ] they remained in touch for the rest of their lives, and Lincoln appointed Joshua's brother, ], to his cabinet as ].<ref> from Lincoln to Speed in August 1855.</ref>

In 2016, historian and psychoanalyst Charles Strozier published, ''Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed,'' in which he examines their relationship. In 1982, Strozier had previously written, ''Lincoln’s Quest for Union'', in which there was a chapter that some had taken as support for the Lincoln gay thesis. Strozier concludes that the relationship was not homosexual and that Lincoln was straight.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Fried |first=Ronald K. |date=2016-05-15 |title=Debunking the Myth That Lincoln Was Gay |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/15/debunking-the-myth-that-lincoln-was-gay |access-date=2021-08-09 |website=The Daily Beast |language=en}}</ref>

====Relationship with David Derickson====
Captain David Derickson of the ] 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.<ref name="Trip">Tripp, C.A. : Intimate World, Ibid.</ref> Derickson was twice married and fathered ten children. Tripp recounts that, whatever the 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!"<ref name=Tripp/> This sleeping arrangement was also mentioned 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 states 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 based on the same report from a single source.<ref name=Johnson>Martin P. Johnson, {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070522033200/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/27.2/johnson.html |date=2007-05-22 }}, ''Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association'', Vol 27 No 2 (Summer 2006)</ref> David Donald and Johnson both dispute Tripp's interpretation of Fox's comment, saying that the exclamation of "What stuff!" was, in that day, an exclamation over the absurdity of the suggestion rather than the gossip value of it (as in the phrase "stuff and nonsense").<ref name=Donald>D. H. Donald, ''We are Lincoln Men,'' pp. 141-143 Simon & Schuster, 2003, {{ISBN|0-7432-5468-6}}</ref>

==References== ==References==
{{Reflist|30em}} {{Reflist|30em}}

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