History is usually written by people who want to keep things tidy. We like our icons like Abraham Lincoln carved in white marble—static, stoic, and definitely straight. But the documentary Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln basically takes a sledgehammer to that polished image. It isn’t just some tabloid project meant to stir up drama. It’s actually a pretty dense, scholarly look at how we’ve been reading Lincoln’s personal life through a modern lens that didn't exist in the 1800s.
If you think Lincoln was just a guy who shared a bed with men because "it was cold outside," you're missing the bigger picture. Honestly, the reality is way more complicated.
What Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln Actually Uncovers
The film, directed by Shaun Eli, isn't just throwing out wild theories. It brings in heavy hitters. I’m talking about historians like Jean Baker, who wrote the definitive biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, and Thomas Balcerski, an expert on 19th-century male friendships. They point out something that feels weird to us now: men in the 1800s were incredibly physically affectionate. They wrote letters that would make a modern "bro" cringe.
But with Lincoln, it went beyond just being "besties."
Take Joshua Speed. He’s the big one. When Lincoln arrived in Springfield, Illinois, in 1837, he was broke. Speed offered to share his bed. They ended up sharing that bed for four years. People love to say, "Oh, everyone did that back then!" Sure, bed-sharing happened because of space and money. But most people didn't keep doing it for four years once they became successful lawyers.
The letters Lincoln wrote to Speed after they moved apart are... intense. He wrote about their "separation" with a level of grief that usually follows a romantic breakup. When Speed was getting married, Lincoln was practically having a panic attack on his behalf, asking if he felt "free from the dread" of the wedding night. It’s heavy stuff.
The Problem With Our Modern Labels
We want to call Lincoln "gay" or "bisexual." But the movie makes a great point: those words didn't exist in 1840. You couldn't "be" gay back then because the identity hadn't been invented yet. You just did what you did.
Historians like C.A. Tripp, who wrote The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, argued for years that Lincoln’s primary emotional and physical connections were with men. This isn't a new "woke" trend. Tripp was a researcher who worked with Alfred Kinsey. He spent decades looking at the primary sources. He found that Lincoln had a pattern. It wasn't just Speed.
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Later in life, during the Civil War, there was David Derickson. He was the captain of Lincoln's bodyguard unit. There are documented accounts from the time—specifically from the diary of Elizabeth Woodbury Fox—noting that Derickson stayed in the President’s bed when Mary was away. He even wore the President's nightshirts.
Think about that. The President of the United States, in the middle of the bloodiest war in American history, is sharing a bed with a soldier. It’s a detail that mostly gets edited out of high school textbooks because it doesn't fit the "Great Emancipator" brand.
Why Does This Make People So Angry?
Whenever someone mentions Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, the comment sections usually explode. People feel protective of Lincoln. They think that by suggesting he might have loved men, you’re somehow "taking him away" or disrespecting his memory.
But why?
If Lincoln was queer, or fluid, or whatever label you want to slap on it, it actually makes him more human. It shows a man who dealt with immense personal melancholy and a complicated marriage, yet still managed to hold a crumbling nation together. It adds layers.
Mary Todd Lincoln gets a rough deal in history, too. The documentary doesn't ignore her. It looks at the tension in their marriage. They had four children. They clearly had a life together. But the film suggests that Lincoln’s deepest emotional intimacy might have lived elsewhere. Both things can be true at once. 19th-century marriages were often functional or political.
Breaking Down the Evidence
The documentary relies heavily on the "Speed letters." You have to read them to believe them. Lincoln writes to Speed: "I shall be very lonesome without you." He talks about their "dreams."
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Then there is the Billy Herndon factor. Herndon was Lincoln’s law partner for twenty years. He wrote a biography of Lincoln after the assassination. Herndon hated Mary Todd, sure, but he also described Lincoln as having "no appetites" for women in the traditional sense. He described him as "asexual" toward the opposite sex, though he didn't use that word.
- The New Salem Days: Lincoln’s relationship with Ann Rutledge is often cited as his "great tragic love." But many historians now believe that story was largely embellished by Herndon to make Lincoln look more "normal" to a Victorian public that was starting to get suspicious of his bachelor years.
- The Soldier’s Home: This is where David Derickson comes back in. Lincoln spent his summers at the Soldier’s Home to get away from the heat of D.C. He and Derickson were inseparable there.
The Visual Language of the 19th Century
One of the coolest things Lover of Men does is show us old photographs. Not just of Lincoln, but of men in general from that era. You see photos of men sitting on each other’s laps, holding hands, and leaning into each other with a vulnerability that vanished in the 20th century.
Hyper-masculinity as we know it is a relatively new invention.
In the Victorian era, "romantic friendship" was a recognized thing. It allowed men to be incredibly close. The debate is where that friendship crossed the line into what we would now call a sexual or romantic relationship. Given the nightshirt stories and the four-year bed-sharing stint, it’s hard to argue it was all just "platonic bros being bros."
Why This Documentary Matters Now
We are in a moment where we are re-evaluating everyone.
Some people call it revisionist history. I’d argue it’s just history. We are finally looking at the stuff that was previously ignored because it made people uncomfortable. If we want to understand the man who wrote the Gettysburg Address, we have to understand his heart.
Lincoln was a man of deep sorrows. He suffered from what they called "hypochondriasis" (clinical depression). His connections with men like Speed seemed to be the only thing that could pull him out of his darkest holes.
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Actionable Insights for History Buffs
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this than just watching the film, you should actually look at the primary sources. Don't just take a filmmaker's word for it.
1. Read the letters. Look up the correspondence between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed. Look for the letters from 1841 and 1842. Read them without assuming you know what they mean. Just feel the tone.
2. Check out Thomas Balcerski. His book Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King provides the essential context for how politicians in Lincoln's era lived. It helps you see that Lincoln wasn't necessarily an outlier—he lived in a world where these bonds were common, even if his were particularly intense.
3. Visit the Lincoln Cottage. If you’re ever in D.C., go to the Soldier’s Home (President Lincoln’s Cottage). Standing in the rooms where he stayed with David Derickson gives you a much different vibe than the Lincoln Memorial. It’s small. It’s intimate. It feels like a place where a man could actually be himself.
4. Ditch the labels. Try to research this without needing to check a box that says "Gay" or "Straight." The 19th century didn't work like that. Lincoln was a man who loved deeply, and often, those he loved most were men. That’s a historical fact, regardless of what you think happened behind closed doors.
The real takeaway from Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln is that our heroes are allowed to be complex. Lincoln was a genius, a savior, a depressive, a father, and a man who found his greatest comfort in the company of other men. Acknowledging that doesn't make him less of a president. It just makes him real.