I'm Hugging You, But I'm Hurting You
Here is Doris Goodwin at the Kennedy Center talking up her new book about President Lincoln. In this excerpt from the Q&A she talks about the relationship between Secretary of War Stanton and Secretary of Treasurer Chase and a few other characters of history:
MS. GOODWIN: And Stanton writes to Chase in much more affectionate language than anything Lincoln wrote to Speed. He writes to him, “Ever since our pleasant intercourse last summer, no one is in my mind more waking or sleeping. I dream of being with you at night, I want to hold you by the hand and tell you I love you.” No one even began to suggest that either of them were gay, that is the way they wrote to one another. Seward, when he’s in the state senate in New York, an older state senator writes to him and says, “I feel positively womanish about you. Ever since I’ve been away, I miss you so much.” And Seward writes back saying, “I feel a rapturous joy that you feel like I do.” But then the next year their friendship breaks up because this older state senator tries to seduce Seward’s wife, who almost falls in love with him. [laughter] And nobody ever suggested Seward was gay. So I think unless we assume that all of the guys in the cabinet are gay, it’s more likely that…
MR. SIMON: That’s an interesting idea. [laughter]
MS. GOODWIN: It’s more likely that I think men had really close friendships then, and I think it's wonderful that they could talk to each other in that open, romantic, even loving way. And it’s just that men and women couldn’t be friendly then in the same way, there's so much chaperoning for women. So you find in women’s history, too, that women write to each other this way in the same time. I think it’s our putting our own sexual understandings back on a time when there was romance, there was love, but I don’t necessarily think there was sex.
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The language these men exchanged is pretty remarkable. So the question is whether people today--and men in particular--still feel this type of affection for acquiantences and just don't express it in the same way or whether, as the moderator seems to suggest, the "liberation" of women and the increased interaction between the sexes has foreclosed these types of deeply felt friendships.
I'm not sure what to make of it.
MS. GOODWIN: And Stanton writes to Chase in much more affectionate language than anything Lincoln wrote to Speed. He writes to him, “Ever since our pleasant intercourse last summer, no one is in my mind more waking or sleeping. I dream of being with you at night, I want to hold you by the hand and tell you I love you.” No one even began to suggest that either of them were gay, that is the way they wrote to one another. Seward, when he’s in the state senate in New York, an older state senator writes to him and says, “I feel positively womanish about you. Ever since I’ve been away, I miss you so much.” And Seward writes back saying, “I feel a rapturous joy that you feel like I do.” But then the next year their friendship breaks up because this older state senator tries to seduce Seward’s wife, who almost falls in love with him. [laughter] And nobody ever suggested Seward was gay. So I think unless we assume that all of the guys in the cabinet are gay, it’s more likely that…
MR. SIMON: That’s an interesting idea. [laughter]
MS. GOODWIN: It’s more likely that I think men had really close friendships then, and I think it's wonderful that they could talk to each other in that open, romantic, even loving way. And it’s just that men and women couldn’t be friendly then in the same way, there's so much chaperoning for women. So you find in women’s history, too, that women write to each other this way in the same time. I think it’s our putting our own sexual understandings back on a time when there was romance, there was love, but I don’t necessarily think there was sex.
--
The language these men exchanged is pretty remarkable. So the question is whether people today--and men in particular--still feel this type of affection for acquiantences and just don't express it in the same way or whether, as the moderator seems to suggest, the "liberation" of women and the increased interaction between the sexes has foreclosed these types of deeply felt friendships.
I'm not sure what to make of it.