Was Abraham Lincoln both America’s greatest president and a queer man? A new documentary argues, yes.
Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, out in theaters Sept. 6, aims to be the definitive documentary about Lincoln’s sexuality, featuring excerpts of loaded language in letters and, to put them in context, several scholars of Lincoln and experts on the history of sexuality, particularly in the 19th century.
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The academics featured in the film argue that the former president, who led the United States out of the Civil War, battled an identity crisis throughout his life: he was married because he had to be at the time to advance politically, but he also had intimate relationships with men. (The film has no relation to Oh, Mary!, the Broadway play out now that depicts Lincoln as a closeted gay man.)
Lincoln’s sexuality was perhaps more widely known during his lifetime than it is now. “In the 19th century, people were very familiar with the fact that Lincoln slept with men, and it was not considered shocking,” says John Stauffer, a professor of English and of African and African American Studies, who is featured in the film.
Here’s how Lover of Men makes the case that Lincoln had intimate relationships with men and why this scholarship is not more widely known.
Tracing all of the evidence that Lincoln loved men
Lincoln’s first love is thought to be Billy Greene, who tutored Lincoln in grammar when he moved to New Salem, Illinois in 1831 at the age of 22. They shared a cot together for 18 months, and at one point Greene wrote in a letter that Lincoln’s “thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.”
Scholars in the film argue that Lincoln’s soulmate was Joshua Speed, who owned a general store in Springfield, Illinois. When Lincoln moved there in 1837—as a young lawyer—he was looking for the materials to build a bed and was directed to Speed’s store. He ended up sharing a bed with Speed for four years, even when he reached a point where he could afford a place of his own.
Their letters are cited in the film as proof that they were physically and emotionally intimate. “No two men were ever more intimate,” Speed even said of his relationship with Lincoln. William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, also used the word “intimate” to describe Lincoln’s relationship with Speed, and so did Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln, later in life. Lincoln would sign off letters to Speed with “Yours Forever.”
Lincoln “had a homosexual relationship with Joshua Speed,” says Stauffer, who has written about the Speed-Lincoln correspondences.
However, the relationship didn’t last because, as the scholars argue, in order to make a name for himself in politics, Lincoln had to take a wife. In 1842, he married Mary Todd Lincoln, who came from a well-to-do family.
“There’s no evidence that Mary Todd knew about Lincoln’s intimacy, that carnal intimacy with Joshua Speed, but that was not uncommon,” explains Stauffer. “There were numerous examples of prominent men who have carnal relations with other men and then still have a happy marriage.”
Per the documentary, Lincoln continued relationships with other men after getting married, having children, and becoming president. In 1861, during the first year of his presidency, he took a special interest in a soldier named Elmer Ellsworth, hailing him as “the greatest little man I ever met.” He wrote the war department twice to get Ellsworth promoted as colonel over several qualified West Point alums. Ellsworth was fatally shot on May 24, 1861, in Alexandria, Virginia, while pulling a Confederate flag down from a hotel rooftop, and the scholars in the film describe Lincoln as “inconsolable” afterwards, noting it was unusual for a president to be so taken by a young officer in the Union army.
In the summer of 1862, Lincoln sought refuge in a cottage a few miles from the White House best known as the place where he came up with the outline of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the film, scholars note two sources that said he was sleeping in the same bed as his bodyguard David Derickson—a Nov. 16, 1862, letter from Virginia Woodbury Fox, who hailed from an influential military family, notes there is a soldier in the cottage who is particularly devoted to the President and sleeps with him. And a history of the regiment that protected Lincoln says that in Mary Todd Lincoln’s absence, Derickson slept in the same bed as Lincoln, in the President’s nightshirt. Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, argues that Lincoln’s feelings for Ellsworth and Derickson “probably helped him cope with the various tragedies of the Civil War.”
Why Lincoln’s sexuality isn’t more well-known
One reason Lincoln’s sexuality isn’t talked about is because homosexuality became so taboo in the 20th century. Eugenics was popular, and homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Religious leaders called it a sin. States passed laws making homosexual relationships a crime, and these statutes remained on the books until the 1960s.
That said, letters between Speed and Lincoln have been in the Library of Congress for decades. Scholars of queer history have been talking about Lincoln’s sexuality since the 1970s, when a new LGBTQ+ movement was underway. “Just as the gay liberation movement is underway, there’s a scholarly interest in finding gay people in the past,” says Balcerski.
Seminal works on the topic include Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (2003) by Jonathan Ned Katz and The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (2005) by C.A. Tripp. Tripp’s book was mentioned in a TIME cover story on new research about Lincoln for July 4, 2005. The magazine noted that “for men to share beds in the mid-19th century was as common and as mundane as men sharing houses or apartments in the early 21st.” There weren’t labels for this behavior so “men could be openly affectionate with one another, physically and verbally, without having to stake their identity on it.”
While the idea that Lincoln was queer may not be breaking news to some, it’s notable that this documentary is coming out in theaters at a time when red states are passing anti-trans laws and banning books with openly queer characters from school libraries. Stauffer notes that it’s the perfect moment for the documentary to come out because sexuality has become “an important aspect of culture, whether it’s the culture of politics, the culture of education, and how people live their lives.” There are more entertainers who identify as LGBTQ+, and the internet has helped LGBTQ+ individuals find people like them to socialize with.
The filmmakers hope that people who can accept Lincoln as queer will also be more accepting of other queer people in general. Balcerski cautions against putting a label on Lincoln, but argues, “we can say that Lincoln’s love included men.”
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