More on Lincoln Dispellers: The Gay Lincoln

The following excerpts are from a debate about C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln that was publish in The Claremont Review of Books in 2005.

Allen C. Guelzo wrote:

"When C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln was published (by Free Press last December posthumously, since Tripp died of AIDS in 2003), anyone with a good set of cultural ears might have heard a faint moan coming from the special historical workshop housing the students, scholars, and biographers of Abraham Lincoln. It was not the conspiratorial moan Tripp had predicted, as if he had liberated some great secret which was striding across the land, committing truth. It was more like the moan of the weary, who have seen this kind of thing before, time and again. The moan is not even about Tripp or his book, so much as it is about how much time they'll have to waste, fielding questions from those, whether lovers or haters of Abraham Lincoln, who believe this is the one simple explanation of everything about him. As Edward Steers says (in the first of the thumbnail critiques of Tripp's book which follow), this kind of noisy announcement of the one, true key to the "secret" of Abraham Lincoln—succeeding Lincoln-and-Marfan's-Syndrome, Lincoln-and-Freemasonry, Lincoln-and-Swedenborgianism—has happened before, and will doubtless happen again as long as someone has an agenda he feels the need to hitch to Abraham Lincoln."

"The argument of the book is plain enough to capture in a few sentences. Recollections by and of the young Lincoln point to homoerotic attractions and attractiveness, leading him to beds shared with several young men, including (in later years) one of the officers charged with protecting his life. Lincoln's marriage to Mary Todd was a misery, not because Mary was a "hellcat," but because Lincoln was violating his own homosexual nature. Lincoln's marvelous resiliency, humility, and charity were lessons he learned from experiencing the intolerance of a homophobic culture. But the experience exacted a toll, a toll paid in guilt and a sense of alienation from others, both of which show up in his reticence about his private life and in his religious ideas. Lincoln was not only "predominantly homosexual," but his homosexuality is (in the words of Jean Baker, who wrote an afterword to The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln) the key to "his independence and his ability to take anti-Establishment positions like the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation.""

"If this is not preposterous, then the word should be declared extinct. The whole proposition ought to collapse under the weight of one question: if Lincoln was a homosexual, why haven't we heard of this before? Surely Lincoln was so public a figure, and homosexuality so leprous an accusation in Victorian America, that not even P.T. Barnum, the Cardiff Giant, and the Feejee Mermaid could have distracted attention from a president who committed sodomy with the captain of his guard."...

Edward Steers, Jr. wrote:

"Abraham Lincoln has been a favorite subject from every side of history. By turns, he has been both hero and villain. As hero, Lincoln has been sanctified as the Savior of the Union, the Great Emancipator, the Man of the People. And in the role of villain (especially for neo-Confederates who despise him for preserving the Union), he has been dismissed as illegitimate by birth, boorish in behavior, a despot who savaged the Constitution while waging a brutal war of destruction, a closet racist who was forced into issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Americans of almost every persuasion have wanted to pin their tail to Abraham Lincoln's donkey."

"So instead of offering something entirely unique, C.A. Tripp has really only joined a long line of tail-pinners, the only novelty being that his argument centers on Lincoln's recorded behavior with other men—behavior that today might raise suspicions of homosexuality, or bisexuality—that included sleeping with various men in the same bed, showing a special affection for certain "young" men, and ending his letters to certain men with "yours forever.""...

Michael Burlingame wrote:

"Insofar as Tripp's book helps disabuse the reading public of the "legend of Lincoln's happy marriage," it serves a valuable function. But insofar as it leads people to think that Lincoln was gay it does a disservice to history, for the evidence adduced fails to support the argument. The cases of Joshua Speed and David Derickson, which Tripp dwells on at greatest length and that provide the strongest evidence for his thesis that Lincoln was "primarily homosexual," are far from conclusive. Lincoln's letters to Speed in the 1840s, which Tripp cites as strong evidence, in fact lack a homoerotic tone. Lincoln's use of "yours forever" in letters to Speed, a phrase that Tripp finds significant, also appears in his letters to many others. In 1864, Lincoln told Titian J. Coffey that "I slept with Joshua [Speed] for four years." If Lincoln and Speed were (to use 19th-century parlance) sodomites, it seems unlikely that Lincoln would have spoken so openly to Coffey. He also acknowledged that he had slept with Charles Maltby over a long period, telling a journalist in 1863: "I know Maltby, for I slept with him six months.""...

"If anything, all the real evidence we have points in precisely the opposite direction. Lincoln's law partner William Herndon alleged that from 1837 to 1842, Lincoln and Joshua Speed, "a lady's man," were "quite familiar—to go no further[—]with the women." On at least one occasion Lincoln shared Speed's taste in fancy women—in fact, the very same woman. Speed recollected that around 1839 or 1840, he "was keeping a pretty woman" in Springfield, and Lincoln, "desirous to have a little," asked his bunkmate, "do you know where I can get some." Speed replied, "Yes I do, & if you will wait a moment or so I'll send you to the place with a note. You cant get it without a note or by my appearance." If Speed was homosexual and impotent with women, as Tripp argues, why did he keep this "pretty woman" in Springfield? If Lincoln was having sex with Speed, why would he ask him where he could "get some"?"...

Full debate.