Lincoln Letter to John Stuart

[antiquefinder]

(01-29-2013 05:55 PM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote:  AntiqueFinder said:
"I am certainly not implying that Mary was a terrible woman but simply put- she wasn't a nurturing wife. Mary had her own problems, and rightfully so with what she had endured. I feel Mary was the right person in Lincoln's life to give him that push in politics, but I feel she was not the best wife for him emotionally. We all need a safe place to turn to for nurturing when things are bad and I don't feel Mary was the one for that job. I could be wrong but this is how I personally feel."


How can we know that she wasn't a nurturing wife? The only people who would know for sure are Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, their children and the very few people who worked or resided there over the years.

Herndon was "certain" that Lincoln was miserable in his marriage, but he bases his opinion on not very much evidence, other than Lincoln sometimes staying at the office until very late at night, and some stories Herndon had gathered from others about Mary's behavior amongst the neighbors. But Herndon was either never, or almost never, a guest in the Lincoln home, so he wouldn't have seen them interacting in a domestic setting. It's pretty clear that Herndon and Mrs. Lincoln simply didn't like each other, which probably led to how he approached interviewees about her and how he wrote about her. It's not enough to point to some incidents of public histrionics to draw conclusions about her private time with Abe and how much emotional support Mary may have provided.

(I think their time in the White House is a different story; the pressures they were both under - and in Mary's case, temptations - were like nothing either had experienced before.)

I will give you that we don't know 100% if Mary was a nurturing wife or not; however, the stories that were told from their neighbors and people who did witness Mary throwing stuff at Lincoln and having fits at Lincoln doesn't seem very nurturing to me. I'm not saying that Lincoln was an angel and didn't have his faults, but he certainly didn't deserve to be abused by his wife. And to be quite frank, if she did those things in public imagine what went on that people didn't see. I believe the both of them needed some serious counseling to get through their depression. And as far as Herndon goes, how do you know that Lincoln didn't talk to Herndon about his marriage? Just because he was never in the Lincoln home doesn't mean he didn't know what was going on. I've had people talk to me about their marital problems and I was never in there homes but I knew what was going on.