Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Gene C]

(06-24-2014 11:27 AM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  I am surprised that AL had a friend like this man. I wonder what Lincoln would have had to say about "Billy's" post-assassination treatment of his widow?

I know what I'd say. And......this reminds me of a song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY4jondX6tg

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-24-2014 11:27 AM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Hi Lewis-

Wow..I am floored. This is the first time I have heard or read that Herndon knew Ann Rutledge personally...fascinating.

Like Laurie, I don't like Herndon. In fact I loathe him. He sounded like a vicious, cruel bully. His comments about Mary possibly having something to do with the deaths of her own children have also implanted the idea in my mind that he was psychologically unbalanced due to years of alcohol abuse.

I am surprised that AL had a friend like this man. I wonder what Lincoln would have had to say about "Billy's" post-assassination treatment of his widow?

Here's the key Billy Herndon quote:

From Herndon's Life of Lincoln, Da Capo ed., pp. 105-106:

"I knew Miss Rutledge myself, as well as her father and other members of the family, and have been personally acquainted with every one of the score or more of witnesses whom I at one time or another interviewed on this delicate subject.... My father was a politician and an extensive stock dealer in that early day, and he and Mr. Rutledge were great friends."

Again: The idea that AL & AR had a doomed romance unbeknownst to Herndon until after AL's death is completely implausible. Herndon had long been obsessed with L. He'd long known all the self-professed witnesses. Why did he frame the romance as a major new discovery? I don't think it was simply a way to get MTL's goat, or an alcoholic rant, or jealousy because he himself adored AL. Here's what I think. Herndon in all probability had heard that Lincoln had gone a little haywire in the late summer of 1835. He'd probably also heard that Lincoln had expressed sorrow about AR's death. But he probably hadn't made too much of it. Why? Because the more credible of the New Salem informants (e.g., Elizabeth Abell) professed no personal knowledge of AL-AR romance, and those who did claim knowledge were suspect, some of them--William "Slick Willy" Greene, for example--highly suspect. By the way, Hannah Armstrong had nothing at all to say about Rutledge romance. (Michael Burlingame's claim to the contrary is based on a weirdly flimsy newspaper quote from a daughter of Hannah's published in I think 1930. This is what you call desperate evidence. Almost unbelievably iffy evidence, given the myths that by then were carrying such a load of rubbish in popular culture.) OK, back to the point. If Herndon didn't have grounds to buy the romance, why did he make a huge deal of it less than a year after Lincoln was slain? My opinion probably won't be popular here, but what the heck. I think that Herndon wanted to give Lincoln a girlfriend. Why? Mary Owens notwithstanding, Lincoln didn't much go for the girls in New Salem: he really, really didn't, credible informants attested (Douglas Wilson, of all scholars, and by the way I much admire him, makes this very plain in "Women," Chapter Four of Honor's Voice). I also think that Herndon wanted to dilute the fact that Lincoln was highly "sex-minded." Why? Herndon felt duty-bound to protect Lincoln from charges that he found sexual & romantic fulfillment with men. What better way to tamp down discussion of THAT hair-raising idea than to portray Lincoln as indifferent to sexual romance in general? If this is what Herndon set out to do--I'm 97% sure that it was--he succeeded brilliantly.

[L Verge]

I am thoroughly enjoying this thread. I am a novice in early Lincoln studies, but from the first I instinctively disliked Herndon. Some of the points being made here seem to support my instinct for disliking him! I also appreciate that some of the Burlingame bubbles are being pricked also.

[Gene C]

Well you had me cheering you on Lewis, until those last few sentences.

I politely, but strongly disagree with you.

[LincolnToddFan]

Interesting. I don't know where I read this, but another author made an excellent point about the idea that AL might not have been heterosexual . He pointed out that if there had been even the slightest indication that he was somehow effeminate, his (many) political enemies would have taken the ball and run with it. They would have had a virtual field day with that sort of information.

Look at what Thomas Jefferson's political opponents did with the rumors that he had a slave mistress and children with her.. They were merciless, brutal.

With Lincoln, there was never even an idea planted in the anti-Lincoln press during his lifetime that his sexual orientation was anything other than heterodox. The fact that he was not a skirt chaser and was awkward with the ladies does not automatically mean he was gay. So instead, his enemies got mileage out of rumors that he was illegitimate or even-gasp! racially mixed.

Lincoln was in love with the world of ideas. His intellect and his imagination are what seemed to drive him. In our own time, when everything and everyone is defined by how they come across sexually, it is even more difficult than usual to understand a man like Abraham Lincoln.

None of us can know for sure, but I don't believe he was gay. The evidence simply isn't there.

[STS Lincolnite]

(06-24-2014 06:19 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Lincoln was in love with the world of ideas. His intellect and his imagination are what seemed to drive him. In our own time, when everything and everyone is defined by how they come across sexually, it is even more difficult than usual to understand a man like Abraham Lincoln.

None of us can know for sure, but I don't believe he was gay. The evidence simply isn't there.

Very well said. I couldn't agree more.

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-24-2014 05:26 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I am thoroughly enjoying this thread. I am a novice in early Lincoln studies, but from the first I instinctively disliked Herndon. Some of the points being made here seem to support my instinct for disliking him! I also appreciate that some of the Burlingame bubbles are being pricked also.

L Verge, I'm curious. Why the remark about Burlingame bubbles? For myself, I find him puzzling. He's a meticulous scholar in many ways but seems to have blind spots a mile wide.

---

(06-24-2014 05:46 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Well you had me cheering you on Lewis, until those last few sentences.

I politely, but strongly disagree with you.

Gene C, Thanks for your candor & politeness. For what it's worth, I was quite skeptical when I first saw the "gay" Lincoln hypothesis. I thought it was gay lib gone overboard: and full disclosure, I'm gay. I also helped C. A. Tripp prepare the "gay Lincoln" book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. Tripp enlisted my help despite the fact that I had a lot questions, some of them hostile. Long story short, it took me a while to see a picture different from what I'd expected. One of the things that fascinated me is the extremely touchy way that Lincoln scholarship, for a long time now, has approached the subject of Lincoln's love life. For example, I was floored when I learned that Carl Sandburg and Roy Basler (ed. of the Collected Works) had quiet conversations about what they called the "sex problem." It's been a major problem. But one that, for understandable reasons, has rarely surfaced in mainstream Lincoln Studies.

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-24-2014 06:19 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Interesting. I don't know where I read this, but another author made an excellent point about the idea that AL might not have been heterosexual . He pointed out that if there had been even the slightest indication that he was somehow effeminate, his (many) political enemies would have taken the ball and run with it. They would have had a virtual field day with that sort of information.

Look at what Thomas Jefferson's political opponents did with the rumors that he had a slave mistress and children with her.. They were merciless, brutal.

With Lincoln, there was never even an idea planted in the anti-Lincoln press during his lifetime that his sexual orientation was anything other than heterodox. The fact that he was not a skirt chaser and was awkward with the ladies does not automatically mean he was gay. So instead, his enemies got mileage out of rumors that he was illegitimate or even-gasp! racially mixed.

Lincoln was in love with the world of ideas. His intellect and his imagination are what seemed to drive him. In our own time, when everything and everyone is defined by how they come across sexually, it is even more difficult than usual to understand a man like Abraham Lincoln.

None of us can know for sure, but I don't believe he was gay. The evidence simply isn't there.

LincolnToddFan,

You make a good point: why didn't Lincoln's enemies attack him for "being gay"? His predecessor, James Buchanan, got heat for his bachelorhood and his close friendship with William Rufus de Vane King. I think the word "molly" was publicly tossed around--which is interesting, because some scholars argue that homosexuality as we now know it didn't exist back then. David Herbert Donald, a terrific Lincoln scholar, claimed that homosexuality was rare in the American 19th century. I have trouble with aspects of this thinking--the West was overwhelmingly male and young, with few available females. Sure, lots of prostitutes, but that required money and going to town. Evidence is emerging that, in fact, the frontier was pretty darn gay. No surprise; think of what happens in prisons, boarding schools, and back in the day (no kidding), pirate ships. The point though is that the public seems to have had a surprisingly realistic awareness of same-sex sex. Given that, why didn't people make fun of Abe & Joshua sharing a bed for four years? It's a legitimate question. William Hanchett, one of the foremost scholars of the assassination, discusses the issue in a series of articles in the Lincoln Herald, "Abraham Lincoln and the Tripp Thesis." To my mind Hanchett doesn't fully solve it (he's extremely astute on other issues, however, very much worth reading). I have a hunch. Lincoln was so formidable a physical presence that few who knew him could have imagined him as "effeminate." But that doesn't get us very far, I concede. So it's an open question: if, as Tripp argues, Lincoln carried on sexually with other males from youth into his presidency (with Capt. David Derickson at the White House, for example), where was the scandal? One possible answer: nobody had any proof. Well, the obvious rejoinder is that there's STILL no proof! I'd dispute that claim but won't get into now. Here's a question for you. What did Lincoln do for sexual companionship until his marriage at the somewhat late age of 33? Was he celibate? (David Donald actually floated this odd possibility.) To reiterate, Lincoln was famously allergic to the company of unattached women. The two prostitute stories are unconvincing, by the way. And what of his legendarily "dirty" sense of humor? No getting around it: the man loved to tell jokes about sex. Was he a case of all talk, no action? That seems unlikely. OK, let's go to the bridge: Does any of this matter? Maybe not very much. To me, though, there's one reason the general issue has ended up mattering a lot: I got tired of hearing senior Lincoln scholars ridicule the Tripp hypothesis when most of those scholars well know that the subject has long been privately discussed by some of the biggest names in Lincoln historiography. It's an old hidden sore spot in Lincoln Studies: and all the bigwigs know it. However, there's a problem with taking it seriously. To the extent that Tripp is right is the extent to which the Lincoln establishment is not merely wrong, but hugely, spectacularly wrong. That's a major problem. I'll leave you with my own personal pet bombshell. The scholarly rehab of the Rutledge story, which kicked off in 1990 with articles by John Y. Simon and Douglas L. Wilson, wasn't checked for flaws. The Lincoln establishment gave it a free pass. After nearly half a century of academic exile, Ann Rutledge almost overnight was reinstalled as Lincoln's great love. No one said boo despite Randall's thorough 1945 demolition. This is weird, my friends. Very strange indeed. Lincoln scholars don't customarily hand out free passes to new interpretations that knock aside decades of consensus. At the least, they debate. They talk it over. Some fight; lots of scholars hate paradigm shifts. But there was no dissent. Not a peep! Why? My answer in brief: the long-repressed gay hypothesis had been bubbling up since the advent of gay scholarship in the 1970s, and many Lincolnists didn't at all mind Lincoln getting a girlfriend. How's that for provocative?

[LincolnToddFan]

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.

[Gene C]

Lewis, I think you're a very intelligent person and you have reached some interesting conclusions. I just don't agree with your previous post. Your arguments are to full of speculation. You take small bits of truth and blow them out of context. I could just as easily make an erroneous and perverted assumption about Lincoln based upon the fact that he frequently had his son sleep with him, then toss in a few comments from his letters about how much he misses and loves his boys to help prove my point.

You made this comment about Burlingame "He's a meticulous scholar in many ways but seems to have blind spots a mile wide."
Bless your heart, but I've reached the same conclusion about you.

[LincolnToddFan]

Tad did not sleep with his father until 1862. The reason was that Tad was grieving for Willie as intensely as his parents were and would awake in the night crying for him. The child's mother had suffered what sounds like a severe emotional breakdown and could not tend to his needs. AL-on top of his other crushing burdens-was left as the sole caretaker of his youngest child. He was a tender, indulgent parent. It might have been unusual to have a child Tad's age still sleeping with a parent but under the circumstances I don't see anything remotely twisted about it.

There is some evidence that AL and Mary continued to at least occasionally share a bed during their WH years. A military aide named Charles Derickson visited the Soldier's Home in the summer of 1863 to deliver a message to Lincoln in the middle of the night, and saw Mary in bed beside him....no Tad anywhere in sight.(Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldier's Home, Matthew Pinsker)

Ironically Cpt. Charles Derickson was the son of the very same David Derickson around whom so much speculation swirls regarding AL's possible gay sexual orientation. Charles Derickson interacted frequently with the Lincolns during the three summers they spent at the Soldier's Home. According to Matthew Pinsker, he came away convinced of a devoted, loving couple.

[Gene C]

I appreciate your comments, I was just trying to show how easy it is to take things out of context.

[LincolnToddFan]

Oh, okay. I misunderstood. Thanks Gene-

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-24-2014 11:27 AM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  I am surprised that AL had a friend like this man.

(I yesterday misssed to follow the recent development of this thread, just skimmed it now, and hope I won't repeat something I overread in haste.)

It depends on what you call a friend. D. Donald in his "We are Lincoln Men" examined Lincoln's kind of "friendships" to several men based on Arestotele's typology of friendship distincting three basic kinds: "enjoyable" (for pleasure driven from each other's company), "useful" (each party has something to gain ny associating with the other), and "perfect" or "complete" friendships. The last category includes free sharing of ideas, hopes, wishes, ambitions, and fears. If I remember correctly (and this makes sense to me), Donald put only Speed into this last category, all other "friends", including Herndon were useful or enjoyable friends, or both, but not "complete" ones. Herndon and Lincoln were mainly linked to each other due to their law partnership and political interests both being Whigs.
Though Lincoln never explained his choice of Herndon, one can assume several reasons. He knew him well as Herndon, too, clerked in Speed's store, slept there in the same room with Speed and Lincoln, and participated in the discussions around the stove. Both were "Young Men's Lyceum" members.
Lincoln recognized that Herndon was "a laborious, studious young man...far informed on almost all subjects than I have ever been" - and Lincoln sure believed to benefit from that. (Herndon collected one of the best private libraries in Springfield.) Also A. L. wanted to be the senior this time, plus watching Herndon study and being aware of his own deficiencies as an office manager, Lincoln hoped Herndon would be more efficient in keeping books and track of a firm's business (turned out to be wrong). One other reason was most likely a political one, a split had developed in the Whig party between the "aristocratic", established leadership (to which N. W. Edwards belonged and Lincoln due to his marriage was associated with) and the "Young Turks" (to which Herndon belonged) who wanted a more democratic party that appealed to the masses. Through Herndon Lincoln seeked a connection to this part of the party. That the friendship was not a complete one is obvious as Herndon found him "incommunicative - silent, reticent - secretive" and "the most shut-mouthed man". "He was the great big man of our firm and I was the little one. The little one looked naturally up to the big one." Does that sound like an even friendship? Rather a useful and partly enjoyable one (as for the shared interest in discussing and literature). Also Herndon had no sense of humor.

As for friendships Donald BTW suspected that for at least the last part of his marriage there was an intimacy Lincoln did not find elsewhere.

Another BTW: One reason for which I personally don't believe A. L. was gay (though who knows) is that most gay men are extremely aware and concerned about their outward appearance, and are less interested in telling and sharing the kind of anecdotes and stories Lincoln enjoyed to tell.

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Eva-

Your last sentence has me completely confused...an intimacy AL found with Herndon in the last part of his marriage? In the last five years of the Lincoln marriage AL was campaigning for the presidency and/or living in the White House. He didn't see that much of Herndon in the last years of his life.

Did I misunderstand what you wrote? Thanks-