John, I ran into this with Alexander Hamilton. People fasten on quite passionate language in letters he wrote in his early twenties to Col. John Laurens, Lafayette, and other young officers on Washington’s staff, or close to Washington. Far more intense than anything Lincoln ever wrote anyone, they speak of “love,” “my heart,” etc., etc.

I concluded that Hamilton was not gay, passingly gay, or passingly bisexual, because of the times, and the rest of his life. His letters–and the letters of other officers to him, and to each other–breathed the 18th century cult of sensibility, propogated by Sterne (and mocked by Jane Austen). It was cool to show how deeply you felt your feelings–hence the over the top rhetoric.

Hamilton showed himself to be a dedicated lover of women. He married at 23, and had eight children with his wife, whom he adored and who adored him. He also had a crush on her elder sister (whether or not they had an affair is a great crux of Hamilton biography). By his own public admission, he had an affair with Maria Reynolds, a blackmailer.

The mass of Lincoln’s life seems very different. The Weekly Standard has a piece by Philip Nobile, accusing C.A. Tripp (author of the book I reviewed) of plagiarizing him, and of bending evidence. The question of plagiarism I leave to the courts. Bending of evidence will be obvious to anyone who reads Tripp’s book. But the wierdness in Lincoln remains.