Suggestions Lincoln, Buchanan Gay Roils Historians
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: February 18, 2008 - 5:00 pm ET
(Washington) As the country observed Presidents' Day the debate over whether
two former Presidents - James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln - were gay continues.
James Buchanan was born in 1791 near Mercerburg, Pennsylvania. He was elected
five times to the House of Representatives; then, after a serving as ambassador
to Russia he was elected to the Senate where he served for a decade.
Buchanan became Polk's Secretary of State and Pierce's Minister to Great
Britain. Service abroad helped to bring him the Democratic nomination in 1856
because it had exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic controversies.
The 15th president of the United States was the only bachelor to serve in
that office and his private life soon became fodder for Washington wags.
For Buchanan had lived with William Rufus King, the Senator from Alabama.
The two were inseparable and the friendship did not go unnoticed.
Andrew Jackson dubbed King "Miss Nancy." Aaron Brown in a letter referred to
King as Buchanan's "better half," "his wife," and "Aunt Fancy . . . rigged out
in her best clothes."
When Buchanan appointed King ambassador to France in 1844 the president wrote
to King saying that "I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to
procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation."
Historians for decades have debated whether the references showed a love
attachment between the two or whether the friendship was blown out of
proportion by political foes.
The friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed is equally
contentious.
Noted gay author C. A. Tripp in The Intimate World of Abraham published in
2004 shortly before Tripp died, lays out what the author says is the evidence
Lincoln had a gay relationship with Speed.
Tripp was a noted psychologist. He previously wrote The Homosexual Matrix
and was a researcher for the Kinsey Institute. The Intimate World of Abraham
was the result of more than 20 years of studying Lincoln's private life.
Using the methodology of the Kinsey sex-research model he probes Lincoln's
personal relations with men and women and concludes that Lincoln was
unnaturally uncomfortable around women, never had a love match with Ann
Rutledge, suffered through a strained marriage with Mary Todd Lincoln, and had
a gay sexual relationship with his longtime friend Speed.
He also details the relationship Lincoln had with another man with whom he
shared his bed, David Derickson, captain of his bodyguards. As well, Tripp
describes another lover who said Lincoln's thighs 'were as perfect as a human
being could be'.
The book contains a poem discovered by Tripp that was written by the young
Lincoln which includes the lines:
Billy has married a boy
The girlies he tried on every side/but none could he get to agree
All was in vain he went home again/and since that is married to Natty.
©365Gay.com 2008
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