Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln

The sexuality of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the 16th President of the United States, has been a topic of debate among some scholars. Lincoln was married to Mary Todd from November 4, 1842, until his death on April 15, 1865, and fathered four children with her. The issue came to greater attention due to a 2005 book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by psychologist C. A. Tripp, which described Lincoln as allegedly having a detached relationship with women, in contrast with a close male friend he allegedly shared a bed with. According to the book Lincoln the Unknown, Lincoln chose to spend several months of the year practicing law on a circuit that kept him living separately from his wife. In 1928, a prominent writer had pointed to a close male friend of the young Lincoln as a possible lover that was denounced as absurd at the time.

Commentary on President Abraham Lincoln's sexuality has existed since the early 20th century. Attention to the sexuality of public figures has been heightened since the gay rights movement of the later 20th century. Lincoln's case re-entered the public consciousness in 2005 with the posthumous publication of C. A. Tripp's book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.

In his 1926 biography of Lincoln, Carl Sandburg alluded to the early relationship of Lincoln and his friend Joshua Fry Speed as having "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets". "Streak of lavender" was slang in the period for an effeminate man, and later connoted homosexuality. Sandburg did not elaborate on this comment.

Lincoln wrote a poem that described a marriage-like relation between two men, which included the lines:

This poem was included in the first edition of the 1889 biography of Lincoln by his friend and colleague William Herndon. It was expurgated from subsequent editions until 1942, when the editor Paul Angle restored it. This is an example of what Mark Blechner calls "the closeting of history," in which evidence that suggests a degree of homosexuality or bisexuality in a major historical figure is suppressed or hidden.

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