Speed lent Lincoln books from his law library. Joshua Speed and Lincoln disagreed over slavery, especially Speed's argument that Northerners should not care. In 1855, Lincoln wrote to Speed: During Lincoln's presidential administration (March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865), he offered Speed several government appointments. Speed refused each time, choosing to help in other ways. Speed disagreed with Lincoln on the slavery question but remained loyal, and coordinated Union activities in Kentucky during the American Civil War. His brother, James Speed, served as Lincoln's United States Attorney General, beginning in November 1864. In explaining the nomination to Congress, Lincoln acknowledged that he did not know James as well as he knew Joshua. Later activities After the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, Speed organized a memorial service in Louisville for the departed leader. He also pledged his support to the new President Andrew Johnson administration (April 15, 1865 to March 3, 1869). Sixty members of the Speed family gave money for a monument to honor Lincoln in Springfield. Joshua Speed also wrote lengthy letters to William Herndon, a former law partner of Lincoln who had set about to write a biography of Lincoln. Death and legacy Joshua Speed died on May 29, 1882, in Louisville, Kentucky. He is interred in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville. His family's estate, Farmington, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and while the farm is substantially reduced in size, the house has been restored and has become a local event venue, and the focus of living history events. Alleged hidden diary In 1999, the author and gay activist Larry Kramer claimed that he had uncovered new primary sources which shed fresh light on Lincoln's sexuality. The alleged sources included a hitherto-unknown Joshua Speed diary and letters in which Speed wrote explicitly about his relationship with Lincoln. The items were supposedly discovered hidden beneath the floorboards of the old store in which the two men lived, and they were said to reside in a private collection in Davenport, Iowa. Kramer died in 2020 and apparently never produced or showed anyone the supposed documents although he published a novel in 2015, including some of his ideas about Speed and Lincoln that historian and psychoanalyst, Charles Strozier, found unconvincing as a matter of history or sexuality. The historian Gabor Boritt, referring to the alleged documents, wrote, "Almost certainly this is a hoax...."