Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1
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63. Deposition in the case of George R. C. Todd vs. Elizabeth L. Todd et al., regarding the estate of Robert S. Todd, in Townsend, Lincoln and His Wife’s Home Town, 229.
64. Stephen Berry, House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), 6–12.
65. Mary Lincoln to Elizabeth Keckley, Chicago, 29 Oct. [1867], Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 447.
66. E[lizabeth] Humphreys Norris to Emilie [Todd Helm], Garden City, Kansas, 28 Sept. 1895, photostat, J. G. Randall Papers, DLC.
67. Mary Lincoln to her husband, Lexington, May 1848, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 37.
68. Berry, House of Abraham, 52–156.
69. Noyes W. Miner, “Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Vindication,” 2–3, manuscript, Small Collection 1052, folder 1, IHi.
70. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868), 135–136.
71. Berry, House of Abraham, 92.
72. James C. Conkling to Mercy Levering, Springfield, 7 Mar. 1841, Carl Sandburg and Paul M. Angle, Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932), 180–181.
73. Laura Catherine Redden Searing, writing under the pen name Howard Glyndon, “The Truth about Mrs. Lincoln,” The Independent (New York), 10 Aug. 1882. Another female journalist also found her essentially childish. Mary Clemmer [Ames], Ten Years in Washington; or, Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them (Hartford, CT: Hartford Publishing Co., 1882), 236–242.
74. Helen Nicolay, Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Century, 1912), 205.
75. Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 3, 1.
76. Helm, Mary, Wife of Lincoln, 32.
77. Berry, House of Abraham, 99–100.
78. Albert S. Edwards to S. M. Inglis, Springfield, 20 Feb. 1897, Small Collection 923, IHi.
79. Jason Emerson, The Madness of Mary Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007), contains much new information about Mrs. Lincoln’s incarceration and her release. See also Mark E. Neely and R. Gerald McMurtry, eds., The Insanity File (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).
80. Davis told this to Orville Hickman Browning in 1873. Browning diary, 3 July 1873, IHi.
81. Davis to Adeline Burr, 19 July 1882, Adeline Ellery Burr Davis Green Papers, Duke University. I am grateful to Jason Emerson for calling this document to my attention.
82. Berry, House of Abraham, 41–42, 188–190.
83. W. A. Evans, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), 49–50.
84. Testimony of Captain C. W. Brant, in Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Rebel Authorities during the War of the Rebellion, Serial Set #1391, House Report #45, 40th Congress, 3rd Session (Washington, DC, 1869), 1086.
85. See Berry, House of Abraham, 83–91.
86. William H. Townsend to Harry E. Pratt, n.p., 22 Mar. 1954, carbon copy, Townsend Papers, IHi. See also Berry, House of Abraham, 61–63, 182–183.
87. Evans, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, 47–48; Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, 421; Berry, House of Abraham, 173–174.
88. Jessie Palmer Weber to Albert J. Beveridge, Springfield, 23 Mar. 1925, Beveridge Papers, DLC; Albert J. Beveridge to [William E. Barton], Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, 4 Jan. 1926, Lincoln Collection, RPB.
89. Mary Lincoln to Elizabeth Todd Grimsley, Washington, 29 Sept. 1861, in Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 105.
90. Evans, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, 47.
91. Elizabeth Edwards to Robert Todd Lincoln, Springfield, 13 Aug. 1875, Insanity File, Robert Todd Lincoln Papers, IHi.
92. Mrs. William H. Bailhache (née Ada Brayman) to Truman Bartlett, Coronado, Colorado, 4 July 1912, Truman Bartlett Papers, Boston University.
93. That trustee was Christopher Columbus Brown. “Condemnation Proceedings to Acquire More State House Land,” manuscript dated 3 Apr. 1878, State House File, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, cited in Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, 384. An 1878 map shows a plot of land across from the state capitol owned by “Christopher C. Brown trustee of Julia C. Baker.” Wayne C. Temple, “Alfred Henry Piquenard: Architect of Illinois’ Sixth Capitol,” in Mark W. Sorenson, ed., Capitol Centennial Papers: Papers Prepared for the Centennial Observation of the Completion of the Illinois State Capitol, 1988 (Springfield: Illinois State Archives, 1990), 24.
94. Mary Lincoln to Mercy Levering Conkling, 19 Nov. [1864], Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 187.
95. Octavia Roberts Corneau (Mrs. Barton Corneau), “My Townsman—Abraham Lincoln,” typescript of a talk given to the Lincoln Group of Boston, 18 Nov. 1939, 17, Abraham Lincoln Association Reference Files, “Reminiscences” folder 5; Octavia Roberts, “ ‘We All Knew Abr’ham,’ ” 29.
96. Elodie Todd to Nathaniel Dawson, 23 May, 23 July, 21 June 1861, Dawson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Berry, House of Abraham, xi, 128.
97. Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, 384.
98. Robert Todd Lincoln to George N. Black, Augusta, Georgia, 20 Mar. 1906, Robert T. Lincoln Papers, IHi.
99. “Brief account of Lincoln’s courtship & marriage,” undated typescript marked “From Ms. in [Oliver] Barrett Collection—S. C. Parks,” Carl Sandburg Papers, University of Illinois.
100. Mary Lincoln to Josiah G. Holland, Chicago, 4 Dec. 1865, and to James Smith, [Marienbad, 8 June 1870], Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 293, 566.
101. Elizabeth Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 443.
102. Ninian Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866] HI, 446.
103. Herndon to Henry C. Whitney, Springfield, 16 Apr. 1887, H-W MSS DLC.
104. Whitney to Herndon, Chicago, 4 July 1887, HI, 621.
105. On Matilda Edwards and Lincoln, see Wilson, Honor’s Voice, 219–242, and “Abraham Lincoln and ‘That Fatal First of January,’ ” in Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln Before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 99–132; J. Bennett Nolan, “Of a Tomb in the Reading Cemetery and the Long Shadow of Abraham Lincoln,” Pennsylvania History 19 (July 1952): 262–306; Orville H. Browning, interview with Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 1; Harry O. Knerr, two essays, both entitled “Abraham Lincoln and Matilda Edwards,” enclosed in Knerr to Ida M. Tarbell, Allentown, 26 Oct. 1936, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College; Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, 9 Feb. 1936; Herndon to Ward Hill Lamon, Springfield, 25 Feb. 1870, Lamon Papers, CSmH; Jane D. Bell to Anne Bell, Springfield, 27 Jan. 1841, copy, Lincoln files, “Wife” folder, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee; Albert S. Edwards in Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 113; Octavia Roberts, “ ‘We All Knew Abr’ham,’ ” 27; William O. Stoddard, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York: Ford, Howard, & Hulbert, 1884), 122. Mrs. Nicholas H. Ridgely (née Jane Huntington), a leader of Springfield society in Lincoln’s day, told her granddaughter, Octavia Roberts Corneau, “that it was common report that Lincoln had fallen in love with Matilda Edwards.” There “was never the least doubt in her mind that this was the case, and she left the story to her daughters.” Octavia Roberts Corneau, “My Townsman—Abraham Lincoln,” typescript of a talk given to the Lincoln Group of Boston, 18 Nov. 1939, Abraham Lincoln Association reference files, “Reminiscences” folder 5, p. 11, IHi; Octavia Roberts Corneau, “The Road of Remembrance,” unpublished manuscript, 119, Corneau Papers, IHi. Matilda Edwards’s niece told Mrs. Corneau that “It is an undisputed fact that Lincoln was in love with her. She never cared for him.” Virginia Quigley to [Octavia Roberts] Corneau, Alton, Illinois, 13 July [1939?], F. Lauriston Bullard Papers, Boston University. In the Edwards’s family tradition it was reported t
hat “Lincoln was very anxious to marry into the Edwards family because of their political influence, but his attempts to court the Edwards girls were rudely repulsed.” Edward M. Quigley to J. G. Randall, Louisville, Kentucky, 7 Feb. 1950, Randall Papers, DLC.
Lincoln had earlier been smitten by a beautiful girl. In August 1827, it is reported, he was captivated by the beauty of Julia Evans in Princeton, Indiana. John M. Lockwood to Jesse W. Weik, Mount Vernon, Indiana, 4 Jan. 1896, and two letters to Mr. J. A. Stuart of Indianapolis, dated Princeton, Indiana, 25 and 26 Jan. 1909, one from an unknown correspondent and the other from “Hastings,” in Jesse W. Weik, The Real Lincoln: A Portrait, ed. Michael Burlingame (1922; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 365–367.
106. Brown, “Springfield Society,” 33–34.
107. Alice Edwards Quigley to “Dear Sir,” Alton, Illinois, 22 Mar. 1935, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call, 9 Feb. 1936; Virginia Quigley to [Octavia Roberts] Corneau, Alton, Illinois, 13 July [1939?], F. Lauriston Bullard Papers, Boston University; Orville H. Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 1; Albert S. Edwards, in Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 113.
108. Berks and Schuylkill Journal, 8 Feb. 1851, quoted in Nolan, “Of a Tomb in the Reading Cemetery,” 292.
109. James C. Conkling to Mercy Levering, Springfield, 7 Mar. 1841, Sandburg and Angle, Mary Lincoln, 180.
110. Jane Hamilton Daviess Bell to Anne Bell, Springfield, 27 Jan. 1841, copy, Lincoln files, “Wife” folder, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee. Mrs. Benjamin S. Edwards recalled that Lincoln “was deeply in love with Matilda Edwards.” Mrs. Benjamin S. Edwards to Ida M. Tarbell, Springfield, 8 Oct. 1895, copy, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. Orville H. Browning thought that “Lincoln became very much attached” to Matilda Edwards and “finally fell desperately in love with her.” Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 2. Alice Edwards Quigley, a niece of Matilda Edwards, told an interviewer: “Undoubtedly Lincoln was in love with Mathilda Edwards, although she never cared for him.” Octavia Roberts Corneau, “My Townsman—Abraham Lincoln,” typescript of a talk given to the Lincoln Group of Boston, 18 Nov. 1939, 11, Abraham Lincoln Association Reference Files, “Reminiscences” folder 5. See also Virginia Quigley to [Octavia Roberts] Corneau, Alton, 13 July [1939?], F. Lauriston Bullard Papers, Boston University.
111. Elizabeth Todd Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 444. Matilda Edwards may not have been entirely truthful with Elizabeth Edwards. A niece of one of Mary Todd’s sisters said it “was always known in our family … that Mr. Lincoln courted Matilda Edwards, a fact which for many reasons she divulged only to her nearest and dearest.” Horace Green, “New Cases of Women’s Influence Over Lincoln,” New York Times, 11 Feb. 1923, section 8, p. 1.
112. Interview with Hardin’s sister, Mrs. Alexander R. McKee (née Martinette Hardin), “A Romance of Lincoln,” clipping identified as “Indianapolis, January 1896,” LMF. Hardin also shared this story with another of his sisters, Lucy Jane, whose son-in-law informed a journalist that “some have questioned whether he [Lincoln] ever wanted to marry Mary Todd. He was in love with her cousin,” Matilda Edwards. Unidentified newspaper article by Frank G. Carpenter, [1891], LMF. Carpenter’s source was Judge Daniel H. Solomon of Iowa, whose wife (née Elizabeth Hardin at Jacksonville in 1839) was the daughter of John J. Hardin’s sister, Lucy Jane. Another of Mary’s cousins, Elizabeth Grimsley, thought Lincoln “doubted whether he was responding as fully as a manly generous nature” should to Mary Todd; his feeling for her “had not the overmastering depth of an early love.” Mrs. Grimsley to Ida Tarbell, Springfield, 9 Mar. 1895, copy, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. Despite all this evidence, some have questioned whether Lincoln ever loved Matilda Edwards. See, for example, David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 84–87.
113. Sarah Rickard, sister of Mrs. Butler, interviewed by Nellie Crandall Sanford, Kansas City Star, 10 Feb. 1907.
114. Speed, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 474–477. Later Speed wrote, “a gloom came over him till his friends were alarmed for his life.” Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes of a Visit to California: Two Lectures (Louisville, KY: John P. Morton, 1884), 39. According to Orville H. Browning, Lincoln “told Miss Todd that he loved Matilda Edwards.” Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 2. Browning added that Mary “had very bitter feelings towards her rival.” But if she did, those feelings did not last long, for in April 1842 Mary Todd invited Matilda Edwards to visit her in Springfield. Letter from Matilda Edwards to her brother Nelson, n.d., quoted in Randall, Lincoln’s Courtship, 163. Matilda Edwards died childless in 1851 at the age of 29.
115. Mary Lincoln to Josiah G. Holland, Chicago, 4 Dec. 1865, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 293.
116. Elizabeth Todd Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 444.
117. Ninian Edwards, interview with Herndon, 22 Sept. 1865, HI, 133. Edwards’s wife Elizabeth also described Lincoln in the month of January 1841 as “crazy.” Elizabeth Todd Edwards, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], ibid., 443. It is possible that Lincoln suffered two separate attacks, one in late November or early December and the other in January. Wilson, Honor’s Voice 233–264; Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005) 50–58.
118. Letter from Jacksonville, 22 Jan. 1841, quoted in CWL, 1:229n. Basler mistakenly identifies the author as “Martin McKee” instead of Martinette Hardin McKee.
119. Jane D. Bell to Anne Bell, Springfield, 27 Jan. 1841, copy, Lincoln files, “Wife” folder, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.
120. James H. Matheny, interview with Herndon, 3 May 1866, HI, 251; Orville H. Browning, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 1–2. Mrs. William Butler confided to her sister that Lincoln was tormented by “the thought that he had treated Mary badly, knowing that she loved him and that he did not love her.” This caused him “an agony of remorse.” Sarah Rickard, sister of Mrs. Butler, interviewed by Nellie Crandall Sanford, Kansas City Star, 10 Feb. 1907. Jane D. Bell reported on 27 Jan. 1841 that “It seems he had addressed Mary Todd and she accepted him and they had been engaged some time when a Miss Edwards of Alton came here, and he fell desperately in love with her and found he was not so much attached to Mary as he thought.” Jane D. Bell to Anne Bell, Springfield, 27 Jan. 1841, copy, Lincoln files, “Wife” folder, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.
121. James H. Matheny, interview with Herndon, 3 May 1866, HI, 251. Speed wrote, “a gloom came over him till his friends were alarmed for his life.” Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes of a Visit to California: Two Lectures (Louisville, KY: John P. Morton, 1884), 39.
122. Speed, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 474–475.
123. Speed, Reminiscences of Lincoln, 39; Speed to Herndon, Louisville, 7 Feb. and 13 Sept. 1866, HI, 197, 337. The extant files of the Sangamo Journal for 1841 contain no poem about suicide. Herndon alleged that when he searched that file, he discovered that someone had clipped excerpts from an issue of the paper. He guessed that Lincoln or someone acting at his instigation had excised the poem. Herndon to Ward Hill Lamon, Springfield, 25 Feb. 1870, Lamon Papers, CSmH. In 1899, J. McCan Davis also searched the 1841 file of the Sangamo Journal, which he found incomplete but which contained no issue from which anything had been clipped. J. McCan Davis, “Lincoln’s Poem on ‘Suicide,’ ” memo dated Springfield, 5 June 1899, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Smith College. A similar search in 1997 of the microfilmed version of the paper revealed no issue with a portion clipped out. On 15 Aug. 1838, however, the Sangamo Journal ran an unsigned
poem titled “The Suicide’s Soliloquy,” which may have been by Lincoln.
124. Thornton told this story to his brother, who in turn related it to his son. Frank Norbury to Logan Hay, 26 Dec. 1936, copy, Abraham Lincoln Association Reference Files, folder “Historical Data, K–N,” IHi. Norbury said that this episode took place in Vandalia, but Thornton served in the legislature between 1840 and 1842, after the capital had moved from Vandalia to Springfield.
125. Lincoln to Stuart, Springfield, 20, 23 Jan. 1841, CWL, 1:228–229.
126. Remarks in the legislature, 8 Jan. 1841, CWL, 1:226.
127. Speech in the Illinois Legislature concerning apportionment, [9 Jan. 1841?], CWL, 1:228.
128. James C. Conkling to Mercy Levering, Springfield, 24 Jan. 1841, Conkling Papers, IHi.
129. Chicago Tribune, 12 Feb. 1900.
130. Sarah Hardin to John J. Hardin, [Jacksonville], 26 Jan. 1841, Hardin Family Papers, ICHi.
131. Turner R. King, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 464.
132. Conkling to Mercy Levering, Springfield, 7 Mar. 1841, Sandburg and Angle, Mary Lincoln, 180.
133. Memorials of the Life and Character of Stephen T. Logan (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 16–17.
134. Sangamo Journal, 13 Apr. 1843.
135. Hay, “Colonel Baker,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 24 (Dec. 1861), in Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 154.
136. Sangamo Journal (Springfield), 13 Apr. 1843.
137. Hezekiah Morse Wead diary, 15 July 1847, IHi.
138. Ibid.
139. Herndon, “Character of Lincoln,” 437–438; Herndon, “Lincoln the Lawyer,” H-W MSS DLC.
140. Logan, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 6 July 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln, 37.
141. Herndon, “Analysis of the Character of Abraham Lincoln,” 431.
142. Memorials of Logan, 38–39.