I'm pretty sure the locals in that film were on the GOP Convention Committee, and the banjo player was the entertainment. They're also instructors at WHINSEC, formerly THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS.
In 1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson was quoted in the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome in the party, "given that the founder was gay."
Was Lincoln Gay? By W. Scott Thompson Mr. Thompson is a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
In his early thirties, before either he [Abraham Lincoln] or his love-object Joshua Speed married, they lived together in cramped circumstances over four full years; not to put too fine a point on it, "the young men slept in the same bed every night," according to a very straight and conventional source. [1] Perhaps we are meant to accept this habit precisely for its openness--since it is not covered up--as necessitated by frontier privation rather than erotic preference: an inference more in the category of the anxious denial of the historian rather than the compelling illogic of the evidence--a memorable avoidance indeed, since it does not even pass the straight-face test.
[1] Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (1982), p. 284.
In "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years" (1926), Carl Sandberg wrote that their relationship had "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets," which some have taken as a veiled reference to homosexuality. In 1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson was quoted in the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome in the party, "given that the founder was gay."
At the risk of being unkind, Lincoln's wife Mary Todd was a shrill, shrieking, perpetually unhappy soul, and just as DE's aging congressman Mike Castle entered a marriage of convenience before running for Congress, I think it's quite likely that Mr. Lincoln understood that "single men don't get elected" and he and Castle both married a couple of purty little thangs! ;)
At the risk of being unkind, Lincoln's wife Mary Todd was a shrill, shrieking, perpetually unhappy sou
Go ahead Dawg, risk it.
I should note that the BAC wing of the neo-con wingnut brigade is very protective of Honest Abe. Perhaps they admire him so because he trashed the Constitution more thoroughly than GWB, and GWB and crew cite the acts of Lincoln as precedent for their own extra-legal shenanigans and power grabs.
Regarding the domestic life of Honest Abe, Lincoln's biographer and law partner, William H. Herndon wrote,
Lincoln's married life was a domestic hell on earth. The whole sad story shall be told sometime. Twice in this man's life he walked that sharp and narrow line that divides sanity from insanity.
Source: "The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letter and Papers of William H. Herndon," by Emanuel Hertz, New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 122.
Again in the winter of 1857 the Supreme Court was in session and Lincoln had an important suit to argue. He came in the clerk's office, the law library room too; his nose was plastered up, fixed up with court plaster. Now for the facts. Lincoln had on the day before become somewhat abstracted, thoughtful, and let the fire in Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln's sitting room nearly die out. Mrs. Lincoln came to the door of the sitting room from the kitchen and said: "Mr. Lincoln, put some wood on the fire." Lincoln did not hear her and neglected the repair of the fire. Mrs. Lincoln came to the sitting room again and said: "Mr. Lincoln, mend up the fire," it having got low down. Lincoln did not hear Mrs. Lincoln; she came in again and picked up a stick of wood and said: "Mr. Lincoln, I have told you now there three times to mend the fire and you have pretended that you did not hear me. I'll make you hear me this time," and she blazed away at Lincoln with a stick of stovewood and hit him on the nose and thus banged it up. Someone in the courtroom asked Lincoln what was the matter; he made an evasive reply in part to the question. Lincoln's girl stated this, if others did not know it. From what I know of the facts, it is more probable that it is true than untrue. I believe it; it went around among the members of the bar as true. Many such quarrels did take place between Lincoln and his wife. Lincoln's domestic life was a home hell on this globe.
Your friend, W. H. Herndon.
Source: "The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letter and Papers of William H. Herndon," by Emanuel Hertz, New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 141.
Also, Lincoln is known to have seen apparitions.
Lincoln's biographer and law partner, William H. Herndon wrote,
This state of Mr. Lincoln, particularly so if it was accompanied by mental and nervous exhaustion, produced by long and intense study, caused him to have delusions -- saw apparitions, specters, and the like. This man was, as a general rule, a sad -- a gloomy and melancholy -- man, but at exceptional times a momentarily happy one, and it was a curious thing to see him sink quickly back into his usual state of sadness and gloom and become, as it were, oblivious of his surroundings, man and the world. Let no man blame Mr. Lincoln for being sad or seeing apparitions; his sadness and his gloom came naturally out of his organism and his apparitions from the same source somewhat and from nervous and mental exhaustion.
Source: "The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letter and Papers of William H. Herndon," by Emanuel Hertz, New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 231.
There is significant evidence that Mary Lincoln's deterioration into insanity resulted from tabes syphilis. While there are no known existing medical records for Abraham Lincoln, his son Robert had Mary Lincoln committed to a mental asylum and there are the medical records of Mary Lincoln and a file kept by Robert Lincoln which he entitled, "The Insanity File." The book, "Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis," by Deborah Hayden provides a history of the disease and provides short histories of famous people known or believed to have suffered from syphilis, including Mary Lincoln.
Lincoln's biographer and law partner, William H. Herndon wrote to Jesse Weik in January 1891,
Friend Weik:
When I was in Greencstle in 1887 I said to you that Lincoln had, when a mere boy, the syphilis, and not let me explain the matter in full, which I have never done before. About the year 1835-36 Mr. Lincoln went to Beardstown and during a devilish passion had connection with a girl and caught the disease. Lincoln told me this and in a moment of folly I made a note of it in my mind and afterwards I transferred it, as it were, to a little memorandum book which I loaned to Lamon, not, as I should have done, erasing that note. About the year 1836-37 Lincoln moved to Springfield and took up quarters with [Joshua] Speed; they became very intimate. At this time I suppose that the disease hung to him and, not wishing to trust our physicians, wrote a note to Doctor Drake, the latter part of which he would not let Speed see, not wishing Speed to know it. Speed said to me that Lincoln would not let him see a part of the note. Speed wrote to me a letter saying that he supposed L’s letter to Doctor Drake had reference to his, L’s crazy spell about the Ann Rutledge love affair, etc., and her death. You will find Speeds’ letter to me in our Life of Lincoln. The note to Doctor Drake in part had reference to his disease and not to his crazy spell as Speed supposes. The note spoken of in the memorandum book was a loose affair, and I never intended that the world should see or hear of it. I now wish and for years have wished that the note was blotted out or burned to ashes. I write this to you, fearing that at some future time the note -- a loose thing as to date, place, and circumstances -- will come to light and be misunderstood. Lincoln was a man of terribly strong passion, but was true as steel to his wife during his whole marriage life, as Judge Davis has said, saved many a woman, and it most emphatically true, as I know. I write this to you to explain the whole matter for the future if it should become necessary to do so. I deeply regret my part of the affair in every particular.
Your friend, W.H. Herndon
Source: "The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letter and Papers of William H. Herndon," by Emanuel Hertz, New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 259.
Syphilis was suggested in Mary Todd’s medical history when Norbert Hirschhorn and Robert Feldman published an article in 1999 reviewing the work of the four doctors who had diagnosed her progressive spinal trouble. Finding a clear case of tabes dorsalis, Hirschhorn and Feldman argue convincingly that the doctors would have known very well by then that tabes was caused by syphilis in the majority of cases and would have opted to save her reputation (and to assure a benefit that might have been withheld by a censorious Congress) by stating that her tabes dorsalis was caused by an injury to her spine when she fell from the French chair. “Given the widespread medical knowledge about tabes dorsalis at the close of 1881 and what then was considered its most likely cause [syphilis], it was inevitable that the four physicians chose the least pejorative diagnosis, however marginally acceptable it was to progressive medical opinion.” Jonathan Hutchinson concluded that it was generally accepted that tabes occurs “almost solely” in those who have previously suffered from syphilis. P.J. Möbius went one step further: “The longer I reflect upon it, the more firmly I believe that tabes never originates without syphilis.”
The tabes diagnosis gives a fresh interpretation to the reasons for Mary Todd’s incarceration: “Symptoms imputed to insanity at her trial clearly had their origin in the organic disease of tabes dorsalis.” The authors point out that the lightning pains of tabes were often described with vivid images appropriate to such extreme agony, such as having wires taken out of the eyes or, as Mary also complained, of being hacked to pieces by knives, or of having a sharp, burning agony in the back, or feeling as if one were on fire.
The treatment of that time for syphilis was a pill containing mercury which has its own side effects.
Source: Deborah Hayden, POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, Basic Books, (2003), pp. 130-1.
Hirschhorn and Feldman, with a third author, Ian A. Greaves, [22] followed their article on Mary Todd's tabes with another find from a letter written by Herndon: "Mr. Lincoln had an evacuation, a passage, about once a week, ate blue mass." [23] They found elemental mercury to be the active ingredient in blue mass, or blue pills, a medication Lincoln took over an extended period. They even had the blue pills recreated in the laboratory using a recipe from 1879 consisting of licorice root, rosewater, honey, and sugar, plus mercury and dead rose petals. Each pill contained approximately 65 grams of elemental mercury. The authors suggest that Lincoln may have been treated with the blue pills for melancholia, or hypochondriasis. Since syphilis sufferers were both depressed and had so many mysterious ailments that they often thought themselves to be hypochondriacs, the blue pills could have been prescribed for the "syphilis that hung to him" and melancholia and hypochondriasis at the same time.
In his early life Abe Lincoln woke up finding James Speed in his bed. As President, he sneaked off to a cottage by the Soldier's Home and woke up finding Army captain David Derickson in his bed. Lincoln apologists, such as Edward Steers below, explain it away with, "men sleeping together in the same bed, a common practice of the period." Presumably, it was common practice for Washington, Adams, Jefferson and other Presidents to sleep with an Army captain, and we just do not hear about it.
Source:Edward Steers, Jr., Washington Times September 12, 2003, Lincoln finds summers of respite in rural area
Steers reviews Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Among the more interesting and little-known aspects of Lincoln's life at the home was his relationship with Capt. David Derickson. Described as "the president's favorite new companion," Derickson was captain of Company K of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry. In September 1862, Companies K and D were detached from the defenses of Washington and sent to guard the president's cottage at the Soldiers' Home. According to Mr. Pinsker, Lincoln often shared his dinner table with Derickson and Capt. Henry Crotzer (of Company D) when Mary Lincoln was away.
In addition, Derickson shared a bed with the president, at Lincoln's invitation. The bed-sharing eventually made its way into the regimental history that received little attention until recently. Contemporary views thought little of men sleeping together in the same bed, a common practice of the period.
Honest Abe -- not what you read in your history books.