Much of our information about the Lincoln-Todd marriage comes from Herndon, who hated Mrs. Lincoln. According to him she was “the female wildcat of the age,” “a tigress,” “a she-wolf” who “woman-whipped and woman-carved” her long-suffering husband. Yet Herndon said of her: “In her domestic troubles I always sympathized with Mrs. Lincoln. The world does not know what she bore or how ill-adapted she was to bear it.”
One thing that must be kept in mind in judging the woman who was Abraham Lincoln’s wife is the fact that she later became insane and some years after her husband’s death was actually confined for a while in an asylum. The seeds of this dark malady may well have been present during her earlier life. She was, perhaps, not responsible for her erratic behavior, her wild bursts of temper and her unreasonably jealous attitude toward her husband.
Immediately after their marriage, the ill-assorted couple went to live at a tavern in Springfield where they paid only four dollars a week for their board and lodging. One week later, Lincoln, in a letter to Samuel Marshall wrote: “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.” This was the only written comment he ever made about his marriage.
Nine months after their marriage a son was born to the Lincolns whom they named Robert Todd Lincoln. The responsibilities that Lincoln had dreaded closed around him quickly. He was thirty-three years old when he married Mary Todd. His prospects were good but he was still terribly poor. His ambition, however, had never slackened. He had served four terms in the Illinois General Assembly. He now determined to run for the United States Congress. He had good reason to believe that he would be successful; he was already powerful in the Whig party in Illinois; he had friends and a following. He began to pull the necessary wires to obtain the nomination. In this he was bitterly disappointed. He twice saw the nomination given to others—one of them his close friend, Edward D. Baker, after whom he named his second son, born in 1846.5
Lincoln did not give up his Congressional ambitions. He devoted himself to law while he waited his chance, but meanwhile he kept in touch with every aspect of the political scene throughout the county and the state. While he waited he also indulged himself—as so many other disappointed men have—in the writing of poetry. He corresponded with a friend, one Andrew Johnston, and exchanged poems with him. Some of Lincoln’s poetical attempts have been preserved. They are generally heavy with gloom—even his taste for the poetry of others ran to the more funereal kind.
It was during the period after his marriage that Lincoln formed his partnership with Herndon. He had broken with Stuart in 1841 to form a short-lived association with Stephen T. Logan which ended in 1844. Herndon had not yet been admitted to the bar when Lincoln asked him to join him; as soon as he was, Lincoln made him his partner.
Herndon was politically useful to Lincoln. He had many friends and he could make friends easily, so that he could rally even the “wild boys” of the town to Lincoln’s support. Whenever Lincoln had to be away from Springfield, Herndon kept him posted on developments on the home front. He acted as Lincoln’s publicity manager, as his scapegoat when necessary, as his political under-cover man and, finally, as the preserver of his life record, energetically seeking out everything that was of interest in connection with the man who had been his partner.
Of the two men, Herndon was unquestionably the more forthright, the more passionately idealistic. He was ready to fight at the drop of a hat, and equally ready to forget his quarrels as soon as they were over. Lincoln’s slower nature, which required him to weigh every phase of any situation before taking action, seems less admirable than Herndon’s “happy warrior” attitude—but it was to take him farther. His was a mind that could function over a long series of carefully planned moves; it was like his ability to learn and memorize—slow, steady and sure. Lincoln never possessed wide learning, but what he did learn he never forgot.
The slow but stolidly ambitious Lincoln bided his time during the years after his marriage. Then, on May 1, 1846, he finally received the long-coveted nomination. His opponent on the Democratic ticket was Peter Cartwright, picturesque Methodist circuit-rider, who attacked Lincoln as an infidel throughout the whole hotly contested campaign. The two men met one day in Springfield. Cartwright hoped to embarrass his opponent publicly. “If you are not going to repent and go to heaven, Mr. Lincoln, where are you going?”
“To Congress,” Lincoln said quietly. He was right, and he was elected by a large majority.
THE CONGRESSMAN FROM ILLINOIS
Before he could go—before his election actually—war with Mexico was declared. With its declaration, and with his election to an office in the Federal Government, Lincoln’s career became associated for the first time with national issues. Hitherto he had been an Illinois man; his interests had never gone beyond the borders of his own state; his experience had touched local legislation only; his training had been provincial, restricted to the narrow boundaries of one small segment of the nation. He went to Chicago for the first time in his life to attend the Rivers and Harbors Convention there. He met such men as Horace Greeley, Thurlow Weed, Schuyler Colfax and Dudley Field. The world was beginning to open up before him, and his eyes reached beyond the horizon of the prairies to see the problems that were confronting a nation.
The Mexican War was no isolated incident in American history. It was fought not merely for patriotic reasons or to protect the lives and rights of American citizens in the newly admitted state of Texas. It was in reality a part of a great and tremendous movement that was to tear the country in two—it was part of the slavery issue that was then building up to the conflict that was to be fought fifteen years later under the leadership of this obscure Illinois Congressman who went to Washington late in 1847 to serve his first and only term.
The Mexican War was an imperialistic move on the part of the pro-slavery forces to gain more territory for their expansion. Cotton land was rapidly being depleted under slave labor, and fresh soil was needed to grow new crops. Almost instinctively, Lincoln seems to have grasped the essential nature of the Mexican War. He opposed it from the beginning, and his opposition nearly wrecked his political career.
Lincoln’s sojourn in the nation’s capital must have had an important influence on him. He left Springfield in November, 1847, in company with Mrs. Lincoln and their two sons, Robert and Edward. The journey to Washington gave Lincoln his first view of the eastern part of the country. In Washington he came in contact with slavery, for the District of Columbia was an important slave-trading center, and the auctioning of human beings could be seen from the windows of the Capitol itself.
On December 6, the new Congressman from Illinois took his seat in the House of Representatives. On December 22, he introduced a series of resolutions sharply questioning whether or not the “spot” on which the first blood of war had been shed was Mexican or United States territory. The border between Texas and Mexico was in dispute, so the question was not without significance. He spoke again on January 12. On this occasion he not only attacked the war policy of the President and the Administration but went on to generalize about revolution.
The Democratic newspapers in Illinois immediately seized upon these two speeches and used them in an attack on Lincoln and the Whig party. Illinois had enthusiastically supported the War, sent armies and supplied leaders. Shields and Baker had gone to win glory on the field of battle. Mass meetings were held at which Lincoln was attacked and his “Spot” resolutions held up to scorn. The word “Spot” was to stick to him for many years in all sorts of derisory connotations, and his theories of revolution were to be used against him even during his campaign for the Presidency. His own native honesty and his inexperience had defeated him. It was obvious that he could not hope for re-election. He had been rash enough to oppose a war and support an unpopular cause without compromise or equivocation.
Nevertheless, during the remainder of his term in Congress, he threw his efforts into furthering the political cause of the
Whig party. He worked for the election of Zachary Taylor; he traveled in New England; he wrote letters and kept in touch with party affairs throughout the country. The Whig party was dying. Its principles were no longer valid, for the issue of the day, rising steadily into greater and greater prominence, was slavery, and the issue could no longer be avoided. The Democratic party stood for the extension of slavery; the Whigs stood for nothing except opposition to the Democrats. A new party was being born, a party composed of all those who hated slavery. This was the Free Soil party, which was attracting all the liberal-minded people of the Northeast. The Free Soil party was short lived; it accomplished little of importance, but it was indicative of the revolt against the inaction in the old Whig party. It died out in 1852, and its members became absorbed in the new Republican party which was to sweep into power in 1860 with Lincoln as its Presidential nominee. Yet, by one of those curious turns of historical circumstance, Lincoln now went to New England to try to put down this revolt—to attempt to strangle at its very inception the political movement that eventually was to carry him to greatness. And to compound inconsistency he went there in behalf of Zachary Taylor, whose chief claim to the Presidency was his military record in the Mexican War that Lincoln had opposed.
During this political campaign in New England, Lincoln first met William H. Seward and heard him deliver a speech against slavery. Lincoln was not only impressed by the nature of Seward’s argument, he was even more impressed by the manner of Seward’s speaking, for he spoke quietly, without the flamboyance or rhetoric that was so popular at the time. Seward was a man of importance in the East; his star was rising daily as the political leader of the anti-slavery forces. Lincoln’s own speaking technique shows Seward’s influence from this time on. He had never been given to excessive rhetoric, but now his words became even simpler and more direct.
Lincoln went on to Springfield, where he made certain that his popularity with his constituents had vanished. Taylor was elected in November—an appointive Governmental office was all that Lincoln could hope for. He returned to Washington for the session beginning on December 7, 1848. During this session Lincoln sponsored an unsuccessful bill that was intended to restrict slavery in the District of Columbia; otherwise he took no part in the growing anti-slavery movement. Taylor was inaugurated; the session came to a gloomy close, and Lincoln returned to Springfield, hopeful that he would be appointed to the Commissionership of the General Land Office. Again he pulled wires. He even returned to Washington to further his claims, but again he was disappointed. The position was given to someone else, and Lincoln was finally offered a minor position as Secretary of the Oregon Territory. He had no heart for the job, and Mrs. Lincoln was inalterably opposed to moving to the far West. His political fortunes were at their lowest ebb. There was nothing left for him to do but return to the law.
In February, 1850, his second son, Edward, died after four short years of life. Everything seemed to be crumbling away from this man who had got so far and who now seemed to be pushed back, losing ground at every step. He buried himself in his law practice, riding the circuit through the small towns of Illinois while Herndon held down the home office.
THE YEARS OF THE LOCUST
Lincoln was only forty years old when his term as Congressman expired, but he already considered himself an old man. The next few years were to age him rapidly. Life with Mary Todd could scarcely have been pleasant during this unhappy period. Their friends and neighbors testify to her bad temper, her nagging ways and her impatience with a husband who was a failure and who was apparently reconciled to remaining one.
The circuit with its tenth-rate hotels and shabby lodging places, its miserable food and long hard jumps from town to town, became infinitely more desirable than his home. He stayed away as much as he could. When court was held in a town near Springfield, all the lawyers and judges would ride home to spend the week end. Lincoln would remain where he was, lonely and miserable, putting up with the discomforts of a boardinghouse in order to find peace and to be left to nourish his own sense of failure without being nagged about it.
When he had to be in Springfield, he spent much of his time at his office in company with Billy Herndon. Although Lincoln had been greatly attracted to the law as a profession during his early youth, by this time the law had become pretty much of a routine matter to him, a means of making a living and not much more. His liking for abstract thought, his skill at argumentation and his ability to analyze any situation until he came to the kernel of its being stood him in good stead in his legal practice. According to Herndon, he had no use for detail; he hated writing legal papers and was generally careless in his methods and in his advance preparation of cases. Yet he was a good lawyer—and an honest one. In 1850 he wrote out some notes for a law lecture in which he set down his profession of faith. In his conclusion he said: “Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.”
The law office he occupied with Herndon was Lincoln’s headquarters, his place of refuge, his study hall and conversation center where he could do exactly as he liked with no one to criticize his actions or his manners. As a result the office was not only exceedingly plain and simple—it was also disorderly and none too clean. One of the men who served as a clerk there said of it:
There was one long table in the center of the room, and a shorter one running in the opposite direction, forming a T, and both were covered with green baize.… In one corner was an old-fashioned secretary with pigeon-holes and a drawer, and here Mr. Lincoln and his partner kept their law papers. There was also a bookcase containing about 200 volumes of law as well as miscellaneous books.… Mr. Lincoln had been in Congress and had the usual amount of seeds to distribute.… Some of the seeds had sprouted in the dirt that had collected in the office.… There was no order in the office at all. The firm of Lincoln and Herndon kept no books. They divided their fees without taking any receipts or making any entries.
Lincoln had one favorite filing place for everything—the lining of his high silk hat. When he was through with current documents he stuck them away in mysterious places. After his death, Herndon came across a bundle of papers marked simply: “When you can’t find it anywhere else, look in this.”
Lincoln would often bring his children to the office. They were an unruly lot, since their father tried to exercise no more control over them than he did over his wife. “The boys were absolutely unrestrained in their amusement,” Herndon said. “If they pulled down all the books from the shelves, bent the points of all the pens, overturned the spittoon, it never disturbed the serenity of their father’s good-nature.” The junior partner, however, did not possess such sublime indifference. “I have felt many and many a time that I wanted to wring their little necks,” he wrote in a confidential letter to a friend.
Lincoln’s apparent idleness in the office and at home may have seemed to be wasted time to a more energetic man like Herndon, yet Lincoln actually used his time well. During this period he took up the study of Euclid for mental discipline, and pored over the problems in his office and on the circuit until he had mastered everything in the first six books. He read a good deal, too, sticking to a few books to which he returned again and again. Shakespeare was his great favorite. He memorized whole passages and would quote them—if given an opportunity.
During these years of political retirement, Springfield came to look upon the familiar figure of Lincoln with that half-amused tolerance which small-town people display toward a person who has ability but who has never quite achieved success. The fact that he was somewhat eccentric in appearance and entirely unconscious of the condition of his attire probably influenced them in underestimating the ugly duckling in their midst. He was oblivious of everything that was not of major importance to him, and his mind often turned inward so completely that he was unawar
e of friends passing him on the streets. People shook their heads sadly as the tall shambling figure went by without noticing them. A story is told of his walking along near his home, dragging behind him a little cart on which one of his children had been riding. The child had fallen off and was lying on the sidewalk crying, but his father had not noticed what had happened and was calmly proceeding with the empty wagon.
Herndon has described in detail the odd appearance of Lincoln as he was seen by his friends in Springfield:
He was thin, wiry, sinewy, raw-boned; thin through the breast to the back, and narrow across the shoulders; standing he leaned forward—was what may be called stoop-shouldered, inclining to the consumptive by build. His usual weight was one hundred and eighty pounds. His organization—rather his structure and functions—worked slowly. His blood had to run a long distance from his heart to the extremities of his frame, and his nerve force had to travel through dry ground at a long distance before his muscles were obedient to his will.… The whole man, body and mind, worked slowly, as if it needed oiling. Physically he was a very powerful man, lifting with ease four hundred, and in one case six hundred pounds. His mind was like his body, and worked slowly but strongly. Hence there was very little bodily or mental wear and tear in him.…
When he walked he moved cautiously but firmly; his long arms and giant hands swung down by his side. He walked with even tread, the inner sides of his feet being parallel. He put the whole foot flat down on the ground at once, not landing on the heel; he likewise lifted his foot all at once, not rising from the toe, and hence he had no spring to his walk. His walk was undulatory—catching and pocketing tire, weariness, and pain, all up and down his person, and thus preventing them from locating. The first impression of a stranger, or a man who did not observe closely, was that his walk implied shrewdness and cunning—that he was a tricky man; but, in reality, it was the walk of caution and firmness. In sitting down on a common chair he was no taller than ordinary men. His legs and arms were abnormally, unnaturally long, and in undue proportion to the remainder of his body. It was only when he stood up that he loomed above other men.
The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln Page 6