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Was Abe Lincoln gay? redux
The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C.A. Tripp says that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away. [...] But in "We Are Lincoln Men" [David Herbert] Donald wrote that no one at the time ever suggested that he and Speed were sexual partners. Herndon, who sometimes slept in the room with them, never mentioned a sexual relationship. In frontier times, Donald wrote, space was tight and men shared beds. And the correspondence between Lincoln and Speed was not that of lovers, he maintained. Moreover, Lincoln alluded openly to their relationship, saying, "I slept with Joshua for four years." If they were lovers, Donald wrote, Lincoln wouldn't have spoken so freely. Tripp charts Lincoln's relationships with other men, including Billy Greene, with whom Lincoln supposedly shared a bed in New Salem, Illinois. Herndon said Greene told him that Lincoln's thighs "were as perfect as a human being could be." [...] Donald also takes issue with the conclusion that Lincoln had a sexual relationship with Derickson, his bodyguard at his presidential retreat, the Soldiers' Home, outside Washington. Tripp writes that their closeness stirred comment in Washington, and cites a diary entry from Nov. 16, 1862, by Virginia Woodbury Fox, wife of Gustavus Fox, assistant secretary of the navy. She recounted a friend's report: "'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!" But Donald writes that "What stuff!" meant she was dismissing the rumor. Among Tripp's revelations is a gay marriage-themed poem that Lincoln wrote in his teens (reprinted in this LA Weekly book review). I will tell you a Joke about Jewel and Mary The poem includes some naughty contemporary slang. Read "low crotch" as "big package". And: Tripp notes that the stanza beginning "The egg it is laid" suggests that "Abe was well aware of the term ‘jelly baby.’ Originally from Negro vernacular, the phrase soon came to be used by whites as well: slang denoting what uneducated folk imagined . . . as a ‘pregnancy’ from homosexual intercourse. What stuff! More and more and more and more.
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The "was Abraham Lincoln gay?" historical debate has picked up again with the publication of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp. This New York Times article (reprinted at iht.com, no registration required)