The answer to yesterday’s trivia question, “which of these men was the cousin of Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd?” was John C. Breckinridge.
Introduction
Believe it or not, the events between the Lincolns' 1840 engagement and 1842 marriage are still the subject of intense scholarly debate.
I have been studying Mary Lincoln for a few years, and have analyzed every piece of information I could find about her. My research was intended to be the basis of a book, but it has turned into dozens of potential books, as each issue I look into leads to ten more. The good news is that this means lots of unresolved mysteries, so my interests overlap!
The Lincoln field is the ultimate rabbit hole - I both encourage and discourage you from getting into it. Modern newspaper sites have really changed the game, and you can solve mysteries from your living room that have plagued top scholars for 150 years. This mystery is characterized by a number of conflicting sources, both contemporary and many years later, some of them clearly spun in a way that suited the witness's interests. I'll try to provide as much information about these people as possible, so that you can help me judge the credibility. It'll probably take a lot of posts to get through it all, but hopefully people will enjoy following the story.
I've mentioned writing about this relatively light-hearted mystery several times on the forum, so here goes - I've never made a post before, so please let me know if you have suggestions about formatting or anything else. I'll try to make this as readable as possible!
The Wedding
Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd on November 4, 1842. He was 33, she was 24. Weddings were simple affairs at the time and all reports indicate that it was a small, sudden wedding at her sister's home.
The ceremony occurred after more than a year of separation and drama, which will be discussed later on.
Whatever the local gossip was, the matter seems to have been largely forgotten until after Lincoln's death.
The Debate
Lincoln's longtime law partner, William Herndon, was an eccentric, hilarious, and brilliant man. He was very unlike Lincoln in many ways, and that was the attraction. After the assassination, Herndon immediately began collecting testimony about Lincoln's life, desiring to write a biography about the pre-presidential Lincoln. He embarked on what is widely considered to be the most extensive historical research and oral history project that had ever been attempted.
Much has been written about Herndon's motivations, str
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Thank you for all the responses to my introductory post - I'm glad people found it interesting! I changed the title slightly to make it a little more accurate. I know these posts raise a lot of questions, and I will try to answer any posed in the comments. Books have been written about most of these issues, and many are available on archive.org, if you are curious.
This installment focuses on Lincoln's life actions to the breakup, but it is necessary to understand what happened later, and quite entertaining on its own. The descriptions of Lincoln and Mary are as they appeared in 1840.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was an up-and-coming attorney and politician, about age 30, who had been born very poor and into a low, rural class. He’d been trying to learn the ways of society and educate himself, and had fallen in with a crowd of promising young men who helped him out. They were all wealthier and more socially ambitious, and they had access to fancy women, a rarity out west. Springfield was still pretty much a village at this time.
Lincoln had walked out of the woods at age 21 after being basically an indentured servant to his father up until that time. He was apparently always awkward with women, but very funny and sweet, and so older married women loved him. His looks didn’t help much in this regard. He was known to have had two prior romances, discussed later in this post.
While in New Salem, he contracted heavy debts from a failed business venture (it's a long story and was due much more to ignorance than greed), which took him decades to pay off. He had no money to his name, no family support, and did not even pay rent until he married at age 33. As someone wrote, he had "nothing but lots of friends." Herndon said that people fought with each other over who got to help him. He was so likeable that he always had a place to stay, and people invested in his future. He met a man named John Todd Stuart, a Springfield attorney who was a cousin of Mary, who invited him to move there and be his partner. He had been elected to the local legislature, and became close with Stuart and Ninian Edwards, who remained lifelong friends, if sometimes rivals, and who to their immense credit recognized and invested in his talents.
So he moved to Springfield around 1838, and a year or two later met the cousin of his law partner, Mary Todd. It seems Lincoln struggled with how far to
... keep reading on reddit ➡Sorry that this has taken forever - the more I look into some of this, the more questions I have. I feel like some things deserve more analysis, but it would take so long that I’m trying not to let perfect be the enemy of good.
ETA: Forgot links to earlier parts - sorry!
Introduction: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/9rhmzi/the_unsolved_mystery_surrounding_abraham_and_mary/
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/9s0d7g/the_unresolved_mysteries_surrounding_abraham_and/
Mary Owens Recap
Looking at my last post, I feel like the Mary Owens letters need further scrutiny. They have been subjected to detailed analysis by other scholars, but I still wonder about some things.
What exactly is going on with Lincoln? Did he feel he couldn’t say no to her sister because he had little prospects for finding another possible wife? Or because he felt he couldn’t insult her by saying no? Exactly how desperate was he? Is he in fact repelled by her and trying to force a rejection, as he later claimed? Is he just really awkward and doesn’t know what to make of the situation? Is he interested or hopeful but just really afraid of screwing it up? Is he sure that she will be miserable in the marriage and resent him and the guilt will ruin his life?
Why does he suddenly write to Mrs. Browning, with no other information about his life? My guess on that is because he had spoken to her about marriage and found it cathartic to tell the story and neutralize the embarrassment.
His fixation on his resolutions will be relevant in future posts, so I’m trying to figure out what exactly he told her. It seems they had far deeper conversations that I think most scholars have acknowledged, but it’s impossible to reconstruct. They’d spoke of her moving to Springfield, yet he says her interest may have been a “jest” or misunderstood by him. He doesn’t reference her responses in his own letters, or much else after the first political update - it’s all a monologue. Yet he does ask her to write to him.
He speaks of their “late meeting” and seeing her “lately.” Did they have just one meeting when he visited New Salem? Had he perhaps seen her in public several times but in private only one time? And then they apparently engaged only in small talk? Or did she actually make a trip to Springfield to see him? Why was Mary Owens even goi
... keep reading on reddit ➡Back in 2017 I had a psychotic break. During this occurrence, I was hallucinating (?) some bizarre conversations I was having with people. One of these conversations was with a man who told me that I was caught, I’d been reincarnating into rats for generations to escape punishment and they’d finally caught me and this lifetime was penance from all of my crimes as... Mary Todd Lincoln? Before this I’d only briefly heard of the name and after I regained sanity I had to do some research on her to understand what kind of crimes the universe was apparently punishing me for. The weirdest part was that at one point the police were called on me and I told the police man that I was supposed to tell him a name... what was it?? Oh yeah! I’m Mary Todd Lincoln! And the officer then closed his notebook and said “Have a nice day, Mary. Good luck.” HAS ANYONE EXPERIENCED THIS SORT OF THING?? Or am I just a fucking loon lol.
Introduction: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/9rhmzi/the_unsolved_mystery_surrounding_abraham_and_mary/
In March, Speed wrote his sister that he was melancholy, and that he would probably be returning home.
>“I endeavor to persuade myself that there is more pleasure in pursuit of any object, than there is in its possession. This general rule I wish now most particularly to apply to women. I have been most anxiously in pursuit of one – and from all present appearances, if my philosophy be true I am to be most enviably felicitous, for I may have as much of the anticipation and pursuit as I please, but the possession I can hardly ever hope to realize . . . There is nothing here but some of the very cleverest fellows that God ever made – the truest friends and warmest hearts – that is worth living in this country for.”
It is generally argued that this refers to Matilda, and it well might. But it's hard to know. I think it is possible he was pursuing several women in the hopes of finding a wife before he left. His home was a plantation, where he probably was not close to large groups of eligible women. But he was close to Louisville. Perhaps he thought he'd be a better catch in a less wealthy city like Springfield.
On May 18, shortly after Speed returned to Kentucky, he wrote to William Butler, who was close with both Lincoln and Speed. Lincoln got his meals and laundry done at the Butler home while sleeping with Speed, and it seems Speed may have done the same. Butler was married with young children, and his wife's younger sister, then about 17, lived with them. Her name was Sarah Rickard. She will c
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