Re: Lincoln, see my forthcoming review in the New York Times Book Review, Jan. 9.

When Lincoln died, Stanton said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” True of him, and of every historical figure. A great man belongs to all subsequent ages, with all their varying preoccuptions.

The key factor in deciding whether to emphasize any trait is its proportion to the life–the life as lived by the subject, and as written by the biographer. Alexander Hamilton’s sex life impinged, grotesquely, on his public career, in the Reynolds Affair; ignoring it was not an option. Gouverneur Morris’s even more active sex life had many fewer public effects (partly because his public career was less considerable). But I wanted to study him as a moral, even more than a political example; so I had to understand how a compulsive adulterer (with other flaws besides) could also be kind, generous, high-spirited and brave. For other lives (in both senses) sex may be largely beside the point. That was mostly what I concluded when I wrote about George Washington, though even there, the gushing of Abigail Adams (and other ladies) is an important measure of his charisma.

Re: Lincoln, it seems to me that his mixed (and incredibly mixed-up) sexuality may have added a layer to his melancholia, which was an important element of his thinking, and of his public persona. It doesn’t explain the Cooper Union Address, but it is certainly as worthy of thought as the 935th analysis of what happened at Cemetary Ridge.