Lincoln and Syphilis

[Rob Wick]

First, let me thank Steve for bringing out the Speed recollections which obviously show that the context was indeed prostitution. I hadn't actually looked at the statement with any detail since Lewis Gannett and I argued back and forth about Tripp's book on Lincoln's alleged homosexuality (Gannett finished editing the book after Tripp's untimely death) on Sam Wheeler's long-defunct forum that he had while working on his doctorate in Carbondale at Southern Illinois University.

However, there is more context to the subject than appeared in Herndon's Informants. In 2016, Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis brought out a book of Herndon's letters on Lincoln. What that shows is the January 5, 1889 date was not the date the interview took place, but rather was the date that Herndon had written Jesse Weik to detail the story. Nowhere in the letter does Herndon ever detail when his interview with Speed was that produced the anecdote. It's likely then that Speed told Herndon this when Herndon originally interviewed him and that Herndon never planned to use it in print.

It's in the same letter that Herndon reports to Weik on the story about Lincoln staying with a gentleman named Cottenbarger in 1850 when Lincoln went to Bloomington for court. This was the incident when Lincoln was sleeping in the same room as Cottenbarger's daughter and her feet hit Lincoln's pillow. "This put the devil into Lincoln at once, thinking that the girl did this of a purpose. Lincoln reached up his hand and put it where it ought not to be." (Herndon to Jesse Weik, January 5, 1889 in Herndon on Lincoln: Letters, University of Illinois Press, 2016, pg. 296). By the way, Herndon told Weik that Lincoln also told the story to James Matheny and Milton Hay, and all three remembered the story the same way.

Herndon's relation of this story goes more to show how mortified Lincoln was when Cottenbarger's daughter got out of the bed to tell her mother what Lincoln had done, and not how randy Lincoln could be, even as a married man. Lincoln, according to this story, was concerned that Cottenbarger would find out and attack Lincoln.

If one reads the footnote that Wilson and Davis provide, one immediately learns the context for both stories. "It may be doubted that WHH was serious about including these salacious anecdotes in the impending new edition of their biography. A more likely possibility suggested by his considerable frustration at this stage, is that he offered such obviously objectionable anecdotes as a taunt to protest his collaborator's unwillingness to accept most of the changes or additions WHH had requested in the course of reading proof." (Ibid, pg. 297).

So this shines a new light on this whole situation. Herndon had to have gotten the first story from Speed, and it had to have come to him during the 1865-66 interviews, but at that time Herndon had no intention of ever using it in public and didn't even write it down. If you look at the way Herndon relates it, the level of detail is evidence that it indeed happened if Herndon's goal was only to tell Weik "look at what I know that I could put in if I so chose." Add to that the fact that Herndon says Matheny and Hay can verify the facts of the second story because Lincoln told it to all three (and that could be verified or discounted rather easily by contact with the two; Matheny didn't die until 1890 while Hay lived to 1893).

I come back to my same contention as of earlier. Why did Speed tell Herndon this? If Speed didn't tell Herndon, why did Herndon lie? After all, the second story would have been forceful enough to make Herndon's point ala Wilson and Davis.

The books Weik wrote after Herndon's death were done in many ways to refute some of what Herndon wrote. In a letter to Ida Tarbell on November 8, 1899, Weik told Tarbell in relation to Caroline Hanks Hitchcock's study of the Hanks genealogy, "Mr. Herndon who had investigated the subject almost forty years before Mrs. Hitchcock's researches began and who obviously knew a good deal about it said more than I would and more than I wanted him to tell." In the same letter, Weik later wrote "Mr. Herndon was given free rein to say what he knew about Lincoln's mother; but in the next Appleton edition, which was published after his death and which underwent some amendments at my hands you will find that the unpleasant reference to Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, has been eliminated. That represents my notion as to the propriety of continuing the controversy. In my opinion, no good can come of it and therefore the sooner it ceases the better."

So one can clearly see that Herndon and Weik had their philosophical differences, which lends credence to Wilson and Douglas's interpretation of why Herndon related the material to Weik in the first place. Michael Burlingame brought out a new edition of Weik's book that helps to put things into context better than the original can.

Best
Rob