Word: lincolnisms
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Questions the book explores include why didn’t Lincoln have any close childhood friends? Was he engaged in a homoerotic relationship with confidante Joshua Fry Speed? Did Lincoln take advantage of his friendship with Secretary of State William H. Seward to control foreign policy himself...
Donald preemptively defended his discussion of hot-button issues against critics who may accuse him of gratuitously sensationalizing his book. He says that no dialogue about Lincoln’s friendships is complete without Joshua Speed, whom Lincoln met in 1837 and with whom he shared everything from burlesque anecdotes to marriage ambitions to the burden of the seceding South...
After consulting with psychologists, scrutinizing the language of correspondence between the co-confidantes, and considering popular attitudes toward homoeroticism in Lincoln’s time and place, Donald concludes that Lincoln and Fry were close friends—and not lovers...
Having written several books on Lincoln alone, Donald says he decided to undertake yet another project on the figure because he wanted a chance to explore Lincoln’s personal side from a personal perspective. “I felt sort of entitled to tell you how I feel about some of this material,” he says...
With the exception of the literature on friendship, Donald relied exclusively on primary source material, much of which he drew from his extensive personal files. He therefore chose to profile only those of Lincoln’s friends who kept some kind of written record of their interactions with Lincoln. Ulysses S. Grant apparently considered himself a Lincoln man, but no record of his correspondence with Lincoln exists...