The Turbulent Universe by Kurtz Paul

Author:Kurtz, Paul.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616147365
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services
Published: 2013-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

BIOGRAPHY

The same thing is true of our understanding of individuals. How are we to explain any person, who and what he or she is, without a detailed biographical account?

Consider how many biographies have been written about Abraham Lincoln: the story of the unlikely rise of a poor boy born in a log cabin on the frontier, self-educated, who rose to greatness as the president during the Civil War and who died a martyr (or traitor, depending on whether you’re a defender of the North or the South). Lincoln had a wife, Mary Todd, a shrew who hounded him with vitriol even after he became president. Of the hundreds of biographies of the man, which was the true account? One biographer, C. A. Tripp, claims that Lincoln was gay or at least bisexual and that he shared a bed with young Billy Green, a frequent bunkmate of Lincoln’s in the 1830s in Salem. A second relationship with a male friend went on for several years. This relationship could still be surmised from the letters of guilt and affection from his alleged paramour of the 1840s, Joshua Speed of Springfield, Illinois, who likewise shared a bed with Abe Lincoln for several years. Tripp observes that poverty did not require the longtime bed-sharing. There are also well-documented accounts of Lincoln’s trysts in the White House with Captain David V. Derickson; both were seen in nightgowns together when Mary Lincoln was absent. The greatness of a man as a public figure is of course quite separate from his private escapades.2

Many consider Thomas Jefferson a semidivine figure as a Founding Father of the American Revolution and author of the Declaration of Independence. Yet his long-standing affair with Sally Hemings, his beautiful mulatto slave, was common knowledge in his day. He took her to Paris with him when he was ambassador.

James T. Callender, a political journalist who had once been an ally of Jefferson, wrote in 1802 that Jefferson had kept a concubine, Sally Hemings—his own slave—and that he sired several children with her. Much was made of the story by Jefferson’s Federalist opponents in his day. Jefferson as a rule did not respond publicly to personal attacks on him, though the story was well known in the nineteenth century. Defenders of Jefferson said that his nephews Peter and Samuel Carr might have sired the children of many Monticello slaves, hence their resemblance to Jefferson.

A special research committee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation reexamined the evidence, including a DNA study of the descendants of Sally Hemings. They concluded in 2000 that there is “a high probability that Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings” and that he most likely “was the father of all six of Sally Hemings’ children.”3 No one is perfect, least of all great political leaders!

Many great historical figures were all too human. Benjamin Franklin, the great sage of Philadelphia, was a ladies’ man who left a good part of his estate to his French mistress. Bill Clinton was nearly driven from office for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

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