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ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(1809 - 1865)
U.S PRESIDENT
U.S Publicity Photo Essay
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The relationship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed has disturbed historians for decades. It is a subject scholars usually have avoided. Carl Sandberg wrote in his Lincoln biography, "There was a touch of lavender in the Speed/Lincoln relationship." Author Jonathan Ned Katz, in Love Stories - Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, provides new revelations regarding the Lincoln/Speed relationship. Katz reveals that Lincoln, as a young senator in the Illinois State Legislature, had been offered lodgings by married individuals, which he adamantly refused. Preferring to share a bed with Joshua Speed rather than accepting more comfortable accommodations leaves one to assume that there was a special chemistry between Speed and Lincoln. Speed has written that "No two men were ever more intimate." C.A. Tripp's study on Lincoln, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, reveals that Lincoln's fascination for Colonel Elmer Ellsworth and Captain David Derickson had tongues wagging in Washington, especially when Lincoln invited Captain Derickson to be his mattress mate every time the First Lady, Mary Todd, left the city.
Copyright Louis Paul Hennefeld 1983
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