Abraham Lincoln is one of our greatest American presidents. Only George Washington can equal him in fame and the significance of his accomplishments. After Lincoln’s tragic assassination in 1865, the “martyred” president became a legend, obscuring the life and personality of the real man. In recent years there had been a debate regarding Lincoln’s sexuality. Was he heterosexual? Was he gay, despite marriage and fathering four children?
Lincoln as a Child and Teen in Indiana
Born in Kentucky in 1809, Lincoln spent his adolescence in frontier Indiana. The state was still a raw, forested wilderness, where farmers supplemented their food supplies with wild game. Young “Abe” seems to have had an interest in girls, but he was too shy and diffident to make much progress with them.
Lincoln’s appearance was also against him. He was tall—at 6’ 4”—and extremely gawky in manner and movement. The youth was also sloppy and careless in dress. Abe was considered homely, even ugly, and girls often laughed at him. He joined in the laughter-- self-deprecating humor was a Lincoln trademark—and went back to reading what books he could find.
Lincoln’s Fondness for Off-Color Jokes and Stories
The mid-nineteenth century was the Victorian age, but the male-dominated frontier was much less prudish. Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life lists several Lincoln jokes or quips on sex. Sexual contact, the future president maintained, “is a harp of a thousand strings.” Lincoln also told the story of Adam and Eve’s first “clothing”—a fig leaf apron. “It is very probable, “Lincoln remarked, “that she (Eve) took the leading part, but he (Adam) doing no more than to stand by and… thread the needle.”
Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Fry Speed
Lincoln met Joshua Fry Speed in Springfield, Illinois in 1837. Abraham needed a place to stay, and so he roomed with Fry, a local store owner. Most of the time Lincoln was good humored and affable, but much of this was a façade. He was an emotional loner, reluctant to share his feelings with others.
Over time Speed got Lincoln out of his shell. Both were plagued by fears, mostly imaginary, of being unable to cope with marriage. Speed and Lincoln became close, very close, until they were truly best friends. C.A. Tripp’s book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln argues the two men were homosexual lovers. Tripp points out that they slept in the same bed, and the Lincoln wrote such things as “forever yours.”
Yet both men had an eye for women. . Speed was a well known ladies man, and once he allowed Lincoln to visit a prostitute he was frequenting. Abraham told his friend he wanted “a little,” meaning intercourse. According to Burlingame Lincoln showed up at the prostitute’s door armed with an introduction. from Speed. Lincoln and the lady “stripped off “and got into bed.
But there was the matter of a fee. The woman wanted five dollars, but Lincoln had only three. When the woman told him that he could owe her two dollars, Lincoln begged off and went home without having sex. He was a poor man, he explained, and didn’t want to “cheat” her by accepting credit. The woman remarked he was the most “conscientious man” she’d ever met. “Honest Abe” even in the bedroom!
Lincoln's Women
Though it’s debated, Lincoln’s first love is said to have been Ann Rutledge, a pretty innkeeper’s daughter in New Salem. When she died in Lincoln was devastated. Later, Lincoln had a half-hearted relationship with Mary Owens, but she rejected him after a year’s tepid courtship. He reacted by writing jokes to friends alluding to her obesity.
After a somewhat tempestuous on again, off again, on again romance, Lincoln married Mary Todd in 1842. She was a southern belle from an affluent family in Kentucky.Mary had the reputation of being hot-tempered and shrewish. But the couple had a genuine affection for each other, and the union endured until Lincoln’s assassination.
Was Lincoln a Homosexual?
Scholars have rejected Tripp’s allegations that Lincoln was a homosexual. There is little real evidence to support it. Lincoln did have a close relationship with Speed, but there’s little to suggest they were homosexual lovers. It was common in the frontier to share beds. David Herbert Donald and other historians reject the idea President Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual, citing lack of real proof.
Sources:
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Two volumes; Barnes and Noble, 2008)
C.A. Tripp Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln (Free Press, 2005)
Don Davenport, In Lincoln's Footsteps A Historical Guide to the Lincoln Sites in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky (Prairie Oak Press, 1991)
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