Courting Mr. Lincoln is a historical novel published by Louis Bayard in 2019. Bayard's novel is set well before the rail splitter would earn that nickname. The story is set in Springfield, Illinois in 1840, twenty years before Lincoln would travel to Washington, D.C. to become a legend.
Dual narratives present a portrait of the young Mr. Lincoln who is rarely the center of any narrative—fictional or otherwise—these days. It is two years before he would wed Mary Todd, who provides one of the narrative perspectives. The other provides an intensely different look at the future President through the eyes of Joshua Speed, a dry goods merchant who is Abe's best friend. In fact, Joshua and Lincoln are notorious for having a very close friendship. The precise nature and closeness of that relationship provides the driving mechanics of fiction to this historical novel.
Bayard has carved for himself a special little niche in the genre of historical fiction by focusing on big name figures from history or classic fiction and tweaking them with a touch of controversy and a dash of panache. The tweak here resides confronting well-known and off-told stories about Lincoln sharing a bed with other men. No historian has yet forwarded any evidence to confirm these stories are examples of anything other than the accepted cultural tradition of the time. Nevertheless, the very oddity of the situation in comparison to modern-day homophobia makes these tales ripe for exploration.
Ultimately, that it was really drives any urge to read the novel. It is a story about Honest Abe that doesn't align with the highlights that have told and retold. Whether out of concern for critical repercussions or simply to take advantage of the power of ambiguity, the author pulls back from the temptation to erase all questions about the nature of the relationship between Lincoln and Speed. What is perhaps most interesting is that he makes the same decision in regard to the relationship between Lincoln and Mary Todd.
The difference is that the relationship with Joshua is clearly a deeply emotional bond while the implication strongly made that marrying Mary was entirely a political decision. Not that this is anything new to either the legend of Lincoln or the marriages of American politicians. The unions of young men already infected with the Presidential fever is a history of choosing wives based on significantly more elements than mere lust. What makes Bayard's fictionalized treatment engaging is that the title of his book definitely seems to apply more to Joshua than Mary Todd.
These words and the profound depth of emotion they convey seem as though they should be coming from the perspective of Mary's narrative thread: "From henceforth, there would be only space where Lincoln used to be. And in Joshua's mind, that space began to expand and deepen until it became a vast nullity, blanketing everything around him until it seemed the night itself had been swallowed up by it.” Like any potential bride who knows she is only going to get in the way of her potential husband's ambition, these words reveal the depth of love it takes to sacrifice personal desires for the greater good of the man who is loved.
