Happy Birthday, Mr. President: Was Abraham Lincoln Gay? We Asked Historians.

Should Abraham Lincoln’s birthday be a queer holiday? While writing about Lincoln in Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola famously did no research, but it’s possible there’s more truth to it than meets the eye. Many historians believe in “The Gay Lincoln Thesis,” which suggests the great president was not so straight after all. We spoke to Thomas Balcerski, Presidential Historian, and Jonathan Ned Katz, Independent Scholar, Historian, and History Activist, about Lincoln’s sexual appetites, the state of queerness before “straight” and “gay” existed, thigh sex, and chronicling your sexual past for the future. 

Thomas Balcerski, Presidential Historian, Eastern Connecticut State University

When did it appear Lincoln’s sexuality might not be all it seemed?

Records of Lincoln’s life point to an intimate, romantic world with men and a tumultuous, vexed world with women. He hit the heterosexual marks — marriage, children — but many historians would rather avoid Mary Todd than explain why Lincoln married her. It's easier to assume "Straight Lincoln" was happily married and leave it at that. Questioning this makes people uncomfortable.

The first scholar to publish a book about “the Gay Lincoln Thesis” was C.A. Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. Tripp uses Alfred Kinsey’s understanding of sexuality to read Lincoln and the evidence differently. Facts citing where Lincoln lived and slept are preserved, which allows a queer scholar to question assumptions through lived experience, like the size of Lincoln's bed and sharing that bed with various men. The love of Lincoln’s life, his deepest romantic and, I’d argue, physical passion, was for another man, Joshua Fry Speed. 

What’s the primary evidence?

Letters, interviews, third-party sources. Lincoln and Speed exchanged dozens of letters. They lived together and shared a bed for four and a half years. Lincoln developed an extreme loving, emotional attachment to Speed, evidenced in the letters. Speed kept these; he didn’t hide them. After Lincoln's death, Speed published them and went on a lecture circuit talking about their relationship. He wasn't ashamed of this loving relationship with Lincoln. He even exploited it for his own commercial gain.

Those letters also exhibit a sexual appetite in Lincoln’s dreams. Perhaps the most telling sexual line is in a letter to Speed where he reveals a dream about their future together. He uses the phrase Elysian Fields, an allusion to Greek mythology, a paradise where society’s rules don't apply. He also acknowledges he’s too afraid to marry Mary Todd. 

What about the other men? 

Billy Green offers this amazing quote in an interview with Lincoln’s first biographer, William Herndon: “He had the most perfect thighs of any man I've ever seen.” Out of nowhere. Why is Billy Green, now an older man, remembering the dead president by his thighs? Elmer Ellsworth was the first casualty of the Civil War. Lincoln chose Ellsworth to be his bodyguard. Surviving photos and portraits of Speed, Green and Ellsworth look similar: they're Lincoln's type. They’re shorter, have dark hair and light eyes.

David Derickson is an outlier, but speaks to Lincoln's pressures as president. This is 1862-3, where the war is at its low point for the Union. Mary Todd does shopping trips and spends time away from the Capitol. Why would she be leaving so often? We know about Derickson sleeping with Lincoln from third-person accounts, diary entries, and regimental histories. Derickson was even observed wearing the President's nightshirt. Some wittier people would say that's evidence of hanky panky. I'm just laying out evidence.

What do we know about Lincoln’s sexual interests? 

Tripp believes Lincoln never engaged in anal intercourse; he believes it's more likely non-penetrative sex, essentially thigh sex. Given the frontier conditions, the Billy Green comment, and what we know from 20th-century frontier men, these men were having intracrural [thigh] sex. There would’ve been a sense that anal intercourse was immoral, to say nothing of oral intercourse. Intercrural sex would be a workaround. I think that was definitely Lincoln's game. 

Lincoln definitely went from an otter to a bear. There's no doubt that his last relationship with David Derickson was pretty hairy. I think he’d go to Bear Week in Provincetown. He would’ve preferred older men, people his own age. I think for Lincoln, it had to be an emotional and intellectual connection before anything else. This is wildly speculative. 

Jonathan Ned Katz, Independent Scholar, Historian, History Activist

How were sexuality and gender understood in Lincoln’s time? 

There wasn’t a distinction between hetero and homo. Those categories only entered the common public consciousness in the early 20th century. So when Lincoln met Speed, Speed offered him a space in his large double bed after Lincoln said he couldn't pay for a single bed. You couldn't imagine a man doing that today without it being a come-on. But it wasn't understood consciously. It may have had an unconscious desire in it. Relationships like these were called romantic friendships. Women had them also. Some clearly lead to sexual relations and a sort of marriage. It wasn’t uncommon. Men didn't immediately worry, oh, I must be a homosexual if I'm desiring this man. 

Conservative historians have said there's no evidence Speed and Lincoln slept together or had sex. But in my book Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality, there are quite a few examples showing those bed sharing situations did lead to sexual encounters. Of course it did. People have urges. [Sarcastically] No one in the whole universe ever touched, never got a hard on, never accidentally. I felt I found enough evidence suggesting it was ridiculous to say it never happened.

What is a favorite story you have about Lincoln’s sexuality?

Lincoln says to Speed that he wants to “get some,” which means Lincoln is asking if he knows any prostitutes. Speed recommends this woman–either his mistress or a prostitute–and gives Lincoln a letter of introduction. Lincoln goes to see her, and they say hello–this is all documented evidence in letters, it's unbelievable. They start stripping off their clothes and get into bed. Lincoln says, what do you charge? The prostitute says $5. Lincoln says, I don't have that. She says, that's okay, I'll take the $3 you do have. Lincoln says, "I couldn’t. I need to pay you what you want." And he gets out of bed and doesn't have fun with the prostitute.

So: should Lincoln's birthday be a queer holiday? 

At minimum, it's worth reconsidering the man beyond the marble monument. The evidence points to a president whose deepest passions were for men — who shared beds, wrote love letters, and, if historians like Tripp are right, figured out workarounds long before Grindr made it easier. This February 12th, consider celebrating accordingly.