"We are Lincoln Men": Abraham Lincoln and His Friends by David Herbert Donald

In bed with Abraham Lincoln

If we accept as a thesis that the measure of a man is the friends that he keeps, then what better way to know Abraham Lincoln than to review the record of his close personal friendships? Donald reviews the scant evidence of Lincoln's early childhood friendships, his close relationship with Joshua Speed, his relationship with his Springfield law partner William H. Herndon, his two cordial post-1860 Washington relationships with Orville H. Browning and Secretary of State Wiliam H. Seward, and his paternally friendly relationships with his private secretaries John George Nicolay and John Hay, as well as his cordial relationship with the captain of his private guard, David Derickson.

Everyone wants to know - was Abraham Lincoln gay? What did his years of bed sharing with Speed, or reports of his sharing a bed with Major Dickerson in Washington mean? In Donald's view such bed sharing was completely unremarkable in its era. It was a matter of public knowledge, and there was no scandal that was imputed from this public knowledge. There is simply nothing there, nothing to be learned from the fact that two men shared a bed, as so many frontier men did.

What is clear is that Lincoln and Speed enjoyed a relationship of emotional intimacy and mutual support. Lincoln and Speed encouraged each other in their mutual reticence to take the step of choosing a wife. Their effusive affection was of its time. One is left free to wonder about the sexuality or sexual practices of men who spent their twenties almost exclusively in the company of other men, but ultimately we cannot know. We can only say that Lincoln seemed to have a relationship that was both equal and emotionally intimate with Speed. His later relationships (including with his wife, who is not considered in this book, except as a background figure) were always colored by a certain distance. He did not make friends easily, or perhaps, after his twenties, at all.

Nonetheless, he was actively social, throughout his life, a raconteur in groups, always visiting with others and, in Washington, putting his feet up with Browning and Seward, and sharing laughs and political plans with his political staff, his personal secretaries Nicolay and Hay. All valued his friendship, and all sensed its limits, reporting his self-possession and his distance.

There are many better books to review the political and military history of Lincoln's life and tenure. This is an excellent review of what can be known of his emotional life, and it assumes the reader's familiarity with Lincoln's political biography and with the Civil War. It is easy to read and quite enjoyable. It was good to spend a few evenings with old Abe.