OAH Magazine of History
Volume 23, No 1
January 2009

Copyright ©
Organization of American Historians

Does Lincoln Still Matter?

Carl Weinberg

The first "Thirteenth Amendment"
Lincoln is well known as the "Great Emancipator" due to his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which became effective on January 1, 1863. Less known is the extent to which Lincoln was prepared to go in compromising with slaveholders when he took office. In his first inaugural address delivered on March 4, 1861, for instance, Lincoln noted that a constitutional amendment had just been passed by Congress, which forbade the federal government from ever interfering with slavery. Though the amendment was not yet ratified, Lincoln made a point of stating his support for permanent constitutional protection for slavery. As he put it, "holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable." If this amendment had passed—Ohio and Maryland did actually ratify it—it would have been the Thirteenth Amendment. War broke out shortly thereafter, dooming its chances. But Lerone Bennett calls Lincoln's support for the proslavery amendment "appeasement," suggesting a parallel with the willingness of Britain and France to tolerate Hitler. Is this a fair analogy? (1)

Lincoln the "Great Centralizer"?
Lincoln and his legacy continue to draw fire not only from the African American left, but from the neo-Confederate and libertarian political right as well. The best illustration of this trend is the work of libertarian economist Thomas DiLorenzo who has published a string of books denouncing Lincoln, most recently Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe (New York: Crown Forum, 2006). DiLorenzo has also allied himself with the neo-Confederate League of the South, which shares his view that slavery had little to do with the Civil War and that "big government" is the root of all evil. Indeed, the League claims that the U.S. has been in decline ever since "Father Abraham destroyed the Old Republic with his war of aggression against the people and States of the South" (2). Most historians are inclined to dismiss DiLorenzo as a crackpot. But in view of the fact that his books generally sell better than those of academic "Lincolnologists" and, even more important, that DiLorenzo's views help lay the foundation for conservative political action today, historian David Blight has recently suggested that we ignore these writings at our peril (3).

Lincoln and Communism
During the 2008 election campaign, McCain supporters repeatedly charged that Obama was a "socialist" or "Marxist." No matter how wild this accusation seemed to some, right-wing Lincoln haters such as DiLorenzo are dead serious in calling Obama a socialist and in tracing this political legacy back to Lincoln. They often observe that when Lincoln won reelection as president in November 1864, Karl Marx penned a letter of congratulations on behalf of the International Working Men's Association. In concluding, Marx wrote: "The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes." Taking the communist charge even further than DiLorenzo, another neo-Confederate group describes the Civil War as "the successful Communist Revolution of 1861" (4).

What do modern-day communists think of the idea that Lincoln was communist-inspired? I asked Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and editor of The Second American Revolution, 1860-65: Marx and Engels on the U.S. Civil War (Pathfinder, 2009) (5). It's true, she said, that Marx and Engels "had great respect for Lincoln, who was often viewed as a buffoon by the ruling classes in Europe." In spite of Lincoln's racial prejudices and initial willingness to compromise with slaveholders, Marx and Engels believed he would carry through an "uncompromising war" on slavery. But Lincoln was no communist. He represented a rising capitalist class and the war was "clearing the road for the development of capitalism," which, in turn, would pave the way for the rise of the modern working-class movement. Soon after the end of the Civil War, Waters noted, Marxists in the U.S. helped lead workers' struggle for the eight-hour day, often fighting against Republican politicians they had allied with during the war. (6)

Was Lincoln gay?
When Lincoln historian David Donald was touring the U.S. promoting his latest book in 1995, the most common question audiences asked him had nothing to do with communism, racism or slavery. Rather, they asked: was Lincoln gay? Suggestions that Lincoln might have been something other than heterosexual came as early as 1926, when Carl Sandburg wrote that young Lincoln and his friend Joshua Speed, who shared a bed upstairs of Speed's store for four years, had a "streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets." More recently, in 1993, the American Historical Association sponsored a symposium at its annual meeting on the subject of "Gay American Presidents." There, historian Charles Shively presented his case for a gay Lincoln (7). In 2005, former Kinsey sex researcher C. A. Tripp published The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, sparking widespread discussion on the topic. Though there is no "smoking gun" evidence to prove that Lincoln was gay, Tripp and others focus on Lincoln's undoubtedly close relationship with Joshua Speed and with bodyguard Captain David Derickson, interpreting letters and other primary documents to suggest an erotic bond (8). Most Lincoln scholars have rejected Tripp's conclusions, though Mary Todd Lincoln biographer Jean Baker is persuaded by the evidence that the sixteenth president was bisexual (9).

For students and teachers who are inclined to react to this debate by asking, "So what?", it's worth noting that Lincoln's potential gay legacy is intertwined with current Republican Party politics. In 1978, a campaign led by a Republican state senator in California for Proposition 6, which banned gays from teaching in the public schools, gave rise to the gay-rights faction of the Republican Party known as the Log Cabin Republicans (10). On its current website, the link with Abraham Lincoln is made crystal clear: "the name of the organization is a reference to the first Republican President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who was born in a Log Cabin. President Lincoln built the Republican Party on the principles of liberty and equality. The party should return to its roots" (11). Ironically, the Log Cabin website chooses not to address the question of whether or not Lincoln himself was gay. Either way, in death, as in life, Lincoln continues to stir controversy.

1. Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000), 339.
2. League of the South Political Committee, "Yes, We Can!," http://dixienet.org/New%20Site/yeswecan.shtml.
3. David W. Blight, "The Theft of Lincoln in Scholarship, Politics, and Public Memory," in Eric Foner ed., Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 275.
4. Confederate States of America, "The Communist Revolution of 1861 Against the United States and Against the Confederate States of America," http://www.confederatestatesofamerica.org/articles/52.htm.
5. The book will appear in both English and Spanish. Its publication is timed to coincide with a May 2009 conference in Monterrey, Mexico on the subject of Marti, Juarez and Lincoln. For more information on the conference, see http://www.cubasection.org/notician.php?id=69.
6. For more on this, see David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872 (1967; repr., Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1981)
7. Carol Lloyd, "Was Lincoln gay?" http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/04/30/lincoln/; Lewis Gannett and William A. Percy III, "Lincoln, Sex, and the Scholars," The Gay and Lesbian Review (March-April 2006): 19. For depiction of a gay Lincoln in popular culture, see "Treehouse of Horror #19," November 2, 2008 episode of The Simpsons television show: http://www.hulu.com/watch/42066/the-simpsons-treehouse-of-horror-19#s-p1-so-i0 (Lincoln appears starting at 11:21). For blogging commentary on the episode, see http://esulincoln.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/lincolns-sexuality-and-the-simpsons.
8. For an analysis of the Lincoln-Derickson relationship that challenges Tripp's account, see Martin P. Johnson, "Did Abraham Lincoln Sleep with His Bodyguard? Another Look at the Evidence," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 27 (Summer 2006): 42-55.
9. C. A. Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Free Press, 2005), xxii.
10. One of the most prominent opponents of Proposition 6 was gay rights activist and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the subject of Gus Van Sant's 2008 film Milk, http://www.filminfocus.com/focusfeatures/film/milk/. See also Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982).
11. Log Cabin Republicans, "A Proud History," http://online.logcabin.org/about/history.html.