Books: The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp

The original Log Cabin Republican?

By Mike Prevatt

There's an old rhyme we used to recite at the sandbox in the first grade: "Abraham Lincoln was a good old man/ He hopped out the window with his dick in his hand." If any of our teachers had heard us uttering such a refrain, they would have surely censured us--not only for its vulgarity, but the idea that one of our greatest presidents was anything but morally upstanding. As it turns out, though, we might have been on to something--Lincoln, by several accounts, was a potty mouth for the ages. Tasteless jokes, dirty rhymes, subversive scatological references--you name it, Lincoln dished it out, albeit among the relative private company of other men.

If you think the notion of Honest Abe as his generation's Andrew "Dice" Clay is sensational, imagine how the conservative status quo might've reacted to the publication of late psychologist/sex researcher C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. The biography, a lightning rod for political pundits, historians and late-night talk show hosts, makes the case for the homosexual Lincoln. Through old letters, accounts of his conversations, references to other historical texts and deduction via psychological tests and theories--almost wholly from Dr. Alfred Kinsey, under whom Tripp served for several years--Tripp analyzes Lincoln's sexuality, along with his outsider personality, and how who he was played a role in what he did, in public and private.

This isn't exactly new territory. For the past couple of decades, historians have looked into Lincoln's personal life--something he fiercely guarded from just about everyone--and dug up bits of what could loosely be called evidence of his bisexuality. Though Lincoln was married most of his adult life, he always had strong bonds with other men--such as Joshua Speed, who shared his bed with Lincoln for four years, and swapped somewhat revealing letters with him up until the president's assassination. But Tripp's coup is having discovered other companions Lincoln might have been intimate with.

Of course, the key word there is "might." None of the evidence Tripp offers--he imposed upon himself a rule of two independent facts or admissions per argument as a rubric--leads to clear-cut proof that Lincoln had sexual relations with other men; homosexuality didn't even have a name back then. But, given how he regarded these men, how close in proximity he kept to them, how distanced he was from his wife--and all women in general, for that matter--his childhood developments and his overall behavior, Tripp makes deductions that are at worst conjecture and at best highly incriminating. Some revelations are worth taking with a grain of salt, and others all but out Lincoln. Tripp even rates Lincoln on the famous Kinsey scale of sexuality a five, which denotes bisexuality slanted heavily toward the homosexual side. (Tripp also calls him a "top," but we won't go there.)

Much of Tripp's motivation seems to come from his studies with Kinsey, which include, among other things, the notion that boys who enter puberty at a very young age are more likely to engage sexually at a young age, and more likely to find partners in other boys than with girls. Lincoln sprouted, so to speak, at the age of 9, and was almost exclusively surrounded by male peers as he came of age--making him, in Tripp's eyes, a viable candidate for homosexuality. The psychology is a little fuzzy, but it's hard to ignore.

Also hard to overlook is how repetitive Tripp becomes in his relaying of facts and theories. Because the book was edited posthumously, Intimate World reads like a bunch of thinly connected essays, padded with overlapping research and ancillary anecdotes. Tripp might counter that with the idea that such an approach is needed for a figure as complex as Lincoln, who, Tripp argues, "is too central a figure in history to keep obscuring basic facts of his life." Though he adds to some of the confusion he aims to combat, Tripp's claim is not like contemporary outing gossip, but a character study as unconventional as its subject.