Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Lewis Gannett]

(04-11-2014 11:22 AM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote:  

(04-10-2014 10:57 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Count me in with Roger and Tom and Liz. He obviously knew this young woman, cared deeply for her, and grieved terribly at her death. But the fact is that a very short time later, Lincoln was considering marriage to another woman.(Mary Owens). He never even casually mentions Ann in subsequent letters to his most intimate friend at the time, Joshua Speed.

As for her death haunting him to the end of his life, where is the evidence for that? Taking Lincoln's own statements into account(to army nurse Rebecca Pomeroy, artist Francis Carpenter, and his own church pastor) the greatest trial of his life was the loss of Willie, his and Mary's golden child. It was Willie who's death caused him so much suffering that he would go to bed at night and try to conjure conversations with the boy in his dreams.

Youthful first love is very powerful and special. Most of us have experienced it. What could be more devastating than to experience the death of such a person? But the idea that his first tragic experience in love cast a shadow over Lincoln and that he spent the rest of his legendary life brooding over Ann Rutledge is for me, based on little more than Herndon's fevered imagination.

First, I'd like to say that I've started reading your posts, after a hiatus from this forum, and am really enjoying them! But on to substance....

While I still believe what I said last July, my only quibble with your post here is that we don't really know whether Lincoln wrote to Speed about Ann Rutledge. I have the distinct impression that Speed did not retain all of his Lincoln correspondence. (I think that about Mary Todd Lincoln, too. How can it be that there is so little correspondence between AL and Mary?) When Herndon came around, I don't think that Speed was particularly revealing - it seems he was rather closed-mouthed about the most intimate aspects of Lincoln's life and the nature of their friendship. Admittedly, many of the people whom Herndon interviewed were reticent about revealing intimate facts. (Then again, I recall Judge David Davis telling Herndon that Lincoln himself was very reticent about his true feelings in general.) As I'm sure you know, back in the 19th century, a lot of private matters were just not talked about publicly. Anyway, concrete evidence of Lincoln's relationship with Ann Rutledge may have existed early on but disappeared by the time Lincoln had become a national figure.

Speed wrote to Herndon about Ann Rutledge, after Lincoln's death: "It is all new to me" (Herndon's Informants, 431). It's noteworthy that in the surviving Lincoln-Speed correspondence (mostly letters from Lincoln to Speed; Speed's to Lincoln have been lost), Lincoln gave Speed encouragement and advice about Speed's tentative relations with his future wife. Lincoln does not cite his own romantic experience with Ann Rutledge in these letters. Scholars who support the revival of the Ann Rutledge story have not addressed the fact that Lincoln apparently never discussed with Speed his relationship with Ann. Yes, Lincoln was famously, even notoriously private; "the most shut-mouthed man" he ever knew, Herndon memorably said. The one likely exception however was Speed. Lincoln "disclosed his whole heart to me," Speed told Herndon (HI 430).