Sometimes the force of preconception to provide bias is really rather staggering. I read an article about Lincolns relationship from age 28 to 32 with a man that was provoking in the amazing blind spots that the preconceived assumption that our Presidents were all hetro-sexual seemed to render onto this person's ability to see the obvious. I suggest you first read this article with at least the consideration that in that day and age closeness between men was accepted but Gayness was not. Certainly one could not have career success, economic success or political success as an out Gay person. Thus the choice was to enter a marriage of convenience and then have a fairly non-sexual marriage, and/or to carry on one's actual sex life outside of the marriage. For someone with integrity the entrance into a marriage of convenience probably also meant to enter into a sort of voluntary celibacy.
http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/print_only/did-abraham-lincoln-s-bromance-alter-the-course-of-american/article_8de9157d-f89f-52a4-a354-751780643fac.html
While I certainly buy the idea that in that day and age people could not always afford their own beds, that such were more of a luxuery and that often family members or friends shared a bed, so take that as a more minor piece of evidence in this story - I think the timing of both Lincoln's depression and his friend Joshua's speaks volumes. After living together for years and sharing a very, by all accounts, emotionally intimate relationship - they encourage each other to try to find women to marry. Lincoln first accomplishes this becoming engaged to Mary Todd, meeting her in 1839 two years into his relationship with Joshua, becoming engaged in 1840 a little after a year from meeting her and breaking off the engagement on Jan 1st of 1841 6 months later. It takes him almost two years from the broken engagement to actually marry her.
As our author points out, Lincoln becomes engaged as his friend plans to move away to take care of his father's estate. One could argue that in the face of being about to lose his friend and enter a marriage of convinence Lincoln facing this as a choice not congruent with his heart, breaks off the engagement and sinks into a depression about the poor set of choices before him as a gay man. Speed leaves and becomes almost immediately engaged to a woman he has just met (reads as a rebound to me.) But he upon becoming engaged also becomes depressed. I see two men for whom the enormity of marriage presents a final seperation of their relationship creating depression in both men.
Speed has moved to Louisville in the spring of 1841 , after being gone only 4 months, Lincoln comes to visit, for a month and while he is there Speed becomes engaged to a woman he has only know for months, immediately becoming depressed. He then goes back to Springfield to see Lincoln, staying with him for the rest of the fall only returning at the end of the year to "prepare for his wedding". You know normally a man in love would be wanting to be around his finance more than his best friend. This story reads to me that they both shared a belief that they must end their relationship and marry but as they attempt to do so each become depressed, they travel back and forth to see each other and only finally seperate so Speeds marriage can be carried out.
Joshua SpeedShould you think me imaginative, I think the quotes from Lincoln's letters (apparently the matching set from Speed are lost) seem very conclusive. These letters are written after Joshua goes back to marry.
“You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting,” Lincoln wrote in one of these letters, “that I will never cease, while I know how to do any thing.” I read this as: "I desire to be with you forever, and I will never cease while I breathe" “You will feel very badly,” he says knowingly of Speed’s fears about consummating the marriage. And later: “…it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me, to dream dreams of Elysium [paradise in classical mythology] far exceeding all that any thing earthly can realize.” I find it very illuminating that Speed has fears about consummating the marriage - yes he was probably had never had intercourse, but if one is Gay it is an open question whether you can aroused enough to have intercourse with someone of the opposite sex. In fact this is enough in question that Lincoln does not reply to the letter confirming the marriage has happened but waits with baited breath to receive a letter from dear Speed confirming the consummation of the marriage. Saying: "I opened that latter (letter), with intense anxiety and trepidation — so much, that although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at the distance of ten hours, become calm.”
Again I am astonished by how bias can blind us. To me the anxiety and trepidation is about whether his beloved has really crossed over to the life of marriage and the "it turned out better than I expected" is an acknowledge that neither knew if he could bed his wife, but it seems of significance that 10 hours later Lincoln is still not calm. I read that as he has wanted this for Speed but it is none the less unsettling and deeply emotional. I am astonished that the author reads this as Lincoln taking courage to confront his own fears of intimacy with women (but why those fears - no explanation) and giving him hope. Where does he speak of hope. Rather I see that with his lover now married off he goes back 4 to 5 months later and makes amends to Mary Todd and then also enters the worldly life outside of Elysium. Lincoln has written to Speed before they both marry: "We both dream of paradise that exceeds what we can realize on earth". To me that says "we can imagine happiness together but we know we cannot realize it in this society." and that in fact is the source of their mutual depression.
I am amazed by a historian who can interpret all these facts: a shared bed for 4 years, depressions after their engagements, letters and visits back and forth reflecting an intense attachment -as all hetro normative. I am reminded how historians interpreted the numerous signs of a early Crete, a matriarchal society, as representing weapons and hierarchy because that is all they had eyes to see, rather than the much less contorted interpretation that it was an egalitarian and matriarchal society. If one simply starts with the belief that it was hard to be Gay in the 1830's ...the clues are pretty straightforward - it in fact takes no real bending to arrive at the obvious conclusion that at minimum the later to be President was bi-sexual but probably Gay.
And if we stop assuming hetrosexual norms - President Buchanan who is usually referred to as our only "bachelor" President, in fact had a male "roommate" for 16 years before he died of tuberculosis, 4 years before Buchanan became president and was commonly rumored to be his partner. A little food for thought.
