Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Rob Wick]

Hello Lewis.

We put far too much emphasis (thanks to Herndon) on whether Ann Rutledge was Lincoln's "greatest" love. She was A love, but I doubt she was his greatest. I wonder whether Lincoln ever had a "greatest" love other than the love he felt for his biological mother. Your attempts to conflate the Rutledge story with whether or not Lincoln's primary erotic response was same-sex are well-laid out in your articles and your decision to work with C.A. Tripp, so I don't want to rehash them here. However, as I've constantly said, you never prove it. There were witnesses in New Salem who were just as credible, although you dismiss them by showing those who never saw evidence of a romance. I would hazard a guess that there were a number of people even in the small hamlet of New Salem who didn't know anything about what their neighbors did behind closed doors. James Randall--actually Ruth, since it was she who wrote "Sifting the Ann Rutledge Evidence" in his biography--constantly had it out for Herndon because he didn't practice what Randall termed "historianship." Randall had a lot of influence in the mid 20th century but John Simon and Douglas Wilson did much to restore Herndon's work, which has been savagely and unfairly criticized here (among other places).

As for Lincoln's sexual orientation, I will leave you with just one question. What does it matter? I don't discount Tripp's thesis because I find homosexuality repugnant (as I've told you in the past). I discount it because it's irrelevant and because there's no direct physical evidence; only a lot of innuendo from a determined advocate for a cause, which is what Tripp was. I would be interested to see where Sandburg and Roy Basler talk about "the sexual problem" given that it could mean what you think, or it could mean the sexual encounters Lincoln had with frontier prostitutes. And I have thoroughly combed Ida Tarbell's papers (which I suggested you or someone else do) and there is no references to her candidly or discretely talking about anything relating to Lincoln's sexual life.

Can you or anyone else show that but for Lincoln's sexual orientation, he would have issued or retracted the Emancipation Proclamation? No. Would he have directed the Civil War differently? No. Whether or not Lincoln's primary erotic response was same-sex is as irrelevant as to whether Lincoln was attracted to flaxen-haired daughters of frontier shopkeepers. It tells us something about who he was, but in the end it tells us very little about who he really was.

Best
Rob