For four years in the 1830s, in Springfield, Illinois, a young state legislator shared a bed with his best friend, Joshua Speed. The legislator was Abraham Lincoln. When Speed moved home to Kentucky in 1841 and Lincoln's engagement to Mary Todd was broken off, Lincoln suffered an emotional crisis. An underground campaign has been accumulating about Abahram Lincoln for years, focusing on his intimate relationships. He was famously awkward around single women. Before Mary Todd, he was engaged to another woman, but his fiancée called off the marriage on the grounds that he was "lacking smaller attentions." His marriage to Mary was troubled. Meanwhile, throughout his adult life, he enjoyed close relationships with a number of men — disclosed here for the first time, including an affair with an army captain when Mrs. Lincoln was away. This extensive study by renowned psychologist, therapist, and sex researcher C.A. Tripp, examines not only Lincoln's sexuality, but aims to make sense of the whole man. It includes an introduction by Jean Baker, biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln and an afterword containing reactions by two Lincoln scholars and one clinical psychologist. This timely book finally allows the true Lincoln to be fully understood.

C. A. Tripp passed away in May 2003, just two weeks after completing the manuscript of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. A psychologist, therapist, and sex researcher, he worked with Alfred Kinsey in the late 1940s and 1950s before obtaining a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from New York University. He maintained a private practice of psychology for years and taught at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, from 1955 to 1964.