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For four years in the 1830s, in Springfield, Illinois, a young state legislator shared a bed with his best friend, Joshua Speed. The legislator was Abraham Lincoln. When Speed moved home to Kentucky in 1841 and Lincoln's engagement to Mary Todd was broken off, Lincoln suffered an emotional crisis. An underground campaign has been accumulating about Abahram Lincoln for years, focusing on his intimate relationships. He was famously awkward around single women. Before Mary Todd, he was engaged to another woman, but his fiancée called off the marriage on the grounds that he was "lacking smaller attentions." His marriage to Mary was troubled. Meanwhile, throughout his adult life, he enjoyed close relationships with a number of men — disclosed here for the first time, including an affair with an army captain when Mrs. Lincoln was away. This extensive study by renowned psychologist, therapist, and sex researcher C.A. Tripp, examines not only Lincoln's sexuality, but aims to make sense of the whole man. It includes an introduction by Jean Baker, biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln and an afterword containing reactions by two Lincoln scholars and one clinical psychologist. This timely book finally allows the true Lincoln to be fully understood.
2.75 stars: flawed arguments and conclusions, but interesting book
| Customer Rating:   | I had a few problems with this book. The author definitely weakened his position on Lincoln's sexuality by being quite obviously anti-Mary Lincoln. Further, the author relies solely upon the testimony of a boyhood friend of Lincoln's (years after the fact), who remembers how tall and gangly Lincoln was at age 9, to prove his belief that Lincoln was sexually mature at that age (and thus, in the author's POV, more prone to same-sex experimentation). I didn't understand how the author arrived at the conclusion of Joshua Speed's supposed lifelong impotence with his wife. The fact that they had no children could just as soon be put down to a medical issue with his wife.
In regards to the author's style, there's quite of bit of repeated word use (for example, if I saw the word "autodidact" one more time on one page!), which was annoying. But also, I realize that the author didn't have the opportunity to review his final draft or approve the editing due to his premature death.
But, these criticisms aside, this is an interesting, and on the whole, readable exploration of another (possible) side of Lincoln's admittedly complex character. The author reaches a conclusion about Lincoln's sexuality which I don't necessarily buy into, but he has enough experience and knowledge of human sexuality to make the question worth exploring. Not that we'll ever know with 100% certainty anyway, but the question of bisexuality does add another dimension to a study of Abraham Lincoln's life.
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A mind in time
| Customer Rating: | | Let me state the obvious. Each of us is a product of our time - of all the people and events we encounter, and the values of the societies we live in. So was Lincoln. So was Tripp. Current Gay and Queer identities are 20th cent constructs and could not have been embraced by Lincoln, nor does Tripp claim this to have been the case. Nor does Tripp present a view that all Gay people will see as politically acceptable - his work helped build the current identity but he was, himself, a product of another era. However, as Robert Aldrich and others have demonstrated, homosexuality is as ancient as humanity and exists in many forms across societies. Tripp gives a good portrait of a remarkable man coping with homosexual urges in an emerging nation. Tenuous though some of his arguments may be, his critics are, in many cases subject to the academic biases of reliance on surviving documentation (often ignoring context and the nature of covert behaviour), lack understanding of the experience of being in a hidden minority and even, in a few cases, rely on arguments that make Tripp's weakest sound strong. The truth is that here is meticulously well researched book that presents a convincing arguement but shows evidence of the author not having survived to do the last few re-writes that would have bought it up to his usual high standard. |
A disappointing book
| Customer Rating: | The world of Lincoln scholarship can be highly contentious, but controversy about this book relates to Tripp's use of evidence, not the topic he examines. My own specialty is Lincoln's pre-presidential life. Determining what happened in those years can involve surmise and supposition. I don't fault Tripp for lacking unobtainable proof. Even outright speculation can freshen thought.
I am concerned, however, by Tripp seizing a kernel of evidence, extrapolating from it, and pronouncing the resultant structure to be proof of his contention. For example, he finds a unique statement from Bill Greene noting that Lincoln had well-developed thighs. Tripp then turns to the Duncan and Nichols biography of Mentor Graham, a source I consider so unreliable that I have never dared cite it as authority for anything. Relying on an undependable source and a single comment from Greene, Tripp claims to prove a homosexual relationship between Greene and Lincoln.
Tripp extrapolates further and argues that because Greene became embarrassed when Lincoln introduced him to Secretary of State Seward as Lincoln's grammar teacher, that meant Greene was uneasy about his old homosexual relationship with Lincoln. Tripp considers and rejects the possibility that Greene said little during the meeting because he didn't want to reveal his poor grasp of grammar to Seward, thereby belying Lincoln's praise and humiliating himself. I find the possibility that Tripp rejects to be more plausible than the one he embraces.
Another type of reasoning is illustrated by Tripp arguing for a homosexual relationship between Lincoln and Joshua Speed because (in part) when Lincoln moved into their sleeping quarters, Speed failed to say anything about his admiration of a Lincoln speech. Tripp here assumes that because Speed failed to mention this in his account of his conversation with Lincoln, that absence means no conversation about the speech occurred. Lincoln and Speed may have talked about many things that Speed didn't mention (weather, crops, politics). Tripp seems to think that if an account doesn't say something happened, then it didn't happen. That's invalid reasoning.
Regarding Lincoln and Speed being bed mates, neither man was secretive about the arrangement, and some men Lincoln slept with had definite heterosexual orientation. Public comment about a politician's sex life was rare in that era, but I have seen examples in Illinois newspapers. If anyone had thought the Lincoln-Speed sleeping arrangement could be portrayed as homosexual, I think political opponents would have raised the issue regardless of whether they believed it.
We can speculate all day about Lincoln's place on the sexual continuum between heterosexual and homosexual, and speculate reasonably, but speculation isn't proof. Still, the topic is worthy. For me, the big disappointment in Tripp's book was in finding him wrong again and again about things I know about. If it had been the other way around I would probably have found the book exciting rather than frustrating. |
Text Book for Queer Theory
| Customer Rating: | Valley Gay Press Book Reviewer: Liz Bradbury
Most art, literature and history is studied from the straight, white, male perspective. If a famous man professed his undying devotion to a woman and slept with her for years, SWM academic theory would presume the couple was sexually involved and use that as proof of heterosexuality. C.A. Tripp simply looks at the facts of Lincoln's intimate life from the position of a queer theory scholar. Interpreting findings from a queer point of view takes this book beyond the genre of biography and helps us understand how all historical theory about any minority has been skewed to fit a mainstream mold, disregarding history as it most probably was. |
You might as well just buy a tabloid...
| Customer Rating: | ...because that's all this erroneous piece of trash is. I'm not homophobic. I am against people trying to cash in on the name of a legendary historic figure simply to cause controversy, and thereby gain some extra dollars.
Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Cruise and others can sue the tabloids when they twist stories. Lincoln's dead. He can't.
Just remember that. |
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