Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[LincolnToddFan]

(04-11-2014 10:22 AM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote:  

(04-10-2014 09:57 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.

Hi Liz-
I am happy to hear that you enjoy reading my posts, because I have been going back and reading yours too, and let me say the feeling is mutual! I suppose it helps that I share your opinion on most things! ;)Now on to substance!

I agree with you regarding the dearth of key letters from Lincoln's personal relationships. The reason I doubt if there are any letters to Speed regarding Ann is that he never even spoke of Ann to Herndon when Herndon was writing his seminal Lincoln bio. Even if Speed was as taciturn as he apparently was, surely he would have had something to say about this key relationship in the life of his most famous friend(assuming it was indeed a key relationship)? After all, he was no friend of MTL and apparently told Herndon that Lincoln said he was railroaded into the marriage by Ninian and Elizabeth Edwards(which I doubt, but that's for another thread).

One of the most shortsighted things MTL ever did was to not make at least some of her correspondence from AL public(or arrange for it to be published after her death) when Herndon went on his Rutledge rampage. There is a delightful and revealing letter from AL to MTL written during the time he served in Congress in 1848 and she had returned to Lexington with their two children. In the letter, he regales her with stories about some of the prostitutes he has seen in the area, and he refers to them as "our girls". Apparently he and Mary got a kick out of the hookers during the brief time they lived at the DC boardinghouse and they nicknamed them "our girls".

I think it must have been unique for an upper middle class married couple during Victorian times to have been so uninhibited about sex as the Lincolns seemed to have been...that they were able to share private laughs about the "activities" in the red light district. Can you imagine what else was contained in their correspondence that has been lost to history? We know that the letters existed, because only a couple of weeks after the assassination MTL tearfully told a friend she spent her time reading and arranging them, and what a large pile they were, and what a consolation they were to her, and how some of them were now yellow with age. But RTL, a notoriously stuffy and private guy, might have felt otherwise about the propriety of some of his parents' private correspondence. I can't imagine HIM ever having naughty convos with his wife about street walkers!
Sooo FRUSTRATING!!

Anyway, here I am..rambling again. You are absolutely correct that the letters dealing with Rutledge might be among the many Lincoln letters that have been lost to history. We will never know.