Lincoln, ever the beloved and fascinating sixteenth president who is very nearly deified for his pivotal role in ending America's Civil War, once again, comes alive in the film Lincoln by Steven Speilberg. The film does an admirable job in depicting the man but does little to shed light on the emotional complexities other than to show the ample reasons that may have contributed to his melancholic personality. But there may be more to the already complex man, as some historians have suggested, notably C.A. Tripp who analyses in detail several of Lincoln's close male relationships, in particular his connection to Joshua Speed, with whom Lincoln lived for 4 years and shared a bed and who remained a friend to Lincoln until his death. Considerable documentation exists to support the notion that the two men were indeed close emotional intimates. It is perhaps a stretch to attribute homo-erotic behavior between the two, but it is not out of the question. In the mid 19th century it was not uncommon for men to sleep two to a bunk. Furthermore, very close relationships developed between men partly in response to the strictures that existed between men and women in the Victorian era. Male/Female behavior was certainly more highly scripted than male/male behavior. Still, historians prevaricate somewhat on this issue. Both L Kramer (see below) and Tripp suggest that there is new and never before seen primary evidence that points to a true homosexual involvement between Speed and Lincoln. We shall see. In the meantime, one is left to consider how this new information might be important.. There is something personally comforting knowing that Lincoln was a gay man. Why? For so long the message about gay people was (and in some quarters still is) that they were incapable of being anything but broken. They had nothing to offer society. They certainly could not be trusted. They were not capable of inspiring others and they could not ever become a hero. Well apparently that is not true. I suspect there were a goodly number of men who loved other men in our country's history, but their homosexuality was conveniently written out of history because it did not fit the particular sensibilities and cultural bias of the time. Perhaps this is the beginning of a historical thaw which will allow the flesh and blood human to emerge from the sanitized pages of revisionist history. Imagine the effect this would have if we read in school that certain important historical figures were gay!. I can only guess that this would reduce if not eliminate prejudice against gay people. WPS
FromSalon
Magazine, May 3, 1999
Fax ( 415 ) 882-8731 ( E-Mail:
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Salon
Was Lincoln gay? Firebrand Larry Kramer says he has the evidence to
prove it. Lincoln scholars are holding their fire until they see it. Get ready
for the second Civil War.
By Carol
Lloyd
The 28-year-old traveler was tall, with rough hands, a chiseled jaw and unforgettable, deep-set,
melancholy eyes. He arrived in town, his worldly possessions in two battered
suitcases, and inquired at a general store about buying some bedding. But the
price was far beyond his budget. The strikingly handsome 23-year-old merchant
took pity on the man and invited him into his own bed, free of charge, which
happened to be just upstairs. The traveler inspected the bed and, looking into
the merchant's sparkling blue eyes, agreed on the spot. For the next four years
the two men shared that bed along with their most private fears and
desires.
If this sounds like the opening of a homoerotic dime-store novel whose
subsequent scenes feature fiery loins and ecstatic eruptions, hold your panting.
The year is 1837, the place Springfield, Ill., and the leading men none other
than our 16th presdent, Abraham Lincoln, and his lifelong friend Joshua
Speed.
It is a story that historians have told and retold, puzzled over and
reinterpreted, dismissed and decorated. Some describe Lincoln's acceptance of
Joshua Speed's generous offer as terse and matter-of-fact; others as beaming and
emotional. What none of them questions is that Lincoln and Speed's years of
living together cemented a friendship unparalleled in its intimacy and
tenderness in Lincoln's life. So far, all major historians have stopped short of
intimating that Lincoln was ever involved in a romantic affair with a man, in
fact, they explicitlydiscourage such interpretations.
But Larry Kramer, the 62-year-old gay rights hell-raiser, Academy
Award-nominated screenwriter ("Women in Love") and Pulitzer-nominated playwright
("The Normal Heart"), wants to change all that. In February, at a gay and
lesbian conference in Madison, Wis., he read a portion of his unfinished book,
"The American People", which, in the course of describing the history of gays in
early America, avers that Lincoln and Speed were not merely bedfellows but
lovers.
"There's no question in my mind he was a gay man and a totally gay man,"
Kramer declares. "It wasn't just a period, but something that went on his whole
life."
Like the rumors that Thomas Jefferson had sired the children of his young
slave Sally Hemings, questions about Speed and Lincoln's relationship have
circulated for years. In "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years" (1926), Carl
Sandberg wrote that their relationship had "a streak of lavender and spots soft
as May violets," which some have taken as a veiled reference to homosexuality.
In 1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log Cabin
Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson was quoted in
the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome in the party, "given
that the founder was gay." Novelist Paul Russell, author of "The Gay 100," a
ranking of the world's most important gay figures, also investigated the rumors
but chose not to include Lincoln, feeling that the case was not strong enough,
though he did include questionable figures like Shakespeare and Madonna. In an
interview that will appear in a forthcoming anthology called "Sexual Writings by
Gore Vidal," Gore Vidal told Kramer some years ago that during the research for
the historical novel "Lincoln," Vidal too began to suspect that Lincoln was
gay.
Like most of Lincoln's early private life, the story of his
friendship with Speed is a murky one, although not nearly as murky as Lincoln's
early liaisons with women. After four years of living in intimate quarters,
Speed announced plans to sell the store and return to his home in Kentucky,
where his family owned a large plantation. Lincoln, who was notoriously awkward
and shy around women, was at the time engaged to a vivacious, if temperamental,
society girl named Mary Todd, but as the date of Speed's departure and
the marriage approached, Lincoln cracked. He wanted to break the engagement by
letter, but at Speed's entreaty, he went to Mary Todd and told her face to face
he did not love her. Some argue that Lincoln had fallen in love with another
woman. Soon after, Speed departed, leaving Lincoln mired in depression and
guilt.
Seven months later Lincoln traveled to Speed's home in Kentucky, where he
spent a month being nursed back to health. After that the two men corresponded
affectionately for decades, chronicling their most personal internal conflicts,
including their abject fear of marriage, which they ominously refer to in their
correspondence (always emphasized) as forebodings.
Speed was the first to approach the
altar successfully, an ordeal that Lincoln coached him through with tender but
not altogether convincing letters of encouragement. It seemed that Speed was on
the verge of a premarital meltdown similar to Lincoln's. "If you went through
the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure not to excite alarm in
anyone present, you are safe, beyond question" Lincoln wrote just after the date
of Speed's betrothal, "and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the
happiest of men." Subsequent clandestine letters inquired whether Speed really
was "happier or, if you think the term preferable, less miserable." Both men
eventually married and had children; they remained close until they had a
falling-out in 1855 over the issue of slavery.
A shared bed, tortured secret letters and a fear of women... what more proof
could scholars want?
Real evidence, they say. First, the shared bed is meaningless, most argue,
since in the 19th century American frontiersmen often slept two and three to a
bed for purely economic reasons. "It was very common for men to share the same
bed in the 1800s, especially in taverns," says Gene Griessman, author of "The
Words Lincoln Lived By" (Simon & Schuster, 1997). "We know that Lincoln had
a long, affectionate friendship with Speed. He deeply loved the man, but to go
beyond that fact is to go beyond any evidence I have seen."
"It sounds like this might be a case of taking a 19th century event and
giving it a 20th century context," says Douglas Wilson, author of "Honor's
Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln" and co-director of the Lincoln
Studies Center at Knox Collegein Galesburg, Ill. Wilson adds that this trend of
seeing the past in terms of the present (what historians call "presentism") has
seen a recent revival, with the controversy over Jefferson's alleged
relationship with Sally Hemings and the "outing" of Walt Whitman.
Other scholars believe that such cozy sleeping arrangements did reflect a
distinct emotional landscape for men, but didn't necessarily lead to hot homo
lovemaking. "There was a lot of male homoerotic desire in the middle of the 19th
century," says UC-Berkeley political scientist Michael Rogin. "There may be
evidence of male-male desire, but that's not gay. If 'gay' is going to mean
anything it's got to mean orgasms with other men. There's got to be some sense
of transgression and forbiddenness."
In an era obsessed with the fine points of identity nomenclature, exactly
what constitutes mid-19th-century homosexuality is a sticky question. Can
homosexuality, be it queer, gay or radical fairy butch, even exist without a
name? And can it exist without self-identification on the part of the lover? Can
it exist simply through desire, or must those desires be consummated?
Kramer has little patience for such theoretical hairsplitting. "I do not
think that people were different starting with the Garden of Eden," he says.
"Why do we imagine that people were these naive asexual beings before the 20th
century? Lincoln had a lot of sex." Kramer doesn't pretend to be a
Lincoln scholar or even an objective researcher. ("I have read all the
biographies, and they are full of shit," he spits, and derides Pulitzer
Prize-winning Lincoln scholar David Herbert Donald as "some dried
old heterosexual prune at Harvard.") He's an unabashed gay rabble-rouser, beating
the bushes of history to find gay heroes. But if he really does have the new
primary sources he claims to, even the staunchest defenders of Lincoln's
heterosexuality may be forced to reconsider. Kramer claims to have a trump card,
a smoking gun: a hitherto unknown Joshua Speed diary, as well as a stash of
letters in which Speed writes explicitly about his love affair with Lincoln. The
secret pages, which were discovered hidden beneath the floorboards of the old
store where the two men lived, now are said to reside in a private collection in
Davenport, Iowa.
No sooner has Kramer mentioned the discovery and location of the papers than
he grumbles, "That's already more than I wish I had said." Kramer is ambivalent
about airing the entire subject. Even the reading, he explains, was a
spur-of-the-moment stopgap measure to save him the trouble of writing another
speech for a second appearance at the conference. "I didn't know there were any
reporters there," he says, "and I didn't let anyone tape it."
Although Kramer refuses to share any portions of these documents, the Capital
Times in Madison reported some of the juicier quotes from the reading: "He often
kisses me when I tease him, often to shut me up. He would grab me up by his long
arms and hug and hug," Speed reportedly wrote. Addressing his dear friend as
"Linc," Speed allegedly described the young politician as a man who couldn't
get enough hugging and kissing: "Yes, our Abe is like a school girl." Kramer also
attested that Speed recounted conversations in which the two men wondered
whether other men, too, had relationships like theirs.
Whether these quotes prove that Lincoln was gay is debatable, although, of
course, Kramer may possess others that are more explicit. But he goes further:
He not only claims that honest, rail-splitting, nation-uniting Abe was a
proto-bossy bottom, but that there existed a whole 19th century gay frontier
subculture. For example, he says there was an underground travel agency that
arranged for small groups of man-loving men to travel into the wilderness for
nature appreciation and other earthy pleasures. Both Lincoln and Speed, Kramer
says, frequented these camping trips while living in Springfield. In one
circular, which Kramer shared by phone, a man named "Dapper Dan from Kansas"
invited "fellow travelers" on a "holiday journey" to sleep outdoors. The passage
he read was certainly suggestive but hardly explicit.
Repeating a claim long circulated in the gay community, if not in Hamilton
scholarship, Kramer also claims that Alexander Hamilton was "essentially a
cock-tease."
All these assertions, however, pale in the face of Kramer's most outrageous
theory: that Lincoln's murder may have been a kind of gay-bashing, resulting
from a kinky sexual set-up. "There's some evidence that shows that Speed
presented Booth to Lincoln as a 'present' and the young Booth, who was a
gorgeous man, was virulently homophobic, like the men who killed Matthew
Shepard," he says. "If the murder turns out to have had a homosexual
underpinning, that's going to freak everybody out."
Seemingly outlandish claims like these, along with the fact that Kramer is
not by any conventional definition a scholar, obviously raise questions about
his historical judgment and probity. Isn't Kramer just a propagandist,laboring
mightily to turn the 1800s into 18th and Castro?
Interestingly, however, Lincoln scholars have largely held their fire even
when confronted with Kramer's more extreme claims. "That's pretty wild," says
Douglas Wilson of the Lincoln-Booth theory. "If Lincoln and Booth had ever met,
I would have thought we would have known more about it. But all ideas are
welcome; you learn more when people argue."
Arguments coming from Larry Kramer tend to have a special vehemence. Long a
lightning rod for controversy both within and without the gay community, Kramer
knows how to play his cards for all they're worth, although playing them close
to his chest is not his strong suit. After founding ACT-UP and the Gay Men's
Health Crisis, two staggeringly influential organizations within the gay
community, Kramer assailed the Reagan administration, the medical establishment
and heterosexuals in general (whom he referred to as "they") with razor pen and
acid tongue. Just as often, he attacked his own community; his conflicts with
factions of the two organizations he founded erupted into public spectacles of
ire and recrimination. No setting was too sacrosanct for Kramer to tell his
angry truths, as evidenced by a eulogy he once gave in which he accused the
gathering of mourners (including himself) of murdering the deceased with their
complacency and passivity.
Compared to those days of high dudgeon and real crisis, it seems odd that
Kramer is so anxious about his scholarly crusade to out a dead president. Why
won't he share his evidence? His explanations vary from wanting to protect the
poor folks of Davenport from a mob of Lincoln lunatics to simply wanting to
finish his monster-in-the-box book (now 2,000 pages long and at least five years
away from being finished) in peace. He's also planning to submit a short excerpt
of the Lincoln material to magazines this fall. But when pressed, he confesses
that he fears the vitriol, or worse, that may rain down upon him from outraged
defenders of Lincoln's sullied honor. "Don't tell them where I live," he adds at
the end of one phone conversation, with no hint of irony.
It's possible that Kramer was led to some of his evidence by a more
respectable scholar, C.A. Tripp, the elderly author of the groundbreaking "The
Homosexual Matrix." Kramer admits that he hopes a forthcoming book by Tripp
comes out before his own. Tripp's book also plans to drag Lincoln out of the
closet, but according to Kramer, it will do so with a good deal more scholarly
muscle and nuance. Kramer says Tripp has evidence that Lincoln had not just one,
but numerous homoerotic relationships throughout his life. Unlike Kramer,
however, he does not construe these ongoing sexual encounters as
self-consciously homosexual. Speaking by phone from his home in New Jersey,
Tripp refuses to "drop any pearls" before his book is finished. "It's too far
away," he says, "about two years."
When told that Kramer had expressed enthusiasm about Tripp's findings, Tripp
snarls good-naturedly: "Of course he did. Kramer's a propagandist. And that's
all I have to say." He does acknowledge, however, that his research was based on
"absolutely new" primary sources that no other historian has yet to see.
All this talk of new primary sources makes the Lincoln history establishment
curious despite their skepticism.
"It's possible there is something else, but I would be very surprised," says
Michael Burlingame, author of the "Inner World of Abraham Lincoln" and history
professor at Connecticut College. "If there's a Joshua Speed diary, then I'm
eager to see it." Indeed, Burlingame is one volume into a three-volume account
of Lincoln's life; presumably such findings might guide his current project in
new directions.
Burlingame is familiar with Tripp's work and despite his "enormous respect
for the man," he disagrees with his ideas about Lincoln's sexual orientation.
"Speed and Lincoln were close emotionally but their letters have no discernable
romantic overtones," he says. "Besides, there is too much evidence that Lincoln
was strongly attracted to women." By way of example he cites the fact that
Lincoln was a "proto-feminist," fell "head over heels in love with 18-year-old
Matilda Edwards" and loved a beautiful young woman named Ann Rutledge.
Such evidence, however, can be interpreted several ways. Heterosexual men
have never had a corner on the market for feminist-friendly attitudes; in fact,
one might argue that proto-homosexual men might better sympathize with the
plights of proto-feminist women. Moreover, some historians reject the tale of his
love for Matilda Edwards as a paranoid fantasy that Mary Todd Lincoln concocted
to explain why Lincoln abandoned her at the altar. In "Lincoln," David Herbert
Donald suggests that there was "no real justification" to think that Lincoln had
fallen in love with her and that Edwards had expressly denied that he ever "even
stooped to pay [her] a compliment." In turn, Douglas Wilson calls Donald's
refusal to deal with the Edwards evidence "just hopeless."
Historians also posit wildly different scenarios regarding the doomed Ann
Rutledge. All evidence comes from third-hand accounts that held that Lincoln
became acquainted with her while she was still engaged to another man. Soon
afterwards, she fell ill; Lincoln sat by her bedside for the last two days of
her life. Some contend the two were on their way to being engaged, others that
Lincoln might have befriended her simply because she was already spoken for.
Others say her death left him a devastated man who, at least from a romantic
perspective, never recovered. Yet as Kramer is quick to point out, not a single
letter exists between Rutledge and Lincoln, and in the thousand pages of
Lincoln's personal correspondence, he never once mentions her name.
Finally, in chronicling the proof of Lincoln's heterosexual romances,
historians are split in their interpretation of his marriage to the volatile,
possibly insane, drug-addled Mary Todd Lincoln. By all accounts the couple had a
difficult, turbulent relationship, but over the course of 10 years they managed
to bear four children. Some historians paint theirs as a difficult but loving
bond; others as the quintessential marriage from hell. Douglas Wilson gives
credence to stories that Lincoln visited prostitutes during his marriage and
later believed himself to have contracted syphilis. David Herbert Donald, in
contrast, paints Lincoln as a faithful, if not exactly doting, husband.
All of these heterosexist interpretations get Kramer foaming at the mouth.
"Why is their version so much more believable than mine? So much of the history
that is shoveled into the world is bullshit, we really have to invent our
own."
Do such overt desires for a specific outcome make it impossible for Kramer to
separate fact from wishful thinking? That was the charge leveled against those
who initially argued that Walt Whitman was a 19th century homosexual. At first
this idea was derided as far-fetched propaganda, but it is now largely accepted
(although academics continue to debate whether it is legitimate to call Whitman
"gay").
But does it really matter if Lincoln was gay? What difference does it make if
the man who reunited the country, ended slavery, wrote some of the most majestic
speeches in the English language and died a martyr's death desired (or actually
had sex with) other men? According to Illinois state historian Tom Schwarz, it
doesn't make any difference: "It's only important if he made conscious decisions
based on his sexuality which then influenced his political behavior, public
policy or his decisions on slavery. If not, its importance readily
diminishes."
Schwarz's politic words, however, don't take into account the enormous
symbolic significance that will attend any reevaluation of the sexual
orientation of America's most beloved figure. Imagine if the Hemings-Jefferson
love affair had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt (which, as scientists
continue to remind us, still hasn't happened) in the Jim Crow 1950s, when
certain states still prosecuted miscegenation? Bigots would have had one less
legendary leg to stand on. Similarly, if the man on our $5 bill was proven to be
gay, right-wing politicians who invoke Lincoln in one breath and denounce the
homosexual menace in the next would be forced to reexamine the deeper meaning of
the phrase "with charity towards all, with malice towards none." Certainly, for
queer theorists and gay scholars, the ability to claim the man who was arguably
America's greatest president as their own would arm gay battalions with a
powerful new rhetorical weapon.
"Greatest" is the operative word here. When Kramer first announced at the
Madison meeting that he was setting out to get gays their "first gay president,"
he could have made his job easier by looking to Lincoln's predecessor, James
Buchanan. The only bachelor to take office, Buchanan spent 15 years, including
some of those in the White House, living with Sen. William King. When King died
Buchanan went into a tailspin, neglecting his executive duties; his already
ineffectual presidency derailed. The contemporary press ridiculed the men's
relationship mercilessly, and Andrew Jackson once called King "Miss Nancy." The
problem, of course, is that James Buchanan is not the guy to stake a modern
civil rights movement on. Passive and ineffectual, he slowly but surely led the
country into a bloody civil war. Despite the fact that it was "obvious" that
Buchanan was gay, Paul Russel says he chose not to include him in "The Gay 100";
he just wasn't anything to be proud of.
One equally controversial gay figure did make it into the book: none other
than the fire-breathing Larry Kramer. In fact, he's the highest-ranked of all
living people on the list. "A lot of people wouldn't agree with that," Kramer
mutters when informed of this fact.
In similar fashion, many of Lincoln's contemporary enemies would have seen
the deification of the rough-hewn, socially awkward president as the worst kind
of historical revisionism. But as Kramer knows, from a political perspective,
revisionist history is the only kind of history that counts.
Note: If you got this far you may enjoy another article written by Gore Vidal (author of The Stone and the Pillar) printed in The Vanity Faire.
Click here to see the article.
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