Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-30-2014 11:22 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Lewis, I am curious if you have an opinion about Lincoln's life on the circuit. I did read Dr. Tripp's book, but that was around 8 or 9 years ago, and I have forgotten if "the circuit" is addressed. Although Herndon did not travel the circuit often he apparently did on at least a few occasions. One thing Herndon says is that he once slept with 20 men in the same room. I realize the group was not always this large, but I think if Lincoln were looking for "opportunities" the circuit would have been one major place to look as he spent 20+ weeks absent from home each year traveling with other men. I know some of the men noted that Lincoln did not go home on weekends when the others did, but as far as I know, none ever said Lincoln was interested in other males in a sexual sense. Did Dr. Tripp comment on Lincoln's circuit riding days?

I've wondered about this. In his book Tripp doesn't get into sexual opportunities on the circuit and I don't recall that we ever discussed it. Those crowded hostelry rooms couldn't have provided much of a venue; although stranger things have happened. There's one passage somewhere in HI from a former circuit rider who mentioned that Lincoln would sometimes slip away from his colleagues to wander around on his own. Of course, this was the barely tamed Wild West, dusty & empty, the towns were tiny, there couldn't have been much to see or many to meet. But who knows? Henry Whitney was a young circuit rider to whom Lincoln took a liking. It was he who recalled that Lincoln "over and over again" compared "sexual contact" to "the harp of a thousand strings." This suggests an expansive attitude about sex, beyond the confines of marriage. Was Lincoln trying to tell Whitney something? Evidently! But what, exactly? Whitney wrote a memoir, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, in which he said that it was as if Lincoln "wooed me to close intimacy and familiarity" (p. 54). I suspect that this probably meant what it sounds like it means. You mention that Lincoln unlike his colleagues tended not to go home on weekends. The colleagues noticed this. Judge David Davis discussed it with Herndon & made a remark about domestic unhappiness (I'm too lazy to look it up just now). This is of course prime evidence for those who like to talk about a wobbly marriage. Something kept Lincoln out on the circuit in crude lodgings with bad food when the others went home to the missus. One could write a novel about it. But there's not much there there for the historian.