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Response to Michael Ferguson's “Was Abraham Lincoln Gay?” (2010)

I write to comment on Michael Ferguson’s splendid article, “Was Abraham Lincoln Gay?,” which appeared in the October 2010 issue of Journal of Homosexuality (vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 1124–1157). Ferguson acknowledges at the outset that his title poses the wrong question. “Gay” as a political and social identity didn’t exist in Lincoln’s time. But Ferguson argues convincingly that male-male sexual intimacy did flourish in the American 19th century, with an easygoing tenderness, ardor, and physicality quite foreign to modern conceptions of friendship between males. It is so refreshing to read Ferguson’s interpretation of 19th-century male-male intimacy. Those familiar with the debate over the late C. A. Tripp’s discussion of Lincoln’s sexuality know that the historian David Herbert Donald discerned a degree of homoeroticism in Lincoln’s friendship with his fouryear bedmate, Joshua Speed, but did not detect any homosexuality. As Tripp used to say with a laugh, “No orgasms allowed!” (Disclosure: I assisted Tripp with the preparation of his Lincoln book.) Indeed, Donald opined that malemale sex was a rarity in the United States in the 19th century, and that insofar as it did occur, was largely confined to adolescents who later shaped up, married, and had children. In short, he subscribed to the classic negative view that homosexuality is a question of aberrance and immaturity. Donald based his opinion in part on the rarity of prosecutions for the crime of same-sex sex. Ferguson, however, sweepingly affirms that male-male sex was ubiquitous and ordinary in the American 19th century. This rings true, both in terms of what we know about largely male populations and in terms of Alfred Kinsey’s interview data. Consider the barely post-frontier town of Springfield, Illinois, to which Lincoln moved at the age of 28 from the tiny hamlet of New Salem, Illinois. As Kenneth J. Winkle