Doris Kearns Goodwin threw cold water on relationship between Honest Abe and Joshua Speed; Andrew Sullivan isn't having it

Goodwin says Speed and Lincoln slept together for three years. We've read six, seven and even nine years, but we'll take her word for it, not being historians.

The argument that he might have been gay rests on two things. One, that he slept in the same bed as his great friend Joshua Speed for three years. And second that he wrote affectionate letters to Speed, ending with “Yours forever,” or “Hope we are friends forever.” Well, as you look back in that era I can see all my guys, Seward, Stanton, Chase and Bates, they all slept in the same beds with people. It was a sense of privacy unlike what we have today. 

     She expanded on male-male customs in the 1800s here.
     Sullivan argued the contrary here:


     Lincoln's 1829 poem about a boy who married a boy is here. Don't tell Goodwin.
     AKSARBENT's favorite Lincoln story is from Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You about ...