Krissy Clark: Why didn't it matter in Lincoln's day that he shared his bed with a man?
[Krissy Clark: Western Editor/Reporter for Weekend America/American Public Media.]
First, a note about gaydar. You know, radar that detects "gay-ness." The word gaydar, of course, didn't exist back in Abraham Lincoln's time. But if it had, and the facts of Lincoln's life had blipped across its screen, those facts would not have gone unnoticed.
Fact number one, explains historian Jean Baker: Lincoln's relationship with Joshua Speed, a shop keeper from Springfield, Ill. Lincoln was a young lawyer who'd just come into town, she explains. "Didn't have much money. Had all of his possessions in two saddlebags. He went to Joshua Speed's store. Now, Lincoln didn't know Speed."
But Speed knew of Lincoln. He was gaining quite a reputation for his powerful speeches in the state legislature. "And so," Baker says, "Lincoln arrives, and says he doesn't have enough money to buy a mattress, and so Speed immediately says, 'Oh, why don't you share mine?'"
Lincoln and Speed bedded down together above the store, in a room they shared with a few other bachelors. Four years later, Lincoln had made more than enough money to buy a mattress, but he was still there.
Lincoln eventually moved out, and got married. Still, he and Speed stayed devoted friends. They wrote tender letters to each other. Baker says Lincoln signed his "Yours, Forever."
But wait, there's more: Lincoln's late-in-life marriage at 32; his awkwardness around women; the poem he penned as a young man about two boys named Biley and Natty, who get married and have a baby.
"The egg it is laid," Lincoln wrote, "but Natty's afraid, that the shell is so soft it never will hatch."
And then there's David V. Derickson, one of Lincoln's body guards once he became president. Derickson "ate with Lincoln when Mary Lincoln was away, slept in the bed when she was away, and once, according to another officer, was discovered wearing Lincoln's night shirt," says Baker.
And yet, the surprising thing about Lincoln's personal life is not the male bed-fellows, the nightshirts, or the homo-erotic poetry. The surprising thing is that none of those intimate details seemed to matter back then.
One woman, the wife of a Washington bureaucrat, wrote a diary entry about the bodyguard rumors she'd heard: "'There is a bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L is not home, sleeps with him.' What stuff!" But, in the gossip department, that was it.
Now, imagine how America would react tomorrow if we heard George Bush was sharing a bed with his bodyguard. His masculinity would be questioned. A fuse would blow in the country's collective gaydar. But in 1862? Baker says, Lincoln's close relations with men inspired more of a collective yawn. "In his time," she says, "Lincoln was mocked for many, many things. But he was never, never mocked for this." ...
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First, a note about gaydar. You know, radar that detects "gay-ness." The word gaydar, of course, didn't exist back in Abraham Lincoln's time. But if it had, and the facts of Lincoln's life had blipped across its screen, those facts would not have gone unnoticed.
Fact number one, explains historian Jean Baker: Lincoln's relationship with Joshua Speed, a shop keeper from Springfield, Ill. Lincoln was a young lawyer who'd just come into town, she explains. "Didn't have much money. Had all of his possessions in two saddlebags. He went to Joshua Speed's store. Now, Lincoln didn't know Speed."
But Speed knew of Lincoln. He was gaining quite a reputation for his powerful speeches in the state legislature. "And so," Baker says, "Lincoln arrives, and says he doesn't have enough money to buy a mattress, and so Speed immediately says, 'Oh, why don't you share mine?'"
Lincoln and Speed bedded down together above the store, in a room they shared with a few other bachelors. Four years later, Lincoln had made more than enough money to buy a mattress, but he was still there.
Lincoln eventually moved out, and got married. Still, he and Speed stayed devoted friends. They wrote tender letters to each other. Baker says Lincoln signed his "Yours, Forever."
But wait, there's more: Lincoln's late-in-life marriage at 32; his awkwardness around women; the poem he penned as a young man about two boys named Biley and Natty, who get married and have a baby.
"The egg it is laid," Lincoln wrote, "but Natty's afraid, that the shell is so soft it never will hatch."
And then there's David V. Derickson, one of Lincoln's body guards once he became president. Derickson "ate with Lincoln when Mary Lincoln was away, slept in the bed when she was away, and once, according to another officer, was discovered wearing Lincoln's night shirt," says Baker.
And yet, the surprising thing about Lincoln's personal life is not the male bed-fellows, the nightshirts, or the homo-erotic poetry. The surprising thing is that none of those intimate details seemed to matter back then.
One woman, the wife of a Washington bureaucrat, wrote a diary entry about the bodyguard rumors she'd heard: "'There is a bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L is not home, sleeps with him.' What stuff!" But, in the gossip department, that was it.
Now, imagine how America would react tomorrow if we heard George Bush was sharing a bed with his bodyguard. His masculinity would be questioned. A fuse would blow in the country's collective gaydar. But in 1862? Baker says, Lincoln's close relations with men inspired more of a collective yawn. "In his time," she says, "Lincoln was mocked for many, many things. But he was never, never mocked for this." ...