"Faith on the Mall" includes gay giants of the day
Their relationships were referred to as "romantic friendships" between men. Oh the woe of my protagonist Betsy, a former prostitute and now housekeeper to Senator Charles Sumner, who can't help loving that man!
Senator Charles Sumner
Betsy, one of my fictional Lockhouse siblings, becomes the Senator's caregiver after the infamous caning he received on the Senate floor. She falls in love with him - and what Washington woman wouldn't have, with his imposing physical stature and powerful voice, combined with his eloquent anti-slavery speeches. But the love of his life was Samuel Howe. Howe eventually married Julia Ward, the lyricist of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, creating a most unhappy threesome.
For a fascinating account of Sumner's romantic friendships, I highly recommend this video. It includes his great friendship with the poet Henry Longfellow and Sumner's attempts at marriage.
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass, his great evolving tome of poetry, marks Walt Whitman as one of the greatest poets of democracy and America. He arrived in Washington City during the Civil War, took a position as a copyist, and visited the injured soldiers in the Armory Hospital and the Patent Office, as depicted in my novel.
The cluster of poems known as the Calamus poems celebrate "the manly love of comrades," and engendered criticisms of him as obscene and pornographic. He is thought to have been homosexual or bisexual, illegal at the time.
His transcendent love of nature and people and this country overpower such labels. Because I sought to craft a saga of Americana, I begin each Part of my book with an excerpt from his poetry.
... and poor leaders too
President James Buchanan
Buchanan immediately preceded Lincoln as President, leading up to the Civil War. These antebellum years are prominent in my book. Many historians rank Buchanan as the worst president in our history for his incompetence and ineffectiveness leading our country on the brink of civil war.
Because of his life-long bachelorhood and a lengthy living relationship with William Rufus King, former VP to President Pierce, gossip and speculation was that they had a romantic friendship.
How interesting to reflect that we may have already had our first gay president and vice-president! And that if people in LBGTQ relationships ran for those offices today, social media would amplify slurs and gossip beyond anything seen over a century ago, despite all our legal advances beyond "romantic friendships."