(06-25-2014 04:09 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  David,

"I do not understand 1836 being Lincoln's mental breakdown year. Is that just a typographical error?"

I hope I've already cleared this up. It's not a typo, by the way. I think you misunderstood my sentence.

"The well-respected Lincoln scholar Ida Tarbell published a book in 1896 entitled The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln. She interviewed many of the same Rutledge family members and residents of New Salem that Herndon interviewed for his famous lecture on the Abraham Lincoln-Ann Rutledge love story and thus had the first-hand opportunity to measure credibility of her witnesses familiar with the story."

Ida Tarbell's book appeared 61 years after Ann Rutledge died. Tarbell did not, in fact, interview "many of the same Rutledge family members and residents of New Salem that Herndon interviewed." Most of the witnesses were dead well before 1896, including Ann's brother Robert Rutledge (d. 1881), by far the most important Rutledge informant--in fact, the only significant Rutledge informant (Jean Berry, Ann's sister, was very young when Ann died). Help me out: who did Tarbell interview who witnessed events in New Salem & environs in the late summer of 1835? Offhand I know of only one, William "Slick Willie" Greene, who in my opinion isn't a reliable source, as detailed at length in an article I published in Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, issue of Summer 2010 (Google lewis gannett ann rutledge to get the full text). Greene is the source of the anecdote about Lincoln's involuntary weeping over the memory of Ann, which you quote as follows:

"The last chapter of the book is entitled 'Lincoln's First Acquaintance with Ann Rutledge--The Story of Their Love.' I quote from the last section of that chapter entitled 'Ann's Engagement to Lincoln' (pages 214-18). Ida Tarbell wrote: 'The lovers passed an hour alone in an anguished parting, and soon after, on August 25, 1835, Ann died.... The death of Ann Rutledge plunged Lincoln into the deepest gloom. That abiding melancholy, that painful sense of the incompleteness of life, which had been his mother's dowry to him, asserted itself. (emphasis added) It filled and darkened his mind and his imagination, tortured him with its black pictures. One stormy night he was sitting beside William Greene, his head bowed on his hand, while tears trickled through his fingers; his friend begged him to control his sorrow, to try to forget. 'I cannot,' moaned Lincoln; 'the thought of the snow and rain [falling] on her grave fills me with indescribable grief.'"

Now, the first thing to say about Greene's statement is how Herndon-like it sounds. Even allowing for Victorian purple prose, it's way over the top. Second, no contemporary gave a first-hand account of Lincoln saying good-bye to Ann: the "anguished parting" is supposition. Yes, the deathbed farewell scene is famous. But we don't have an account. This is what we have: the little Rutledge farmhouse on McNamar's land some six miles out of New Salem was a scene of abject misery. The whole family was desperately ill with "brain fever" that had sickened the entire area. We have no first-hand account of a funeral for Ann; there might not have been a funeral. Few if any ceremonial niceties attended her death & that of others in what was probably a typhus epidemic. As one contemporary recalled, there weren't enough well people to take care of the sick. It was truly a terrible time for little New Salem and much of the rest of Southern Illinois. Greene quoted Lincoln lamenting rain and snow on Rutledge's grave. Lincoln did speak of rain on Ann's grave, according to one other firsthand account in addition to Greene's. Here's the thing, though: those two comments about rain on the grave are the only recorded references Lincoln made to Ann in the aftermath of her death. Isaac Cogdal supplied more Lincoln quotes about Ann, but these statements, if Lincoln really made them, which is highly doubtful, happened in '65 or '66, 30 years after the events. Think about this. Here we have alleged events of very high drama. But no one remembered Lincoln saying, at the time, anything about the tragedy other than remarks about rain. Actually, it's even more peculiar. Other than the two rain comments and Cogdal's dubious claims we have no reliable records that Lincoln ever spoke of or even wrote to Ann. "My heart is buried there," meaning the grave: no reputable historian will tell you that we have evidence that Lincoln uttered those words. Ann's name appears nowhere in the Collected Works. No letters from either party to the other. No contemporary diary accounts. No marriage documents.

David, I realize that you took some effort to compose your post, I thank you for it, and I'm glad to have made this reply. But there's not much point in me going further. You can find more details than you probably want to know about all of this in the JALA article.

Best, Lewis

(06-25-2014 04:36 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  

(06-25-2014 04:27 PM)Mike B. Wrote:  Cogdal may have got the wording wrong, but it is not to much to assume Lincoln made a reference to her when asked. Tripp tried to use the technique of similarity of writing to determine authorship in JALA, but this is a misuse. Cogdal can't be supposed to remember the exact wording of a six year old conversation. We are not dealing with a verbatim transcript of the conversation.

Mike,

It's true that Cogdal's quotes from Lincoln might not sound like Lincoln because Cogdal was recalling them after six years, and inadvertently used his own speaking style. I agree with you about that. But there are more serious problems with Cogdal's claims. Why was he the only person to whom Lincoln ever confided such personal acknowledgments about his past? Lincoln didn't even tell Joshua Speed about Ann Rutledge. I agree with David Donald and Tripp that the Cogdal evidence is very shaky. I don't however with agree with Tripp's argument about the phrasing, and told him so when we were preparing the book.

(06-25-2014 04:37 PM)Mike B. Wrote:  Aren't two references to the rain and snow beating on her grave important in the sense that it was so memorable that people independently remembered he said it decades later?

Heart buried in her grave is of course nothing.

(06-25-2014 05:05 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  I have idiscussed this with Ed Steers in the past, and I do agree 100% with Ed's conclusion in his book.

(06-26-2014 07:54 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  there are web pages by gays in this mass of stuff

Alarik, Scott. “Overreaching Limits Lincoln Biography,” The Boston Globe, January 23, 2005.
Brookhiser, Richard. “Was Lincoln Gay?” New York Times Book Review, January 9, 2005.
Epstein, Daniel Mark The Real Lincoln Bedroom: Love in a Time of Strife,” New York Times, July 3, 2008, B1.
Ewers, Justin “The Real Lincoln,” U.S. News & World Report, 126 (February 21, 2005), 66.
Greenburg, Paul. “The Essential Lincoln: Reflections on a Great President’s Birthday,” Jewish World Review, February, 11 2005.
Nobile, Philip. “A Dishonest Book Claims Lincoln as the First Log Cabin Republican,” The Weekly Standard, 10 (January 17, 2005).
Smith, Dinitia. “Finding Homosexual Threads in Lincoln’s Legend,” New York Times, December 16, 2004, B1.
Tripp, C. A. The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Free Press, 2005.

(06-26-2014 05:01 AM)Gene C Wrote:  Lewis, I don't have anything new to offer you about your theories that you haven't heard before, but then you haven't offered us anything new either. To me, your like the Booth Mummy. Nobody believes it's real, the story behind it doesn't add up, but its odd so I kind of want to see it. After you see it, you come away disappointed, mostly in yourself for wasting your time, money and attention on it. Your theories that Lincoln was a homosexual, are like that, it's "carnival side show" history. And then you have the gall to whine and comment that no one will do a systematic rebuttal. Sorry, but I've seen this kind of side show before, and as others have noted, there's nothing of substance to it.

Some of the other things you've commented on have merit, but not this.

(06-26-2014 07:54 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  there are web pages by gays in this mass of stuff

(06-26-2014 06:29 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Lewis, I'm sorry, I've yet read your theories only as far as posted on this thread (but am generally not unfamiliar with the topic and arguments). I have also drawn my personal conclusions on this so far unprovable topic. May I ask - have you (of anyone else) ever investigated what gay men think of the theories of Lincoln being gay?
(I wonder in how far such theories are developed and promoted by people who have personally only little experience and acquaintance with homosexuals and homosexuality. )
Lewis, just to say - this is a serious question, and I would highly appreciate any comment. Thanks!

(06-26-2014 08:19 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  [. Gene: You have some reading to do.

(06-26-2014 09:05 AM)Gene C Wrote:  

(06-26-2014 08:19 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  [. Gene: You have some reading to do.

I've read this that you wrote, and it was enough. Especially part 111, Suggestions in the New Testament that Jesus had a Gay Sex Life
"The New Testamen includes stories of Jesus hanging around with young men wearing only a white cloth and who then get totaly naked."

http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Bible%27s_New_Testament_and_Sex

You're pretty good at taking things out of context and twisting and editing passages into perverted insinuations that clearly aren't there.

(06-01-2014 03:26 PM)Gene C Wrote:  I don't remember anyone mentioning this, but evidently Abraham was not what we would consider an attractive young man.