Originally posted by: vailr
Originally posted by: pyonir
I can't imagine an unmarried man getting into office in the first place.
Historically, 2 U.S. Presidents were batchelors at the time of inauguration.
A Google search of "unmarried president" produced this link:
http://www.planetout.com/news/...rchive/whitehouse.html
One of James Buchanan's (1791-1868) claims to fame is that he was the United States' first "bachelor" president. When he was in his 20s, Buchanan worked as a lawyer in Lancaster, Pa., where he met and became engaged to a woman named Ann Coleman. But Buchanan's fiancee broke off the engagement suddenly and died soon after. Buchanan remained unmarried for the rest of his life.
Buchanan, however, enjoyed a 20-year intimate friendship with another bachelor, William Rufus de Vane King. The two men met as U.S. senators in 1834, when King was 57 and Buchanan, 43. They shared quarters in Washington, D.C., for many years, and Buchanan called their relationship a "communion."
King, a cotton planter from Alabama, was the object of derision by some of his peers, like Andrew Jackson, who dubbed him "Miss Nancy." Aaron Brown, a leading Democrat, called King "Aunt Fancy" and Buchanan's "better half." In a private letter, Brown used the feminine pronoun for King. Despite King's perceived effeminacy, he was elected as Franklin Pierce's vice president in 1852, on the pro-slavery ticket. But after only six weeks in office, King died of tuberculosis.
Buchanan went on to hold several higher offices, including secretary of state, and became president in 1857. His single term was fraught with upheaval: the Panic of 1857, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and the secession of seven Southern states from the Union. He is now mainly remembered for his failure to take a strong stand against slavery.
-----------------
In 1885, 20 years after Lincoln's death, another unmarried president took office. Unlike bachelor Buchanan, though, Grover Cleveland had a reputation as a rake. He asked his sister Rose, a "spinster" with a successful career as a teacher, novelist, and literary critic, to move to Washington to be his first lady and bring a note of respectability to the White House. She acted as first lady until her brother married in 1886.
In 1889, when she was 44, Rose Cleveland began a romantic friendship with Evangeline Simpson, a wealthy 30-year-old widow, whom she met while on vacation in Florida. After returning to their respective homes, the two women exchanged a flurry of increasingly erotic letters. "I tremble at the thought of you," Cleveland wrote. "I dare not think of your arms." Simpson, in return, addressed Cleveland as "my Clevy, my Viking, my Everything." When Simpson enclosed a photo of herself in a letter, Cleveland replied that "the look of it [is] all making me wild."
After a few years, however, Simpson chose to follow a more conventional path. In 1892, she became engaged to an Episcopal bishop twice her age. The decision, Cleveland wrote, hurt her deeply. Nevertheless, she wished the couple well -- on White House stationery.
When Simpson's husband died a few years later, she returned to corresponding with Cleveland. Reunited, the women moved to Italy in 1910, where they lived together until Cleveland died eight years later. Remaining in Italy, Simpson survived her partner by 12 years, and the two were buried there side by side.
