Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed - Hardcover

Strozier, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231171323 ISBN 13: 9780231171328

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2016

Synopsis

On April 15, 1837, a "long, gawky" Abraham Lincoln walked into Joshua Speed's dry-goods store in Springfield, Illinois, and asked what it would cost to buy the materials for a bed. Speed said $17, which Lincoln didn't have. He asked for a loan to cover that amount until Christmas. Speed was taken with his visitor, but, as he said later, "I never saw so gloomy and melancholy a face." Speed suggested Lincoln stay with him in a room over his store for free and share his large double bed. Thus began what would become one of the most important friendships in American history.

Speed was Abraham Lincoln's closest confidant, offering him invaluable support after the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge, and during his rocky courtship of Mary Todd. Lincoln needed Speed for guidance, support, and empathy. Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln is a rich analysis of a relationship that was both a model of male friendship and a specific dynamic between two brilliant but fascinatingly flawed men who played off each other's strengths and weaknesses to launch themselves in love and life. Their friendship resolves important questions about Lincoln's early years and adds significant psychological depth to our understanding of the making of the sixteenth president.

About this title

Book Description

Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln is a rich analysis of one of the most important friendships in American history. Joshua Speed and Abraham Lincoln's relationship was both a model of male friendship and a specific dynamic between two brilliant but fascinatingly flawed men who played off each other's strengths and weaknesses to launch themselves in love and life. Their friendship resolves important questions about Lincoln's early years and adds significant psychological depth to his later decisions as husband, war leader, and president.

About the Author

Charles B. Strozier, a historian and psychoanalyst, is a professor of history at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and faculty, training, and supervising analyst at TRISP in New York City. His books include Lincoln's Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings (1982) and Until the Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 and New York City in the Words and Experiences of Survivors and Witnesses (2011).

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0231171323
• ISBN 13: 9780231171328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352