"Recently, another question has been raised: Was the close relationship between Lincoln and Speed a homosexual one? Or, since the word homosexual did not come into use until the 1870s, could it be called a "homoerotic" one? To be blunt, did they have sex together? It was not until the gay liberation movement that these subjects began to be discussed, and with increasing frankness. On a publicity tour that I undertook in 1995-1996 to promote my biography of Lincoln, I was astonished to discover the question most frequently asked was whether Lincoln was gay. The subject deserves careful and cautious discussion.
First, it ought to be noted that no contemporary ever raised the question of sexual relations between Lincoln and Speed. Herndon, who sometimes slept in the same upstairs room over Speed's store, never mentioned the possibility, though he discussed at length his ideas about Lincoln's sexual interests in women. Charles Hurst, another of Speed's clerks, who also slept in the room, never referred to any sexual or even physical intimacy between the two men. Though nearly every other possible charge against Lincoln was raised during his long public career -- from his alleged illegitimacy to his possible romance with Ann Rutledge, to the breakup of his engagement to Mary Todd, to some turbulent aspects of their marriage -- no one ever suggested that he and Speed were sexual partners.
In these still primitive, almost frontier, days in Illinois, it was anything but uncommon for two or more men to share a bed. Space was at a premium, and privacy was not much valued or expected. Unmarried men who worked on farms, or in livery stables, or in country stores regularly slept in the same beds. Primitive hotels often offered transients only the option of sharing a bed with other guests. Even when respectable lawyers rode the circuit, traveling from county seat to county seat, they tumbled unceremoniously into bed together. There was no sexual implication in these sleeping arrangements.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, close relations between a man and a woman prior to, or outside of, marriage were frowned on, but intimacies between two people of the same sex -- especially if they were young -- were readily tolerated. There are a surprising number of well-documented cases of love among young men. Young Ralph Waldo Emerson nearly swooned with passion over Martin Gay, whom he thought the most handsome student at Harvard College, but he was too inhibited to make his love known. Daniel Webster was deeply in love with James Hervey Bingham, a classmate at Dartmouth, with whom he continued on intimate terms long after graduation. He addressed Bingham as "Dearly Beloved," and ended his letters with affectionate phrases like: "Accept all the tenderness I have. D. Webster." The letters between such male lovers are full of references to sleeping together, kisses, caresses, and open longing for each other. There can be no doubt that these were erotic relationships, but with rare exceptions, they do not appear to have been sexual relationships.
The Lincoln-Speed connection did not fall even into that category. Nearly all of the documented erotic relationships between males were between young men -- in effect, boys who had reached the peak of their physical powers but were far from ready to assume the role of husband and breadwinner. In contrast, when Lincoln and Speed came together in 1837, neither was a youth: Lincoln was twenty-eight years old and Speed was twenty-three. Nor, when appraising their relationship, can one find anything to suggest a passionate or erotic connection between the two. There is an extensive correspondence between Lincoln and Speed during the 1840s (consisting almost entirely of Lincoln's letters to Speed; Speed's replies have to be conjectured from Lincoln's responses), but, unlike the letters between other enamored males that have been preserved, they are totally lacking in expressions of warm affection. To be sure, Lincoln closed one of his letters, "Yours forever" -- but this was the same phrase he used in writing to his law partner and to an Illinois congressman.
The evidence is fragmentary and complex, but my judgment is strongly influenced by the opinion of Charles B. Strozier, the psychoanalyst and historian, who concludes that if the friendship had been sexual Lincoln would have become a different man. He would, Dr. Strozier writes me, have been "a bisexual at best, torn between worlds, full of shame, confused, and hardly likely to end up in politics." What finally convinced me that the relationship between Speed and Lincoln was not a sexual one is an anecdote from late 1864, when Lincoln found it necessary to replace his attorney general and chose Joshua's brother, James Speed. James Speed, he told Titian J. Coffey, the U.S. assistant attorney general, was "a man I know well, though not so well as I know his brother Joshua. That, however, is not strange, for I slept with Joshua for four years, and I suppose I ought to know him." I simply cannot believe that, if the early relationship between Joshua Speed and Lincoln had been sexual, the President of the United States would so freely and publicly speak of it. In my judgment, these two young men were simply close, warm friends, who came close to achieving Montaigne's definition of complete comradeship, a relationship in which "all things being by effect common between them: wills, thoughts, judgments, goods,...honour, and life." I do not know whether Speed had earlier, or subsequent, friendships of this nature, but it is clear that this was the first -- and perhaps the only -- time Lincoln had ever arrived at such a degree of intimacy with any other person." -- "We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincon and His Friends" by David Herbert Donald.
Thank you for this post, that was very convincing.