Most important person in Lincoln's life

[Juan Marrero]

Admitting my tendency to psychoanlyze, I nevertheless thought it would be interesting to speculate about whom was the single most influential person in forming Lincoln's character and outlook.

Obvious candidates would be Nancy and Thomas, Mary, Ann Rutledge, his stepmother Sarah, and even Shakespeare.

My sense is that it was Nancy Hanks Lincoln. His statements to Herndon suggest that he thought that his intelligence came from her side of his family, implying perhaps that Thomas was the less impressive parent. Her early death gave him a tragic, fatalisitic view of life, marked by a dificulty in accepting the "cheap grace" of organized religion. It does not seem that Thomas was a particulary sentimental or affectionate parent (even by the standards of the day) so Nancy's death may have exposed Abraham and his sister to a harsher childhood than if she had lived. This may have made him even more inclined to care about the weak than he was already naturally inclined.

In my limited observed experience, it seems that people who lose a mother early on are particularly impacted by the loss. A sensitive person like Lincoln would have been deeply affected.

There is the old saw that people tend to marry someone who reminds them of their distaff parent. Mary Lincoln does not support that theory; she, in fact, suggests the antithesis of the little we know about Nancy.