Young love? Abraham Lincoln & Joshua Speed
Some historians believe that Buchanan wasn’t our only queer
president. And which president do they debate about? None other than Abraham Lincoln. While sharing beds was common in Lincoln’s time, Keith Stern, author of Queers in History, takes exception with the suggestion that Lincoln and shopkeeper Joshua Speed sharing a bed for four years was typical:
Some historians note that it was common
for men to share beds in those days, there was a shortage of beds.
But they fail to recognize that many of those men were also lovers.
It’s true, there was a shortage of beds,
and as men traveled around they might arrive at a roadside inn where
there was lack of space, so they might be forced to share a room or even
a bed with one or two other men. There were many jokes about what
went on in those shared beds too.
But it was unusual for two adult men to happily sleep together at home for so long the way that Abe and Josh did….
Nearly four years later, on January 1,
1841, Abe learned that Josh was leaving him and going back to his native
Kentucky. Abe was devastated and suffered symptoms of what today
we would call a nervous breakdown, an episode known to historians as
Lincoln’s “fatal first.”… By the way, there is not a shred of evidence
to support the contention of some historians that Lincoln also broke off
an engagement with Mary Todd or suffered any of the other myriad
setbacks that some have postulated to explain what upset him on that
fateful day, other than the well-documented impending separation from
As Abe grew older he continued to have
intimate relationships with men…. Even as president, Lincoln formed a
close attachment to a soldier, Captain David V. Derickson, who was the
commander of his guards. In 1862 and 1863, they shared a bed in
the White House and a getaway cottage at the outskirts of town.
Believe me, there were plenty of extra beds in the White House.
Lincoln’s same-sex relationships did not
go unnoticed by contemporaries and early biographers. Virginia Woodbury
Fox, a well-connected Washingtonian, wrote in an 1862 diary entry:
“Tish says, ‘there is a Bucktail
Soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs L.
is not home, sleeps with him.’ What stuff!”
Even thirty-three years later, Thomas
Chamberlain, one of Lincoln’s bodyguards, remembered the relationship of
the two men when he wrote a history of the regiment:
“Captain Derickson, in particular,
advanced so far in the President’s confidence and esteem that, in Mrs.
Lincoln’s absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage,
sleeping in the same bed with him, and — it is said — making use of His
Scandalous stuff. Some historians
like to say these observers were not implying a sexual relationship,
only that the two men were good friends, and it was perhaps slightly
improper for a common soldier to become so close to the President.
But the fact that people of the time invariably noted the men slept
together only when Mrs. Lincoln was not around, indicates to me that
they had an inkling what was going on — they were aware that the
relationship was somehow hidden from and perhaps a substitute for
Lincoln’s terrible marriage to Mary Todd….
We will likely never know for sure if
Abraham Lincoln had sexual relations with those men. But it seems
clear he had a passionate desire for intimacy with men to an extent that
attracted notice among the people who knew him.
(For more information on what other historians think, the Wikipedia article on Lincoln’s sexuality summarizes the arguments of both historians who suggest Lincoln was queer and historians who find this idea preposterous.)
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Read about our first gay president and our first gay vice president, James Buchanan and Rufus King.
Read about our first queer Cabinet member, Alexander Hamilton.