BOOKS
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The Intimate World off
Abraham Lincoln
Welcome home, Abe
byC.A. Tripp; Free Press, 2004;
$27.95 hardcover
Kinsey researcher unearths compelling evidence
that President Lincoln’s ax swung both ways
he ill-named “right wing” didn’t like it
when Thomas Jefferson was outed for sleep
ing—and producing children—with one of
his slaves. They also
weren’t happy when lefty
professor Martin Bernal
made a strong case in
Black Athena that the
Greek ideal worshipped
by the West had its ori
gins in Africa. In the Jef
ferson case, DNA nailed
the case and silenced the
'Sri
;
skeptics. In the Bernal
case, reactionary scholars
made fools of themselves
trying to counter the
apparently abhorrent
idea that black Africans
were the real source of
Western culture.
Now the right has a
new worry—it turns out
that “Honest” Abe Lin
coln may have been
queer. This isn’t actually
a new idea. Even the standard worshipful
biographies by rhe likes of Carl Sandburg
mentioned Lincoln’s “streak of lavender
and spots soft as May violets.” But C.A.
Tripp, the Kinsey researcher known for
his breakthrough 1975 book The Homo-
sexual Matrix, spent 10 years researching
rhe question from every angle. The
results are documented in The Intimate
World of Abraham Lincoln, finished just
before Tripp’s death.
The evidence here, based on exhaus
tive, focused research on the elusive
topic of Lincoln’s “intimate life,” is com
pelling. We’re not talking about a smok
ing gun; it’s more a persuasive composite
portrait that slides Abe comfortably
toward the homo end of the Kinsey
scale. (He had four children with Mary
Todd, but of course we all know gay
fathers.)
Tripp demolishes much of the myth
of Lincoln’s heterosexuality. Abe’s sup
posed lifelong pining away for Ann
Rutledge (who died early) is decisively
proven to be a fabrication of Lincoln’s
law partner, William Hemdon, that was
happily perpetuated by later biographers.
Abe’s marriage to the demented Mary
This regal couple sat for
Todd was a disaster he was constantly
Wilkes in 1885.
T
THE INTIMATE
WORLD OF
.
ABRAHAM
I LINCOLN
eatingout
eatingout
eatingout
by
G ary M orris
trying to escape from—most
intriguingly by bedding down
with the captain of his body
guards, David Derickson,
when Mary was away. (This
didn’t go unnoticed; Derick-
son’s Anny captain mentioned
it in his memoirs, shocked
that Derickson was even
“making use of his excellency’s
night shirts!”) Even Lincoln’s
stepmother weighed in on the
subject after his death: “He
was not very fond of girls.”
We learn that Lincoln
entered puberty early—in
Kinsey terms a hint of future
homosexuality. Abe apparent
ly had no verifiable teen-age
hetero romances and was
apoplectic at the prospect of
marriage (well documented in
his letters). He scandalized listeners with dirty
jokes, which often carried anal references. He
even wrote a queer poem about two boys get
ting married (“But Billy has married a boy”)
that also contains a reference to a “low
crotch”—in modem parlance, a big dick.
More substantively, Tripp delves into the
prez’s many “special friends” like Joshua Speed,
who slept in Abe’s bed for four years. Hetero
commentators have seized on this as “typical”
queer overreaching, saying that two men in
bed in the 1800s was not necessarily, or even
usually, gay. But four years is a long time for
two straight men to be snuggling up, and these
two shared their most intimate secrets in pas
sionate letters, with Abe signing off with
“Yours forever.”
Tripp also identifies a string of previously
unidentified male companions, one of
whom, Billy Greene, admired Abe’s
-----
physique enthusiastically, telling Hem
don that the president’s thighs “were as
perfect as a human being could be.”
Reactionaries and homophobes notwith
standing, perhaps it’s time to say, “Welcome
home, Abe.”
Dear Friends: American
Photographs off Men
Together 1840-1918
by David Deitcher; Harry N. Abrams,
2005; $17.95 softcover
avid Deitcher’s photographic study Dear
Friends: American Photographs of Men
Together, 1840-1918 makes a dandy com
panion to Tripp’s Ixxsk. Deitcher, who adds a
thoughtful text to the gallery, is not looking to
prove anything—simply to tantalize contempo
rary readers with images of men from a long-
vanished era showing affection to each other.
The men in these tintypes, daguerreotypes
and other early photographic formats aren’t
being presented in the book as gay, but as
anonymous average joes whose sexuality isn’t
known. They appear in various loving poses,
hands on each
other’s knees,
arms inter
twined, hold
DEAR
FRIENDS ing hands, cud
dling, gazing
affectionate
ly—one might
say romantical
ly—at each
other.
These ph o-
tos—which
include a star
tling image of
a bunch of
.. *«e
cowpokes get
-
ting all inti
mate at a “stag
dance”—reveal
an era appar
ently much
more hos
pitable to male bonding and perhaps more
than cliches of the “nigged frontier” and its
rigid gender roles would have us believe. The
fact that the identity of most of the subjects is
unknown supports the book’s idea that loving
male friendships were widespread and accepted
at the time. Whether that translates into the
i homoerotic is perhaps best decided by the
beholder.
&
photographer D.J.
eatingout
“Just a foolish picture," reads the inscription
on this 1907 image.
eatingout
eatingout
G ary M orris spends his spare time trying to
make his thighs look as fetching as Abe Lincoln’s.
eatingout
eatingout
eatingout
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