The Library › Reel VI · The Roommate
Did Lincoln visit Joshua Speed’s family plantation in Kentucky?
VERDICTTRUE
Yes. In August 1841 Lincoln spent three weeks at Farmington, the Speed family home near Louisville, recovering from his collapse. Speed’s widowed mother gave him a Bible, and he borrowed law books from Speed’s brother James, whom he later made Attorney General. On the trip home he saw enslaved men chained together on a steamboat, his first known written observation of slavery.
The receipts
- Abraham Lincoln, Historic Farmington
The comedy version
The untold story of Abraham Lincoln and the man who lent him half a bed.
Play The Roommate ☞More from this shelf
- Did Lincoln really move into Joshua Speed’s bed because he could not afford seventeen dollars of bedding?True
- Was it normal for two men to share a bed in the 1830s?True
- What happened on Lincoln’s “fatal first of January” 1841?Disputed
- Did Lincoln really call himself “the most miserable man living”?True
- Did Lincoln write that he was jealous when Speed got married?True
- Did Lincoln ask Speed whether marriage was worth it, a month before his own wedding?True