Free Republic

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. Thanks for the warm welcome. Laura and I are so very grateful for your generous invitation to be here. Mr. Speaker, thank you for your incredibly warm words. I appreciate your leadership, I appreciate your friendship and so do the people of Illinois. I am so honored to be here to dedicate a great institution honoring such a great American. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum was a long time coming. But as many speakers have said, it's really worth the wait. Laura and I were just given a tour by Richard...

At Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War. Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two...

A homosexual advocacy group is planning to hold a discussion on 'gay icons' in US history'--including President Abe Lincoln--at part of its national celebration at Philadelphia's Independence Hall later this spring.Equality Forum is organizing a 'national celebration' to mark the 40th anniversary of the 'gay civil rights movement' which it says began with a small demonstration at Independence Hall years before the Stonewall riots in New York City.The panelists include a 'recognized expert' on Eleanor Roosevelt, and the editor of CA Tripp's new book 'The Initmate Life of Abraham Lincoln' in a panel discusson of 'closeted public leaders.''Governor McGreavey showed...

BY PAUL AYARS THE COURIER Attempting to discredit a recently developed theory, a panel of four distinguished Lincoln historians declared Sunday that Abraham Lincoln was not homosexual. The panelists, here for Lincoln College's 140th anniversary Charter Day observation, were guest speaker Edwin Bearss, an honorary degree recipient in history from the college; Cullom Davis curator of the Lincoln Legal Papers at the University of Illinois-Springfield; Ralph Gary and Ronald White. The historians' views against Lincoln being homosexual won warm applause from an audience largely made up of invited representatives of 10 Illinois Civil War roundtables. The homosexual theory emerged in...

Was Abraham Lincoln a gay American? The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C. A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away. In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, Mr. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former...

MY REVIEW of C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln for THE WEEKLY STANDARD has caught the attention of several bloggers--but Andrew Sullivan seems to have been the most irritated. Indeed, his website contains half a dozen angry references to my essay--and that's not counting the drive-by blast he fired off in a column for the New Republic.Perhaps Sullivan deserves some answer, for he insists THE WEEKLY STANDARD must apologize for my calling Tripp's book a hoax and a fraud--although one would have more confidence in Sullivan's complaints if he gave a stronger sense of having actually read my...

NBC's Today spent much of Tuesday's show incessantly plugging an upcoming story about a book by a gay advocate which claims that President Abraham Lincoln was gay. Katie Couric, for instance, contrasted Lincoln's image of honesty with the new charge: "He's famous, of course, as 'Honest Abe,' but was former President Abraham Lincoln not completely honest when it came to his sexuality?" Ann Curry set up the eventual story: "Now to an interesting question that has surfaced about one of this country's most revered Presidents nearly 150 years later. Was Abraham Lincoln gay?" That story included those who don't buy...

The Intimate World of Abraham Lincolnby C.A. Tripp Free Press, 384 pp., $27The notion that Abraham Lincoln had homosexual experiences is hardly new. All the way back in 1924, Carl Sandburg's bestselling biography winked at Lincoln's "streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets." And more explicit versions of the idea have appeared in the years since — as signaled by "Log Cabin Republicans," the name chosen by gay members of the GOP for their advocacy group. But the attempt to use this "Gay Lincoln Theory," making the sixteenth president an icon for modern homosexuals, is now poised to...

NEW YORK, Dec 16, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The age-old debate of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's sexuality is due to be stirred up with the release of an author's determination Lincoln was gay. In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, the late author C.A. Tripp claims Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd, was away. Tripp died last year, two weeks after completing 10 years of research on the book, the New York Times...

IN the pantheon of presidents, was Abraham Lincoln a queer eye among a bevy of straight guys? Yes, claims a new book, "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," which has received the imprimatur of a major publisher (Free Press) and a distinctly supportive article in The New York Times. The book's author, the late C.A. Tripp, was a longtime gay writer and former sex-researcher for Alfred C. Kinsey. And he insists that the case is beyond dispute: Lincoln was gay, he writes, naming several alleged lovers. But the evidence is not just slim, it's nonexistent. [snip] Which is why...

Was Lincoln Gay? By W. Scott Thompson Mr. Thompson is a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. What drives our great to greatness? We search, and find hope and humanity, unassuageably-remembered hunger, driving fear; but sometimes the mystery goes deeper to presiding emotions unmistakable in their power but strangely indeterminate in their form. In the present case Abe Lincoln passed from death into a demigod of national might and righteousness, and now makes him the canonic hero of liveliest sympathy and spiritual growth. And neither depiction--better still a union of the two--rings false. We examine...

Imagine that America had a Chief Justice of the United States who actually believed in enforcing the Constitution and, accordingly, issued an opinion that the war in Iraq was unconstitutional because Congress did not fulfill its constitutional duty in declaring war. Imagine also that the neocon media, think tanks, magazines, radio talk shows, and television talking heads then waged a vicious, months-long smear campaign against the chief justice, insinuating that he was guilty of treason and should face the punishment for it. Imagine that he is so demonized that President Bush is emboldened to issue an arrest warrant for the...