BWas Abraham Lincoln both America’s greatest president and a gay man? A new documentary argues: yes.

Lover of Men: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln, “The 40 Fingers,” which hits theaters Sept. 6, is said to be the definitive documentary on Lincoln’s sexuality. It includes excerpts from charged letters and, to put them in context, impressions from several Lincoln experts and experts on the history of sexuality, particularly in the 19th century.

Scholars featured in the film argue that the former president, who led the United States out of the Civil War, struggled with an identity crisis throughout his life: He was married because he had to be at the time to advance politically, but he also had intimate relationships with men. (The film has no connection to Oh, Mary!the current Broadway play in which Lincoln is portrayed as a non-openly gay man.)

Lincoln’s sexuality may have been more widely known during his lifetime than it is today. “In the 19th century, people were very familiar with the fact that Lincoln slept with men, and it wasn’t considered shocking,” says John Stauffer, a professor of English and of African and African-American studies who appears in the film.

How it works Lovers of men explains that Lincoln had close relationships with men and why this research is not known to a wider public.

Looking for all the evidence that Lincoln loved men

Lincoln’s first love was probably Billy Greene, who taught Lincoln grammar when he moved to New Salem, Illinois, in 1831 at age 22. They shared a bed for 18 months, and at one point Greene wrote in a letter that Lincoln’s “thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.”

Scholars on the film argue that Lincoln’s soulmate was Joshua Speed, who owned a general store in Springfield, Illinois. When Lincoln moved there in 1837 – as a young lawyer – he was looking for materials to build a bed and was sent to Speed’s store. He ended up sharing a bed with Speed ​​for four years, even when he got to a point where he could afford his own place.

Their letters are cited in the film as evidence that they were physically and emotionally intimate. “No two men were ever more intimate,” Speed ​​even said of his relationship with Lincoln. William Herndon, Lincoln’s partner in the law firm, also used the word “intimate” to describe Lincoln’s relationship with Speed, and later so did Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln. Lincoln signed letters to Speed, “Forever Yours.”

Lincoln “had a homosexual relationship with Joshua Speed,” says Stauffer, who wrote about the correspondence between Speed ​​​​and Lincoln.

However, the relationship did not last long because, scholars argue, Lincoln needed a wife to make a name for himself in politics. In 1842, he married Mary Todd Lincoln, who came from a wealthy family.

“There is no evidence that Mary Todd knew about Lincoln’s intimacy, this carnal intimacy with Joshua Speed, but that was not unusual,” Stauffer explains. “There are numerous examples of prominent men who had carnal relationships with other men and still had happy marriages.”

According to the documentary, Lincoln continued to have relationships with other men even after he married, had children, and served as president. In the first year of his presidency, 1861, he took a particular interest in a soldier named Elmer Ellsworth, praising him as “the most splendid little man I ever met.” He wrote twice to the War Department to promote Ellsworth to colonel, despite excluding several qualified West Point graduates. Ellsworth was fatally shot in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 24, 1861, while pulling down a Confederate flag from a hotel roof. The scholars in the film describe Lincoln as “inconsolable” afterward, pointing out that it was unusual for a president to be so taken with a young Union Army officer.

In the summer of 1862, Lincoln sought refuge in a cottage a few miles from the White House, best known as the place where he wrote the outline of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the film, scholars mention two sources that say he slept in the same bed as his bodyguard, David Derickson—a letter dated November 16, 1862, from Virginia Woodbury Fox, who came from an influential military family, mentions that a soldier particularly devoted to the president was staying in the cottage and sleeping with him. And a history of the regiment that protected Lincoln says that in Mary Todd Lincoln’s absence, Derickson slept in the same bed as Lincoln, wearing the president’s nightgown. Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, argues that Lincoln’s feelings for Ellsworth and Derickson “probably helped him cope with the various tragedies of the Civil War.”

Why Lincoln’s sexuality is not better known

One reason Lincoln’s sexuality is not discussed is that homosexuality became taboo in the 20th century. Eugenics was popular and homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Religious leaders labeled it a sin. States passed laws criminalizing homosexual relations, and these laws remained in effect until the 1960s.

However, letters between Speed ​​​​and Lincoln have been in the Library of Congress for decades. Scholars who study gay history have been talking about Lincoln’s sexuality since the 1970s, when a new LGBTQ+ movement emerged. “Just as the gay liberation movement is going on, there is a scholarly interest in finding gay people in the past,” Balcerski says.

Pioneering works on this topic include Love stories: Sex between men before homosexuality (2003) by Jonathan Ned Katz and The intimate world of Abraham Lincoln (2005) by CA Tripp. Tripp’s book was featured in a July 4, 2005, TIME Magazine cover story about new research on Lincoln. The magazine noted that “it was as normal and commonplace for men to share a bed in the mid-19th century as it was for men to share a house or apartment in the early 21st century.” There were no labels for this behavior, so “men could openly show their affection for one another, physically and verbally, without basing their identities on it.”

While the idea that Lincoln was queer may not be news to some, it’s notable that this documentary is coming to theaters at a time when Republican states are passing anti-trans laws and banning books with openly queer characters from school libraries. Stauffer notes that this is the perfect time for the documentary to be released because sexuality has become “a major aspect of the culture, whether it’s in the culture of politics, the culture of education, and the way people live their lives.” There are more entertainers who identify as LGBTQ+, and the internet has helped LGBTQ+ individuals find people like them to connect with.

The filmmakers hope that people who accept Lincoln as queer will also be more accepting of other queer people in general. Balcerski cautions against pigeonholing Lincoln, but argues, “We can say that Lincoln’s love included men.”