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Lincoln, Gay?Of course!

By Mark Schatzker
Posted Friday, Jan. 21, 2005, at 12:24 PM ET

The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, the controversial new book by C.A. Tripp, argues that the Great Emancipator was gay. But close readers won't be surprised by this assertion: Incontrovertible evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality is all over his other biographies.

"He was always ... writing poetry." (Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald, Page 33)

"[T]hey noted ... how affectionate he was to kittens and other pets." (Lincoln, Page 55)

"Then, so they said, Abe Lincoln called out, 'I'm the big buck of this lick. ... If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.' " (Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, by Carl Sandburg, Page 15)

"Abraham Lincoln was one of those who danced." (Lincoln, Page 85)

"Taller than most of the other students, he wore a coonskin cap and buckskin pants that were always too short, so that, a classmate remembered, 'there was bare and naked six or more inches of Abe Lincoln's shin bone.' " (Lincoln, Page 32)

Lincoln to friend: "Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid." (Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, Page 120)

"They were finally able to swap nine cords of firewood for nine yards of white domestic cloth, out of which, Hanks reported, 'Abe had a shirt made.' " (Lincoln, Page 34)

"His White House bed, nine feet long, nearly nine feet high at the headboard, had bunches of grapes and flying birds carved in its black walnut." (Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, Page 389)

Lincoln to another politician: "I am six feet four without my high-heeled boots." (Lincoln, Page 251)

"To settle a dispute over which company should have a certain campground, Lincoln wrestled with Lorenzo D. Thompson. In their first feel-outs of each other, Lincoln called, 'Boys, this is the most powerful man I ever had hold of.' " (Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, Page 29)

"Stanton, too, repeatedly warned Lincoln against mingling with promiscuous crowds at the theater." (Lincoln, Page 594)

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Mark Schatzker is a Toronto-based journalist and a writer at large for Toro magazine.
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