Why Wasn’t *This* in My AP U.S. History Textbook???

A spicy new documentary, Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, hits select theaters this weekend, and I’m seated for the 175-year-old tea it’s spilling.

By Kylie Cheung  |  September 5, 2024 | 4:09pm
Photo: Getty Images EntertainmentMovies history
Why Wasn’t *This* in My AP U.S. History Textbook???

As the proud recipient of a 5 on my AP U.S. History exam in 2015, I’m embarrassed by how much this one article from People, “Abraham Lincoln Shared Bed with a Man for 4 Years, Fell Into ‘Suicidal Depression’ When He Left, Doc Says (Exclusive),” has taught me. 

The celebrity mag secured the “exclusive” from Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, a new documentary that hits select theaters this weekend and, as Them’s Mathew Rodriguez put it, features “a veritable Avengers-style lineup of queer scholars and writers.” Together, they dissect Lincoln’s letters and writings to reveal that the Civil War-era president’s most intimate relationship wasn’t with his wife Mary Todd, the mother of his four sons, but with a general store manager named Joshua Speed, with whom Lincoln lived and shared a bed with from 1837 to 1841 in Springfield, Illinois.

The social media commentary on the headline alone is already making this documentary more entertaining than the 2012 blockbuster Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: “LOVE that Abraham Lincoln was depressed AND gay…” wrote one user. Another screenshotted a line at the end of People’s article referring readers to a suicide hotline, given its references to Lincoln’s suicidal ideation, and captioned it, “imagining a situation where finding out abraham lincoln is bisexual makes you wanna die.” One person screenshotted People’s headline and wrote, “ok who else was like ‘they talked to his doctor?’”

But back to Lincoln’s secret love life. On January 1, 1841, Lincoln learned Speed was planning to move back to Kentucky to run his father’s plantation—which, fucking yikes—and consequently, Lincoln was so devastated that his friends had to put him on “suicide watch.”

“Then Lincoln goes into a suicidal depression. They established a kind of suicide watch,” a clip from the documentary reveals. “His friends removed his razor kit and any other sharp objects, like a knife. And he wrote to his law partner that ‘I am the most miserable man living.’”

That same letter continues, “If what I am feeling were distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on the earth. That I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forbode I shall not. Now, to remain as I am is impossible. I must die, or be better, it appears to me.” It’s dramatized language like this that prompts Rodriguez to conclude the documentary’s big reveal isn’t that Lincoln was gay or bi, but “that he acted like a lovestruck twunk.” Fair!

Speculation about Lincoln’s sexual orientation isn’t new, though the sheer level of evidence I’m uncovering as I learn about this documentary is certainly new to me. Lincoln and Speed met and immediately moved in with each other, and despite being an attorney and general store manager, they conveniently couldn’t afford another bed for all of those years. And in a Challengers-esque twist, Speed is the one who introduced Lincoln and Todd—Speed was also, allegedly, a strain on the couple’s relationship. At one point, historians speculate in Lover of Men, Lincoln briefly broke off his and Todd’s engagement because it caused him and Speed to become estranged.

Ultimately, the documentary presents Speed as one of several male lovers Lincoln may have taken—another maybe-lover wrote an ode specifically to Lincoln’s thighs (!!?), prompting historians to ponder whether Lincoln and this man were partaking in femoral intercourse. Lover of Men also looks at an early draft of historian Carl Sandburg’s iconic 1939 biography of Lincoln, uncovering lines that potentially allude to Lincoln’s queerness, suggesting “streaks of lavender ran” ran through the president and that “he had spots soft as May violets.” The documentary further speculates about other queer-coded signals from Lincoln’s early life, like his aversion to playing outdoors and engaging in manual labor, preferring to read and spend time with his mother.

Per an official synopsis of the documentary, “Lover of Men widens its lens into the history of human sexual fluidity and focuses on the profound differences between sexual mores of the 19th century and those we hold today.” Everyday modern labels of queerness like “gay” or “bisexual” or “queer” didn’t exist in Lincoln’s lifetime; while that precluded people like, potentially, Lincoln, from labeling themselves, it also made it so men could comfortably engage in all kinds of behaviors—like living together and sharing a bed—without fear of being labeled gay.

I will certainly be watching Lover of Men as soon as I can find a theater screening it—if not to learn just how gay Lincoln maybe (ahem, definitely) was, then certainly to partake in some capital-D-discourse about the steady evolution of how we construct and conceive of queer identity, and how this was performed even before we had the language to do so.

 
Join the discussion...