A. Lincoln A Biography

Chapter 7
A Matter of Profound Wonder 1831–42

I AM NOW THE MOST MISERABLE MAN LIVING. IF WHAT I FEEL WERE EQUALLY DISTRIBUTED TO THE WHOLE HUMAN FAMILY, THERE WOULD NOT BE ONE CHEERFUL FACE ON THE EARTH.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO JOHN TODD STUART
January 23, 1842

WHEN LINCOLN GREW UP IN INDIANA, HIS STEPMOTHER, SALLY BUSH Lincoln, remembered, “He was not very fond of girls as he seemed to me.” Anna Caroline Gentry, a schoolmate, reported that Lincoln “did not go much with the girls—don’t like crowds—didn’t like girls much.” In New Salem, Lincoln was even shy about waiting on young women in his store.
But if young women did not know what to make of Lincoln, older women adored him. In New Salem, several older women mothered this awkward young man, cooking and cleaning for him and repairing his clothes. Lincoln reciprocated their affection, finding a safe harbor in their matronly company. One young woman from New Salem recalled, “Lincoln loved my Mother and would frequently ask her for advice on different questions—Such as love—prudence of movements.” Jack Armstrong’s wife, Hannah, took a liking to Lincoln. Fun-loving Jack enjoyed telling people that one of the boys in his family might actually be “Abe’s son,” an allusion that Lincoln, although a pretty good practical joker himself, did not find funny. Some of these women, in mothering Lincoln, also wanted to assist him in finding a suitable bride.
IN NEW SALEM, Lincoln broke through his shyness to court the young Ann Rutledge. He did not need to go far to find her; he had boarded with the James and Mary Rutledge family in his first months in New Salem.
Ann was eighteen years old when Lincoln arrived in 1831. She was five feet three inches tall and pretty, with blue eyes and light, auburn hair. Bill Greene called her “a young lady … of Exquisite beauty.” Neighbors remembered her as “intelligent” and “smart.” Her brother, Robert Rutledge, said, “My sister was esteemed the brightest mind of the family.”
Lincoln was attracted to this gentle young woman but knew that Ann’s hand was being sought by several men. She became engaged to John McNeil in 1832. McNeil told Ann he had changed his name from McNamar to McNeil because his father had failed in business, and the son was determined to make enough money to return to New York, pay off his father’s debts, and restore the family name. He promised that upon his return from New York they would be married. Ann shared his story with members of her family, some of whom were dubious about its truth.
Her engagement did not discourage Lincoln, and a door opened for him to visit with Ann when McNeil left. How their friendship blossomed into romance is not known. No letters have survived from Ann Rutledge, and nothing in Abraham Lincoln’s correspondence tells us about her. How did Abraham overcome his inhibitions?
At some point in 1835, Lincoln and Ann entered into what couples at that time called an “understanding” about their relationship. Ann’s cousin, James McCrady Rutledge, about her same age, remembered that while Lincoln was boarding with his uncle, he “became deeply in love with Ann.” Lincoln, as postmaster, would be privy to the early letters and then lack of letters from McNeil. It became apparent to everyone that McNeil was not going to return, but vows were honored for a long time in that era. Lincoln and Ann may also have paused because he as yet had no profession except as a part-time legislator, and she wished to pursue more education. Rutledge said his cousin Ann “concented to wait a year for their Marriage after their Engagement until Abraham Lincoln was admitted to the bar.” Rutledge firmly believed, “Had she lived till spring they were to be married.”
In the long, hot, rainy summer of 1835, Ann fell ill with what people called “brain fever,” probably typhoid fever, perhaps caused by the flooding of the Rutledge well. She died on August 25, 1835. Her uncle, John M. Cameron, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, preached her funeral sermon.
Lincoln was devastated by Ann’s death. He had lost his mother and his sister to early deaths, and now he had lost the first woman he had loved. He had perhaps surprised himself in reaching out to young Ann Rutledge, and now she had been taken from him prematurely.
Lincoln was staying with Elizabeth and Bennett Abell at the time. Elizabeth Abell said later, “It was a great shock to him and I never seen a man mourn for a companion more than he did for her[.] He made a remark one day when it was raining that he could not bare the idea of its raining on her Grave.” Robert Rutledge remarked, “The effect upon Mr. Lincoln’s mind was terrible; he became plunged in despair, and many of his friends feared that reason would desert her throne.” The residents of New Salem, in remembering Abraham and Ann, did not claim they knew the details of their love for each other, but, as Robert Rutledge summarized, Lincoln’s “extraordinary emotions were regarded as strong evidence of the existence of the tenderest relations between himself and the deceased.”
A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR after Ann’s death, Lincoln entered into a relationship with a more mature, imposing woman. Mary Owens, born in Green County, Kentucky, in 1808, grew up in a wealthy family, the recipient of a fine education. Lincoln met her while she was visiting her sister, Elizabeth Abell, in New Salem in 1833. Mary, a good-looking woman with dark eyes, black hair, and a generous figure, exhibited a spirited and witty personality.
Three years later, in 1836, Elizabeth Abell prepared to travel to Kentucky to visit her sister. Elizabeth told Lincoln lightheartedly that she would bring Mary back if he would marry her. Mary, twenty-eight, was reaching the age when society would label her an old maid. Lincoln, probably in the same blithe spirit, boasted that he would marry Mary if she returned. After the death of Ann Rutledge, Abell and other women in the village had been encouraging Abraham to look for a wife.
Mary Owens returned to New Salem in November 1836, aware of Lincoln’s boast. Their relationship flowered, but from the beginning it also prickled. On one occasion, a party of men and women on horseback on their way to a gathering had to cross a stream. Mary said, “The other gentlemen were officious in seeing that their partners got over safely,” but Lincoln never looked back “to see how I got along.” When Mary rode up beside him, she remarked, “You are a nice fellow; I suppose you did not care whether my neck was broken or not.” Lincoln laughed and replied that he “knew I was plenty smart to take care of myself.”
Abraham and Mary had barely begun their courtship when Lincoln left New Salem for the opening of the new legislative session in Vandalia. They may have reached some kind of understanding, but each was already experiencing some apprehension in their relationship. Lincoln was circumspect about the exact nature of his uneasiness. Did he compare this strong, mature woman, a year older than himself, with pretty young Ann? He does not say. Mary, a woman born to privilege, may well have wondered about a man who had not yet established himself in a profession and lacked the social graces of a gentleman.
After two weeks in Vandalia, Lincoln wrote Mary expressing all kinds of discomfort. He began by telling her about his “mortification” in looking for a letter from her and not finding one. In the rest of his letter he talked mostly about himself and said almost nothing about her. Toward the end he confessed that his spirits were not well: “With other things I can not account for, have conspired and have gotten my spirits so low, that I feel I would rather be any place in the world than here.” As he was about to conclude, perhaps having reread the letter, Lincoln blurted out, “This letter is so dry and [stupid] that I am ashamed to send it, but with my pres [ent] feelings I can not do any better.” The letter revealed Lincoln’s deep insecurities within himself in relation to women.


Lincoln began to court Mary Owens, daughter of a well-to-do Kentucky family, about a year after Ann Rutledges death. They differed in educational background and temperament, and their relationship struggled and then ended.

Within a month after moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln wrote to Mary, who had returned to Kentucky. By now Lincoln seemed to be looking for a way out of their relationship. He told Mary that she would not enjoy living in Springfield. “This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all, at least it is so to me.” He confided, “I am quite as lonesome here as [I] ever was anywhere in my life. I have been spoken to by but one woman since I’ve been here, and should not have been by her, if she could have avoided it”—an unusual comment to tell another woman. In Lincoln’s courtship of Mary Owens, he atypically went out of his way to emphasize the negative. This may have been his obverse way of speaking of his own lack of self-assurance. He wrote, “I am afraid you would not be satisfied” living in Springfield. Women ride about “flourishing” in carriages, but “it would be your doom to see without shareing in it.” Owens “would have to be poor without the means of hiding your poverty.” Lincoln finally got around to speaking of his own commitments. “Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented.”
In August 1837, Lincoln traveled to New Salem to see Mary, who had returned from Kentucky. On the day they parted he wrote her an earnest but painful letter. “I want in all cases to do right, and most particularly so, in all cases with women.” He pleaded “ignorance” about her true feelings for him. “What I do wish is, that our further acquaintance shall depend upon yourself.” Lincoln then poured out his heart, but in a sentence filled with qualifications. “If you feel yourself in any degree bound to me, I am now willing to release you, provided you wish it; while, on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I can be convinced that it will in any considerable degree, add to your happiness.” Finally, he told her, “If it suits you best to not answer this—farewell—a long life and a merry one attend you.” He hoped she would write back and “speak as plainly as I do.”
She never replied.


Lincolns letter to Mary Owens on August 16, 1837, reflects his conflicted feelings about their relationship. He writes mostly about himself and his feelings, and little about her.

Lincoln found himself deeply hurt—again. Was he blindsided by her silence? Lincoln’s letters to Owens revealed him, again and again, conflicted about what to do. It seemed as if his mind told him he should ask her to marry him, but his heart wasn’t in it.
That the wound did not heal quickly became apparent by a letter Lincoln wrote nearly eight months later—to another woman. This time he wrote to Eliza Caldwell Browning, the wife of his lawyer friend Orville Browning, and poured out the story of his relationship with Mary Owens in astonishing detail. By now he was not so complimentary of Mary, writing, a bit cruelly, “for her skin was too full of fat, to permit its contracting in to wrinkles; but from her want to teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general.” But the burden of his letter was his own deeply wounded self. He confessed, “I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly.” It is telling that Lincoln did not write to a male friend. Somehow he felt the freedom to admit to Eliza Browning his lack of social intelligence about women. He admitted something more. Mary Owens “had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness.”
Years later, Mary Owens said that she found Lincoln “deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman’s happiness, at least it was so in my case.” She quickly added, “Not that it proceeded from a lack of goodness of heart.” Why did their relationship not work? Mary Owens surmised, “His training had been different from mine, hence there was not that congeniality which would have otherwise existed.”
Lincoln, who had lost his first love to death, had now reached a murky parting of the ways with a woman he never really loved.
WHEN THE CAPITAL MOVED to Springfield in 1839, Lincoln began to socialize more than ever before. With the legislature scheduled to meet in Springfield for the first time in December, Lincoln’s sense of self-assurance became more secure. He now felt freer to meet young women in the new capital city. He was about to meet the woman who would change his life.
Mary Elizabeth Todd was born on December 13, 1818, in Lexington, Kentucky. Her grandfathers, Levi Todd and Robert Parker, had helped settle Lexington. Her father, Robert Smith Todd, grew up in the family home, Ellerslie, a twenty-room mansion. The Todd family counted as a neighbor Henry Clay, rising Kentucky politician. Six feet tall with brown hair and large brown eyes, Robert Todd became a prominent second-generation leader of Lexington, which fancied itself a civilized town that had moved beyond the frontier.
At twenty-one, Todd married the teenage Eliza Parker, a distant cousin, in 1812. Mary, their fourth child, grew up in a two-story, nine-room, Georgian brick home on Short Street in the center of Lexington. A child of privilege, she knew herself to be part of one of Kentucky’s leading political families.
Mary’s mother, Eliza, died in the summer of 1825 after the birth of her seventh child, probably from a post-birth bacterial infection, at the age of thirty-one. Mary was six years old. When Mary was eight, her father married Elizabeth Humphreys, a wealthy young woman whose family had strong political connections with the Todds. “Betsy” Humphreys, from Frankfort, nine years younger than her husband, would bear nine children in the following fifteen years. Mary would now grow up in the vortex of an absentee father, often away on business or politics, and a stepmother who many said favored her own children.
Robert Todd was an uncommon father who encouraged the education of his daughters as well as his sons. In the fall of 1827, Mary entered the Shelby Female Academy, housed in a two-story brick house at the corner of Second and Market. Dr. John Ward, an eccentric Episcopal minister, led the school, which was later known as Dr. Ward’s Academy.
One of Mary’s cousins, Elizabeth Humphreys, remembered her as an aspiring scholar. “Mary was far in advance over girls of her age in education.” Dr. Ward believed in beginning class at 5 a.m. on summer mornings and in leading early morning recitations throughout the year. Mary flowered in this disciplined academic atmosphere. Her cousin said, “She had a retentive memory and a mind that enabled her to grasp and thoroughly understand the lessons she was required to learn.”
Much of Sunday was spent at the McChord Presbyterian Church. Her father had been one of the founding members of the church. In 1823, when Mary turned five, the church organized the first Sunday school in Lexington. Here Mary participated in the standard Presbyte rian education of children and youth by catechizing, a method used by Presbyterians, as well as Congregationalists and many Baptists, in America. Young people were expected to memorize the 107 questions and answers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, beginning with the well-known first question.
Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
In 1832, at age fourteen, Mary entered Madame Mentelle’s Boarding School. As a rule, Mary would have ended her education after her five years at Dr. Ward’s, as only a few thousand girls in America received more than four years of education. Augustus and Charlotte Mentelle, the aristocratic directors of the school, had fled France in 1792 during the French Revolution. Mary received a fine classical education, including French, which set her apart from many of the women she would come to know as an adult.
That year Mary’s family moved into a new and even more impressive home on Main Street, with fourteen rooms, both a single and a double parlor, six bedrooms, and formal gardens. The Todds valued both education and fine living.
When Henry Clay visited Lexington in the summer of 1832 while campaigning for the presidency, Mary had already developed a remarkable knowledge of politics. Four years before, at age ten, she had refused on principle to attend a Lexington event honoring presidential candidate Andrew Jackson and had argued with a pro-Jackson neighbor. Now a passionate Whig, she spoke up at a dinner honoring Clay to promise him her support. She quickly added, in everyone’s hearing, that she, too, expected to live in Washington some day.
While growing up in Lexington, Mary encountered slavery everywhere. The production of hemp on the bluegrass plantations in the surrounding countryside depended on slave labor. White families used slaves for work inside and outside their homes. By the time Mary was twelve, her father had one slave for every member of his family. The female slaves cooked the meals, washed and sewed the clothes, and looked after the children. The male slaves did everything outside the house, including taking care of the horses.
Lexington was a major slave market. Traders drove groups of slaves—men, women, and children—right past Mary’s home on their way to the Deep South. She saw the slaves, young and old, shackled together two by two. As Mary walked to and from school, she frequently observed the slave auctions held at Cheapside, Lexington’s public meeting place adjacent to the Fayette County Courthouse on the town square. On another corner of the square stood the black locust whipping post, erected in 1826. As a slave master whipped a slave, a cry would pierce the air of this self-proclaimed civilized town.
BY THE TIME MARY was eighteen, she was considered by her friends, female and male, a pretty young woman. Five feet two inches tall, with soft brown hair, she had a broad forehead, a small upturned nose, blue eyes, and a rosy complexion. Mary exhibited a strong-minded determination to get her way, and the inner circle of her family knew “her temper and tongue.” A prominent chin gave the impression of a resolute personality. Her hands darted impulsively in gestures as she spoke.
In the spring of 1837, Mary decided to follow a Todd family pattern and visit Springfield, Illinois. Mary’s older sister Elizabeth had married Ninian Edwards, son of the governor of Illinois, and moved with him to Springfield. After the death of their mother, Elizabeth had been as much a mother as a sister to Mary. Their sister Frances also lived in Springfield, as did an uncle, Dr. John Todd, and three cousins, John Todd Stuart, Lincoln’s law partner; Stephen T. Logan, his future law partner; and John J. Hardin. The Todds and the Stuarts—Kentuckians, Scottish, and Presbyterian—were forming a veritable clan in Springfield.
In early May, Mary boarded the train for Frankfort, Kentucky, to begin a journey by train, boat, and stagecoach to Springfield. If all connections were made, it would take her two weeks to arrive at Elizabeth and Ninian Edwards’s impressive new home on Second Street in the southern part of the city. She may have learned from John Todd Stuart that he had invited a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to join him as a partner, but it is doubtful she met Lincoln on this visit. She returned to Lexington in the fall of 1837; they would not meet for another two years.
In the summer of 1839, Mary returned to Springfield, intent on staying this time for more than a visit. She quickly became part of a clique of young women and men calling themselves “the Coterie” who often gathered at the Edwardses’ two-story brick home at the top of “Aristocracy Hill.” James C. Conkling, a lawyer who had moved to Springfield in 1838 and a member of the Coterie, described Mary as “the very creature of excitement,” and said she “never enjoys herself more than when in society and surrounded by a company of merry friends.” When one day Mary mimicked the mannerisms of some of her suitors, Ninian Edwards exclaimed, “Mary could make a bishop forget his prayers.”
Some of the most marriageable young men in Springfield attended Coterie gatherings, including Stephen A. Douglas; Edward D. Baker; Lyman Trumbull, a slender, good-looking lawyer from Belleville; and James Shields, a native of Ireland, who became auditor of the state of Illinois in 1839. A new invitee was Abraham Lincoln.
Next door to Mary’s sister lived attorney Lawrason Levering. His sister, Mercy Levering, a visitor from Baltimore, quickly became Mary’s dearest friend in Springfield. For many years Mary and Mercy exchanged long letters. Letter writing was an opportunity for women to share intimate feelings they could not express in public, even in conversation between friends. Mary’s correspondence reveals a young woman of intellectual depth and emotional intensity capable of communicating her thoughts and feelings in lucid prose. She wrote in small, slanted script, filling up every sheet right to the borders of the page, her writing style a metaphor for the way she wanted to extend her life right up to and sometimes beyond the prescribed female sphere of her day.


Ninian and Elizabeth Edwards hosted the Coterie at their home on Aristocracy Hill Elizabeth never liked Lincoln, believing him to be beneath Mary’s social station.

Mary attracted many suitors—old and young, short and tall. A lawyer and legislator named Edwin Webb became very interested, but Mary told Mercy he was “a widower of modest merit,” besides “there being a slight difference of some eighteen or twenty summers in our years.” Stephen Douglas had moved from Jacksonville to Springfield in 1837 after his appointment as register of the Land Office. He and Mary were seen frequently about town together, and rumors circulated about their relationship. Was it friendship or romance?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND Mary Todd probably first became aware of each other in the summer of 1839. They pushed the old axiom “opposites attract” to its limits. Mary described herself a “ruddy pineknot, ” but in truth she was pretty and perky. Mary’s sister Frances described Lincoln as “the plainest man” in Springfield. Mary was well educated, whereas Abraham had received the barest of formal schooling.
The differences between Abraham and Mary’s social standing were exhibited for all to see on the dance floor. James Conkling, Mercy’s beau, wrote her that when Lincoln danced he gave the impression of being “old Father Jupiter bending down from the clouds to see what’s going on.” Lincoln disliked dancing, but perhaps he could not resist asking this good-looking, witty young woman. “Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way,” he said.
Later, Mary, with a mischievous smile, recounted the dance to her cousin Elizabeth, saying, “And he certainly did.”
There were other, deeper differences, yet to be discovered in this oddly matched couple. But in many ways, they were alike. Both prized education and had worked hard to achieve it. In Mary, Lincoln recognized a soul mate in intellectual curiosity and learning.
Lincoln’s courtship of Mary was a romance of the mind as well as the heart. Their mutual enjoyment of ideas and politics put Abraham at ease. They both loved poetry, especially that of Robert Burns, and enjoyed reading aloud to each other. Lincoln, who often led in conversations with men, found himself listening to Mary. Elizabeth Edwards happened upon them once when they were together and observed, “Mary led the conversation—Lincoln would listen and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power.”
Abraham and Mary also shared a passion for politics. The daughter of a leading Whig in Kentucky, she attended speeches for Whig presidential candidate Harrison in 1840 and often discussed politics with her friends. She wrote to Mercy, “This fall I became quite a politician, rather an unladylike profession.”
But in the midst of delight there arose doubt. Unlike his political self-confidence, Lincoln’s confidence that he could succeed in marriage was always on shaky ground. He doubted himself as much or more than Mary. His experience with Mary Owens was still fresh in his mind. At age thirty-one, a part-time politician at the beginning of a career in law, he joined many young men of his time who wondered whether they could support a wife. Remembering the embarrassing attachment of his horse and surveying instruments in New Salem, not to mention his “National Debt” from his failed store he was still paying off, Lincoln had many questions on his mind as his courtship of Mary advanced.
There was also the matter of the opposition of members of Mary’s family. Older sister Elizabeth expressed her resistance to the relationship. She thought that Lincoln, who came to her elegant home in his Conestoga boots, was beneath Mary in every way. “I warned Mary that she and Mr. Lincoln were not suitable. Mr. Edwards and myself believed they were different in nature, and education and raising.” She concluded, “They were so different that they could not live happily as man and wife.”
Abraham and Mary courted in a sexually segregated Victorian society. Various marriage manuals counseled lovers to “test” each other. Women were encouraged to throw “large and small obstacles in the path of the courting male to measure the depth and intensity of his romantic love.” Mary, whether or not she was following the advice of a manual, was very adept at this kind of testing.
A nineteenth-century Dictionary of Love stated that doubt was “a great sharpener and intensifier of the tender passions.” Lincoln could have been a case study for the Dictionary of Love, first with his doubts about his love for Mary Owens, and now his doubts about himself in his developing relationship with Mary Todd.
At some point in 1840, Abraham and Mary’s relationship advanced from friendship to courting to an agreement that they might marry. This was not an engagement in the modern sense. He gave her no ring. They told no one of their decision. Rather, they had entered into an “understanding.” Mary described this change as having “lovers’ eyes.”
By the end of that year, however, their relationship suddenly fell apart. It is not clear when or why the break occurred. It may have come on New Year’s Day, 1841, but it might also have occurred earlier, during the month of December 1840.
There may have been another woman. Matilda Edwards, daughter of Whig politician Cyrus Edwards and cousin of Mary’s brother-in-law Ninian Edwards, arrived at the Edwards home that fall. No one, male or female, could fail to notice the beautiful sixteen-year-old. Mary described her to Mercy Levering as “a most interesting young lady,” who has “drawn a concourse of beaux & company around us.”
Some contemporaries suggested that Lincoln may have been drawn by the “fascinations” of young Matilda. He certainly may have looked, and Mary may have seen him look, but he also knew he was nearly twice Matilda’s age.
Friends differed on who ended the relationship. Conkling thought that Mary broke their understanding; Joshua Speed believed that Lincoln did. Speed said his best friend “went to see ‘Mary’—told her that he did not love her.” He further believed that “Lincoln did Love Miss Edwards” and “Mary Saw it.” Lincoln, acting honorably, told Mary of “the reason of his Change of mind” and she, in turn, “released him.” The conversation over, according to Speed, Lincoln “drew her down on his Knee—Kissed her—& parted.”
JAMES CONKLING WROTE TO MERCY LEVERING, “Poor L! how are the mighty fallen!” Lincoln had not simply fallen; he was overwhelmed. On January 2, 1841, the clerk of the state legislature called the roll four times, but Lincoln did not answer “Present.” On Monday, January 4, Lincoln missed eight votes. On Tuesday, January 5, he did not answer to three afternoon roll calls. Lincoln was always regular in attendance, but his breakup with Mary had plunged him into such despair that he failed to show up to work.
Lincoln’s melancholy became the talk of Springfield. Conkling told Mercy that when Lincoln finally returned to the legislature he was “emaciated in appearance and seems scarcely to possess strength enough to speak above a whisper.” Joshua Speed removed Lincoln’s razor for fear of what his friend might do.
Lincoln sent a letter to Mary’s cousin, his former law partner John Todd Stuart, on January 23, 1842. “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.” Lincoln was pessimistic about his future. “Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
Nearly fifteen months later, Lincoln wrote to Speed and referred to “the fatal first of Jany.’41.” What did he mean? It has long been assumed that Lincoln was referring to the breaking of his understanding with Mary. Read in the context of a series of letters with Speed, however, in which Speed was struggling with his own engagement and prospective marriage, the reference could also refer to the pain in Speed’s life.
Mary also suffered, and her feelings for Lincoln had not diminished with absence and time. Nearly six months after the breakup, she wrote to Mercy, “[Lincoln] deems me unworthy of notice, as I have not met him in the gay world for months, with the usual comfort of misery, imagine that others were as seldom gladdened by his presence as my humble self, yet I would the case were different, that ‘Richard’ should be himself again, much happiness would it afford me.”
When Mary placed quotation marks around “Richard” she was referring to Shakespeare’s Richard II. Mary would have been an unusual young woman to be familiar with Shakespeare. At first it seems an odd allusion. Richard II had ascended the English throne as a young man in 1377, but quickly proved to be unwise in his choice of counselors and reckless in his spending of money. Mary may have been expressing her concern about Abraham’s mental well-being, and yet her confidence that, despite his humble beginnings, there was royalty in Lincoln’s future.
SOMETIME IN 1842, more than a year after the split, Eliza Francis, wife of newspaper editor Simeon Francis, took matters into her own hands. She invited Abraham and Mary to her home, each not knowing the other was coming. Sitting in her parlor, Mrs. Francis urged Abraham and Mary to be friends again. It took a third person to get them to deal with the hurt and pain, and move toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Abraham and Mary began meeting clandestinely at the Francises’ home and at the home of Lincoln’s physician and Whig friend, Dr. Anson Henry.
That fall, when Lincoln and Mary were participating in the biennial campaigning for state offices, Lincoln gave her an unusual gift. He tied up with a pink ribbon a list of the returns from the last three legislative elections in which he had been one of the winning candidates. Whether Mary found this romantic, we do not know.
One of the most bizarre episodes in Lincoln’s life, which brought him face-to-face with the possibility of death, took place just as he and Mary were resuming their relationship. Early in 1842, the State Bank of Illinois had been forced to close. In August, the governor, treasurer, and auditor ordered county tax collectors not to accept the state’s own paper notes for payment of taxes and school debts. Only gold and silver would be accepted. Citizens, however, had almost no gold or silver.
The problem escalated when state auditor James Shields issued an order advising state officers how to restore a sound currency. By this time, opposition to the state plan had begun to escalate. Shields, a young Irish immigrant and a rising Democratic politician, became the focus for a vigorous response by Illinois Whigs.
Lincoln, a staunch defender of the state bank, saw an opportunity to harvest some political hay in the upcoming 1842 election for state legislature and governor. Where best to attack the Democrats but in Lincoln’s favorite vehicle—the newspaper?
The Sangamo Journal had recently printed a satirical letter to the editor from “Rebecca,” a country woman who lived in “Lost Townships.” This letter, in its homely dialogue, enunciated important Whig ideas. Lincoln contacted editor Simeon Francis suggesting he write a follow-up letter. Lincoln assumed the persona of “Rebecca” and sharpened his writing sword to attack Shields and the Democratic Party’s policies. Lincoln showed his letter to Mary, and she and her friend Julia Jayne helped revise its humor and satire.
Published on September 2, 1842, “Rebecca’s” letter singled out Shields for ridicule because of his role in the currency dilemma. She minced no words: “Shields is a fool as well as a liar.”
Lincoln described Shields at a party in Springfield. “If I was deaf and blind I could tell him by the smell.” Placing Shields in the middle of a group of women, the usually gallant Lincoln authored a particularly coarse description: “All the galls about town were there, and all the handsome widows, and married women, finickin about, trying to look like galls, tied as tight in the middle, and puffed out at both ends like bundles of fodder that hadn’t been stacked yet, wanted stackin pretty bad.”
Silver, the reason for Lincoln’s political invective, was now used against Shields with irony. “He was paying his money to this one and that one, and tother one, and sufferin great loss because it wasn’ silver instead of State paper.” Finally, Lincoln put words in Shields’ mouth: “Dear girls, it is distressing, but I cannot marry you all. Too well I know how much you suffer, but do, do remember, it is not my fault that I am so handsome and so interesting.”
Mary and Julia, caught up in Lincoln’s escapade, decided to expand the fun by writing a third Rebecca letter, published in the Sangamo Journal on September 16, 1842.
Shields, known for his violent temper, became enraged. He demanded the name of the person who had heaped such scorn upon him. Francis told him it was Lincoln. Lincoln may have allowed Francis to reveal his name, perhaps to protect the names of the two young women. Shields’s pride was hurt, but more important, Lincoln had threatened his aspiring political career.
Shields fought back. He confronted Lincoln in Tremont at the Tazewell County Courthouse. He intended to get a retraction from Lincoln. Or else. Shields challenged Lincoln to a duel. The state auditor, who had fought in the Black Hawk War, enjoyed a reputation as an outstanding marksman with pistols.
Dueling had become a recurring feature of American life in the early nineteenth century. The nation had been stunned when Alexander Hamilton died in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804, but the shock arose from the death of one of America’s most talented leaders, not because of a duel. The first American duel took place in 1621 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. People of all walks of life participated in duels, even as many states passed anti-dueling laws. Dueling, according to the Illinois criminal statute of 1839, was a penitentiary offense, punishable by five years in prison.
As the person challenged, Lincoln had the prerogative to select the weapons. Aware of Shields’s skills with firearms, Lincoln chose long cavalry broadswords instead of guns. Six feet four inches tall, Lincoln knew what a tremendous advantage his height and reach gave him over Shields, who was five feet nine inches.
Dueling was not outlawed in Missouri. Just as Hamilton and Burr, nearly forty years earlier, had crossed the Hudson River from New York to New Jersey in 1804, early on Thursday morning, September 22, 1842, two boats embarked from Alton, Illinois, and crossed the Mississippi in the morning mist to a muddy shore on the Missouri side. The party walked a few steps to a clearing that would serve as the dueling ground.
Accounts conflict over what happened next. Some said Lincoln, stretching out his long arm and longer broadsword, cut off the limb of a willow tree high above the combatants and frightened Shields with the demonstration of his extensive reach. Another report said Shields laughed at this gesture. But in his laughter, or his fear, he realized the absurdity of the situation and agreed to make peace. The duel ended before it began.
What are we to make of the near duel between Lincoln and Shields? Did Lincoln, almost unable to stop his participation in the duel, act more like the young wrestler than a mature man? Did he agree to participate to defend the honor of Mary and Julia Jayne, who had written the third letter? It seems certain that Lincoln did not want to harm Shields. He understood he could disarm with a sword, but not with a pistol. Some have suggested that Lincoln and Shields thought they might get political publicity from the duel.
When it was all over, Lincoln felt deeply embarrassed by the whole affair. Years later, when people would bring up the duel, Lincoln quickly let it be known that he did not want to discuss it.
WITH THE DUEL BEHIND HIM, and now reunited with Mary, Lincoln still struggled over whether he should marry Mary. He wrote to his friend Speed for advice. Lincoln had received letters from Speed as his friend struggled over his own engagement to Fanny Henning. Now Lincoln wanted to know how it had turned out. “Are you now, in feeling as well as judgment, glad you are married as you are?” Lincoln recognized that “from any body but me, this would be an impudent question not to be tolerated,” but he was confident that Speed would accept the question from him, his closest friend. “Please answer it quickly as I feel impatient to know.”
Speed must have responded, but no letter exists. Years later Speed wrote, “One thing is plainly discernable—If I had not been married & happy—far more happy than I ever expected to be—He would not have married.”
On Friday morning, November 4, 1842, Abraham and Mary announced that they intended to marry—that very evening. The couple did not tell anyone in advance. There was much to do and little time to do it.
They decided on a private marriage service. Lincoln called at the brown frame house at Eighth and Jackson to ask the Reverend Charles Dresser, rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, if he would marry them in his home. When Mary broke the news of her wedding to her sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth and Ninian Edwards erupted over the suddenness of the decision. Elizabeth had long objected to Lincoln, but now that the deed was going to be done, Ninian insisted, as Mary’s legal guardian, that the wedding take place in their home.
Lincoln purchased a wedding ring at Chatterton’s Jewelry Store on the west side of the town square. He had the ring inscribed “Love is Eternal.” Around noon, Lincoln asked fellow Springfield lawyer James H. Matheny to be his best man. Mary hurried to ask her cousin “Lizzie” Todd and her good friend Julia Jayne to stand up with her. Elizabeth Edwards, fretting about what food to provide, sent out to Dickey’s, Springfield’s only bakery, for gingerbread and beer, and later decided to bake a cake, which did not turn out well.
At seven o’clock on a rainy, tempestuous evening, the thirty-three-year-old Lincoln and the twenty-four-year-old Mary took their places in front of the fireplace of the Edwardses’ parlor. On the mantel two lamps were lit. The great difference between their heights, he an angular six feet four inches, and she barely five feet two inches, was striking. Mary wore a white muslin dress skirt. The Reverend Dresser, dressed in the vestments of the Episcopal Church, led the wedding service from the Book of Common Prayer. Abraham and Mary exchanged their vows, pledging themselves to each other. Saying “With this ring I thee wed,” Lincoln slid the band on Mary’s finger.
ONE WEEK AFTER Lincoln’s wedding, he wrote to his friend Sam Marshall, an attorney in Shawneetown, Illinois, concluding his letter, “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is a matter of profound wonder.”
From now on, Lincoln’s life would be like the three-legged stool that he had made as a boy in Indiana. The three legs gave the stool stability; if one leg were ever shortened or lengthened, the balance could become precarious. In the first leg of his adult life, Lincoln found success in politics; in the second leg, he established himself as a lawyer; in the third leg, he entered into marriage. The challenge that lay ahead would be how Lincoln could balance on all three legs as he reached for higher political office.


This first known photograph of Abraham Lincoln was made by Nicholas H. Shepherd in his daguerreotype store on the Springfield town square. Lincoln’s muscular hands reveal his past, but his dress points to his future as a congressman.