Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Lewis Gannett]

Did somebody use the word "prejudice"? Everybody makes generalizations based on personal experience. It's unavoidable: how else do we try to understand the world? But personal experience can also be a limitation. So, in a way, we come full circle on this particular topic. The challenge for historians is to recognize that historical reality isn't necessarily what their experience has predisposed them to see.

[Eva Elisabeth]

"Stereotype" might have been the better expression. However.
Could you give me an argument for "Lincoln was gay" which could not be interpreted as rooting in a stereotype?
BTW, isn't stereotype a feature (like telling jokes) and prejudice the conlusion (he was/wasn't gay) drawn upon stereotypes?

[Lewis Gannett]

I don't think anyone can try to identify Lincoln as gay based on stereotypes. He wasn't at all effeminate, etc. To look at it another way, does any of the evidence that Lincoln had sex affairs with men point to stereotypical gay behavior? I'm drawing a blank on that one.

[LincolnToddFan]

Right after the Tripp book came out, there was dinner table gossip among some friends of mine about Lincoln's stereotypical gay traits. Like many of my male friends who are homosexual, he had a strained relationship with his father but revered his mother(and stepmother). His stepmother said he didn't like girls. He adored cats. He had a high pitched voiced. I kid you not...this was the "evidence" that convinced them above all others. Even when I pointed them toward documentation that Lincoln was a passionate animal lover period, not just cats. As if ALL gay men prefer cats!

He was one of those people that both men and women were drawn to and fell in love with.( Even though, other than Ann Rutledge and Mary Todd, I can't think of any women who were in love with Lincoln...if anyone else can, let me know)

As Eva pointed out, he was sloppy and disorganized in his appearance and his surroundings despite MTL's ceaseless efforts to give him polish. He had a dirty, I do mean dirty sense of humor. He was probably a military genius, adept at the exclusively male art of war. He did not enjoy physical labor, but was outstanding at it when he needed to be. He had at least one serious love affair and several intense crushes on women before he met his wife.

My reason for pointing all this out is that Abraham Lincoln does not fit either stereotype for males(gay or straight). The man was an original, period.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-29-2014 02:24 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  ...does any of the evidence that Lincoln had sex affairs with men...

As I once said, I've never payed much attention to this topic. Just curious now - is there indeed any real evidence that Lincoln had sex affairs with men? Could you give one example? (Sorry if I overread it somewhere.)

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Eva,

Lewis is better informed on this subject than I am. But my answer to your question would be that there is speculation that AL had affairs with men. I cannot think of anything that could be called hard evidence.

There IS irrefutable evidence that he engaged in heterosexual sex.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Toia. This is what has so far been known to me, too. (I was a bit astonished that I've never come across such evidence as I assumed knowledge of such would have spread widely.)

[David Lockmiller]

(06-28-2014 05:07 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  I must back up a bit in my reply to David Lockmiller, who wrote:

Yet, Professor David Herbert Donald states in his Pulitzer Prize winning book Lincoln at page 57: "[Lincoln] told Mrs. Bennett Abell, with whom he was staying, 'that he could not bare [sic] the idea of its raining on her grave.'"

As David says, it is indeed true that Donald, in Lincoln, endorsed the academic revival of the Ann Rutledge story. Absolutely true, and I apologize for casting doubt on David's observation. But there's a major twist here: Donald had changed his mind, and then changed it again. In his very first book, Lincoln's Herndon, his justly celebrated bio of Herndon, he ridiculed the Rutledge story, in Lincoln he reversed himself and accepted the story, and in "We Are Lincoln Men" he once again rejected it. (Incidentally: he gave Tripp partial credit for the final rejection.) Why did Donald go back and forth? That's way too complicated to get into here. The main point is that, after much thinking, David Donald concluded that the Rutledge story didn't happen, and based that conclusion to a large degree on Elizabeth Abell's statement that she knew nothing about a Lincoln/Rutledge love affair.

Then, if there was not a strong love relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, what possible explanation would Lincoln have made to Elizabeth Abell as to why "her (Ann's) death was a great shock to him." Elizabeth Arbell made this observation which continues as follows: "I never seen a man mourn for a companion more than he did for her[;] he made a remark one day when it was raining that he could not bare the idea of its raining on her Grave." Herndon's Informants at page 557.

You say that both you and "Flip-Flop" David Donald have "concluded that the Rutledge story didn't happen, and base[] that conclusion to a large degree on Elizabeth Abell's statement that she knew nothing about a Lincoln/Rutledge love affair." The exact words used by Elizabeth Abell in answer to Herndon's third question are these: "[T]he Courtship between him and Miss Rutledge I can say but little." Herndon's Informants at page 556. At least Elizabeth Abell knew that there was a "Courtship between [Mr. Abraham Lincoln] and Miss Rutledge." You and "Flip-Flop" Donald, in the end, will not even admit that.

There's an old saying that I believe is applicable here: "There are none so blind as those that will not see."

[Gene C]

(06-28-2014 10:30 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  Hi Gene. Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Douglas L. Wilson & Rodney O. Davis, eds.) appeared in 1998, five years after John Evangelist Walsh published The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Ann Rutledge Legend. It therefore doesn't appear in Walsh's bibliography.

My mistake, and a careless one at that. Herndon is listed in the bibliography, but not Herndon's Informants. Thanks for correcting my error.

---

(06-29-2014 04:25 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  He had a dirty, I do mean dirty sense of humor.

I have heard he told a few smutty jokes or stories, but do you remember where you might have read this?

[LincolnToddFan]

Gene, I gave an example(a few posts up) by his response when he came home during a storm and found his terrified wife with her head under the covers, and there are a couple of other explicit "jokes" that I remember in the course of many years of Lincoln studies.

But there is no way I will be repeating them here...on a Sunday no less!

ETA: The description of his humor as decidedly dirty is just my own opinion...others might not feel the same way.

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-29-2014 05:22 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(06-29-2014 02:24 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  ...does any of the evidence that Lincoln had sex affairs with men...

As I once said, I've never payed much attention to this topic. Just curious now - is there indeed any real evidence that Lincoln had sex affairs with men? Could you give one example? (Sorry if I overread it somewhere.)

I don't fully understand how this posting system works. Sometimes I don't see posts until a couple days after they appear. That's the case with Eva's post, above, and Toia's reply to it.

About "real evidence" that Lincoln had sex affairs with men. There's no smoking-gun evidence so far discovered, and I'd be willing to bet money that none ever turns up. Instead, there's a collection of verifiable items related to Lincoln's life that, taken together, suggest that he was sexually drawn to men. How strong is this evidence? Ah! Good question! You won't be surprised to hear that it depends on who's looking at the evidence. Some people check out the various items and very quickly see bisexuality. Others look at the same evidence and see no such thing. Does that surprise you, given what I've been going on about here for the last week or so? Honest: it's true: this is what fascinates me about the Lincoln sexuality debate. Like I've been saying about the Rutledge debate: How is it possible that even trained historians can examine precisely the same body of evidence and from it draw radically different conclusions?

I'm not going to run through the whole bisexuality case. It would take too much time, typing in these little boxes isn't fun, etc. Eva, the best way to see the evidence is to read C. A. Tripp's book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, Free Press, 2005. It has a lot of interesting material about Lincoln's life and personality aside from sex & romance. I think it's a reasonably fun read. But then, I'm biased, given that I'm credited as "editor" on the title page. Jean Baker wrote the excellent Introduction. Michael Burlingame supplied a vigorous dissent, which appears in an Afterword. Michael Chesson, UMass/Boston history professor emeritus, provided a spirited Afterword in support of Tripp's argument. Chesson, incidentally, is rather conservative, married with kids, a church deacon, a captain in the Navy Reserve, a Pulitzer finalist I think twice, he won two prestigious prizes for books on Southern history, he's a Richmond native, blah blah blah, and he's a friend of mine. Actually he was one of my professors in grad school at UMass. So, there's my advertisement for and duly diligent full disclosure about the Tripp book. I really think that you should buy it and tell all of your friends to buy it, and maybe start a book club: ha ha. Funny!

I'll give you a quick thumbnail sketch of two items of evidence and then you're on your own.

Some people think that the most sensational item is a diary entry a D.C. socialite named Virginia Woodbury Fox made on Nov. 16, 1862: "Tish says, '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!" The soldier in question was Captain David Derickson, commander of a detachment of Pennsylvania soldiers who guarded the both White House and the presidential summer retreat at the "Soldiers' Home," an enclave of buildings located some miles outside of Washington. Derickson & Lincoln hit it off. As Virginia Fox noted, they sometimes slept together when Mary Lincoln was out of town. Well, what of it? The detail about Mary being away is interesting. The Lincolns mostly used separate bedrooms at the White House because Lincoln sometimes conferred with staff in the middle of the night, and also because Mary (some scholars think) had sustained injuries giving birth to Tad and had therefore given up conjugal relations. So: if Derickson's occasional sleepovers with Lincoln were purely chaste, as some have claimed, why make it a practice only when Mary was away?

There's more about Derickson. In 1895 his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Chamberlin, published a regimental history that included an account of Derickson's unit. Chamberlin wrote, "Captain Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the President's confidence and esteem that in Mrs. Lincoln's absence he frequently spent the night at his [Soldiers' Home] cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and--it is said--making use of his Excellency's night-shirt! Thus began an intimacy which continued unbroken until the following spring, when Captain Derickson was appointed provost marshall of the Nineteenth Pennsylvania District, with head-quarters in Meadville." Note the "in Mrs. Lincoln's absence." Now, some people have argued--David Donald among them--that Chamberlin never would have gone on about Derickson sleeping with Lincoln if there had been even the slightest hint of scandal to it. Oh yeah? Hmm. That's open to question. Who knows what any of these people thought about the significance of the sleeping arrangement? In any case, we have two independent accounts of a sleeping arrangement when Mary was away. OK: So what? I'll speak for myself. I think Lincoln and Derickson probably had a sexual affair--and astonishingly enough, were fairly reckless about it. Even with the wise precaution of not sharing the bed when Mary was around.

Nobody has disputed the authenticity of these texts. Nobody has convincingly explained why two grown men chose to sleep together. It wasn't for lack of bedrooms; the White House had plenty and so did the "cottage," which was a large house. Lincoln didn't need a replacement bed warmer on cold nights when Mary was away because he mostly didn't share his bed with Mary anyway. As mentioned, this isn't a smoking gun. But it's suggestive.

Then there's a whole bunch of other, admittedly less dramatic stuff. To my mind the general relationship with Joshua Speed stands out. I think the correspondence between Lincoln & Speed is very telling; the most telling thing of all, actually. And everybody's heard about the four-year bed sharing above the Springfield store. Critics scoff that it was normal to share beds back then because mattresses were expensive. But for four years? Also, there was a second bed in that room above the store. Herndon sometimes occupied it, another store employee named Charles Hurst sometimes slept in it. But Lincoln & Speed often had the room to themselves. When they did, neither apparently made use of the second bed. Oh and by the way: you know the story about Lincoln arriving penniless in Springfield, too poor to buy his own bed. Generous Speed, a stranger, on the spot offered to share his bed with the sad-looking newcomer whose saddlebags contained all of his worldly possessions? We've all heard that story. It's not entirely a true story. Lincoln owned a real-estate lot in Springfield & sold it shortly after arrival for a tidy sum. Make of that what you will. The real-estate facts have been readily available to scholars for nearly a hundred years. So why do we constantly hear about how Lincoln couldn't afford a bed? You know, stuff like this really starts to add up after a while.

What do you think, Eva? Let me know. I'm curious.

[RJNorton]

(06-30-2014 01:44 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  and also because Mary (some scholars think) had sustained injuries giving birth to Tad and had therefore given up conjugal relations.

Jean Baker is among those who disagree. Her reasoning is on p. 228 of her Mary bio.

[Gene C]

(06-30-2014 01:44 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  . I think the correspondence between Lincoln & Speed is very telling; the most telling thing of all, actually. And everybody's heard about the four-year bed sharing above the Springfield store. Critics scoff that it was normal to share beds back then because mattresses were expensive. But for four years?

Your scaring me Lewis, I know people who let their dog sleep with them, and their mattress is over four years old.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Lewis, I now remember the Derickson "story". When I read of this I assumed they shared one bed as A. L. did with Speed and others as it was not unusual in those days. At all, my first thought when reading about the "gay theory" was that someone was seeking for (selling? gaining fame by?) another sensation as people love that, especially the slippery or romantic ones.

I could give you an explaination for the "why-only-when-Mary-was-away", even with the background of shared bedrooms (didn't they already have shared bedrooms in Sprinfield after the house remodeling as it was a fashion of those days?). But most likely you would consider it far-fetched due to wishful thinking. But I don't mind whether Lincoln was gay or not, what concerns me (same goes for the Rutledge story) is what, in case such suspicions and claims are untrue, they do to the "victims" (A. L. and family) and their reputation. What would they think and feel if they knew about this? Would it have hurt their feelings? Would it be just and rightful towards them to spread such claims unless there was unchallengeable, 100% proven evidence, especially as they can't "defend" themselves anymore? This is probably a difficult point regarding political correctness - as if one says it might be harmful to suspect someone being gay (whereas suspecting someone being straight would most likely not be considered harmful) such discriminates gay people.

Well, I've never been interested in reading Tripp's book (like I've never been interested in reading M. Burlingame's "Inner World"), but I begin to work up curiousity.

[Gene C]

"It's amazing what you can find, that isn't there, when you're looking for it."
P. T. Barnum

Actually he never said that. But he would have if he'd thought of it.