Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-24-2014 10:30 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Hi Lewis,

To your question of what kind of sex life AL led up to his marriage? I have no idea. I will be the first to admit that I don't have enough knowledge about that period of his life. I agree with you that he probably was not celibate. And yes...his humor definitely had a strongly sexual bent. He loved talking about sex. In one of his letters to Mary during the period he served in Congress in the late 1840's(she had returned to Lexington) he gleefully regales her with gossip about the prostitutes in the Capitol ("our girls") and which of his colleagues were visiting them and coming away with "altered" parts.(The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, pgs#142-143 Daniel Mark Epstein)

The seeming ease and lack of embarrassment with which this Victorian couple discussed sex and intimate body functions was unusual for their time. During their WH years, Mary wrote to him from NYC where she was vacationing with Tad and Lizzie Keckley to complain about a difficult menstrual cycle she'd had. (MTL: Her Life and Letters, pgs #139-140 Justin Turner and Linda Leavitt Turner)

A book allegedly comprised of oral testimony of a Black domestic of the Lincolns named Mariah Vance has been largely discredited as unreliable by historians. (Lincolns Unknown Private Life, Lloyd Ostendorfer) This is the book that claims that AL was secretly baptized after he was elected President. I read the book years ago and dismissed most of what I read..it just didn't sound like AL at all.

But there was one anecdote that stood out in my mind. AL hurried home from his law office to be with Mary during a thunderstorm. At the time she was pregnant with Tad. She was in a back bedroom of their Springfield home with her head under the covers. He(according to the maid) told her to get her head from underneath the blankets unless she was going to make herself useful while she was under there. The crude remark was designed to shock her and make her so angry that she would forget her terror...which is precisely what happened. She flew shrieking and pounding at him with her fists, while he laughed uproariously, lifting her into his arms and kissing her.

Not sure if this story is true, but it's a perfect example of the type of humor he was known for. As far as sex, he sounds far from a novice and was apparently refreshingly open minded for his time. But just like so much of this man's life, the issue of whether or not he was at least bi-sexual will remain a mystery unless something new and unexpected pops up.

I think the Lincolns probably had a better marriage than they're often given credit for, especially by Burlingame, who clearly despises MTL, unreasonably I'd say. They had 4 children, lost two before Lincoln was murdered. And they held it together as best they could despite the unimaginable pressures of that wartime presidency. I like your comments about L.'s earthy sense of humor, his & Mary's unVictorian candor with each other. With regard to what we think we know and what will remain a mystery unless new evidence turns up. You say that the bisexuality theory lacks sufficient proof to be credible. What about the Rutledge story--is the proof credible? How do we decide what's credible? This is what I love about history. Coming to conclusions is a lot murkier than one might at first think.