Recently, a reader asked a Washington City Paper columnist (The Straight Dope, 4/2) if Abraham Lincoln was a heterosexual or a homosexual.

One of the things unique to Lincoln scholarship is the large number of Lincoln’s friends and acquaintances who saved every scrap of paper that came into their possession that Lincoln had put his pen to. As a result, no other figure in American history left behind such a paper trail of his public and private life as Lincoln. These papers can be found in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler (Rutgers University Press, 1953).

Virtually every library has this book. In it, the curious can find a number of letters Lincoln wrote to his best friend, Joshua Speed, as well as the letters Lincoln wrote to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Readers can judge for themselves the relationships that existed there.

Capitol Hill