Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[LincolnToddFan]

(05-21-2014 09:18 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  

(05-21-2014 07:05 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Hi David,

That's a very intriguing excerpt but I am not sure how it proves that AL discussed Ann Rutledge with Speed. It sounds like Speed is speculating that the doctor's letter might have contained some reference to Rutledge based solely on the fact that the doctor refused to read it aloud?

Exactly. It goes like this: Lincoln doesn't reveal to Speed a passage in a letter from Lincoln to a Dr. Drake. Speed speculates that the passage COULD have been about Ann Rutledge. But Speed doesn't find out, because Lincoln never shows him the mysterious passage. What might we conclude? Lincoln doesn't seem to have told Speed about Ann Rutledge. Speed was actually reduced to saying (to Herndon) that he never found out if Ann was or was not mentioned in a letter that he himself had never seen! That, along with "It's all new to me," is the sum total of what Herndon managed to extract from Joshua Speed about Ann Rutledge. Well, there's one other oddball Speed reference to Ann but I won't belabor it. What does it mean? I for one think it means a lot. If Lincoln's mental breakdown in New Salem in late August/early September 1835 expressed the grief of a passionate lover, why didn't he allude to it even once to Speed?

Excellent, I agree with you. Of course there is also a chance AL discussed Rutledge with his close friend Dr. Anson Henry, who treated AL after his second and most serious emotional collapse after the breakup of his engagement to Mary Todd in January 1841. This time he became so despondent that his friends feared for his life. Dr. Henry told his wife that AL confided things to him that he had never told another living person. Dr. Henry remained close to both the Lincolns until the end of his life. He was one of the very few people outside the family that Mary agreed to see in the wake of the assassination.

So perhaps Dr. Henry knew about the Lincoln/Rutledge romance, but per some agreement with AL never spoke of it. It's all so strange, isn't it?

Poor AL. Just as I was typing this up, that old Rolling Stones hit from the 1960's called "19th Nervous Breakdown" popped into my head!

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(05-21-2014 09:49 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  Something about Lincoln I find very interesting: he was drawn to people more educated and more worldly than he. Some of these friends were women; Joshua Speed was the only male example I know. I mention this because it bears on why Lincoln married Mary Todd: compared to most people Lincoln had known, Mary was a walking, talking encyclopedia. Lincoln learned from her. Speed, by the way, came from a rich, educated, slave-owning Kentucky family: shades of Mary. Lincoln learned from him, too. Imagine: this guy who would turn into one of the greatest geniuses of all time came from the remotest sticks, and to get to his future high places he had to learn A LOT. Lincoln hungered for knowledge like a starving person. In fact, it almost ruined his health. This oddly enough circles back to the Ann Rutledge story. Its driven-mad-with-grief theme isn't the only way to make sense of what happened.

Lewis,

the same thing has always struck me about AL and I think I mentioned it in another thread. He seemed to never look back after he left that cabin in the wilderness. He liked and respected intelligent, upwardly mobile people....both men and women. He seemed much more comfortable around the Todds than he did his Hanks cousins and his step-siblings. By all accounts he was always comfortable and content in the luxurious Todd homes in Kentucky and particularly loved spending hours in the well appointed library at Buena Vista, their summer place. In fact at his Springfield funeral rites the newspapers noted that there were quite a few of the Todds, but from AL's side of the family there was only his cousin Dennis with whom he was never close.

He sent his oldest son to be educated at Phillips-Exeter and Harvard, then as now the swankiest schools in the nation and a bastion of the upper class elite.

And most striking of all, he never ever took any of his children to Pigeon Hollow to meet his relatives, nor were they invited to Springfield to see them. None of his children ever met anyone from their father's birth family. It is Mary Lincoln who insisted on naming their youngest son "Thomas" after her husband's father.