Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[LincolnToddFan]

Abraham Lincoln NEVER left Mary Todd at the altar. That story was investigated and thoroughly debunked years ago. There exists no marriage license for any Lincoln-Todd wedding other than the one that took place on the evening of Nov 4, 1842. The original source of the aborted wedding story is Elizabeth Todd Edwards who was ill and in her dotage when she gave the interview to Herndon. But even if there had been a wedding scheduled, why has no marriage license ever been uncovered in the public record? MTL's niece Katherine Helm also emphatically denies that it took place and there are no other witnesses who verify it either.

People who claim Lincoln had the ring inscribed to "appease" Mary sure don't give the guy any credit. This theory implies that he was weak and dishonest, some pliable little donkey who could be led around by a spitfire almost a full decade younger than himself. I don't buy it.

I have always been mystified by Michael Burlingame's seething, deeply personal antipathy toward the wife of a man he obviously admires. He and Herndon would have gotten along famously. The only thing I can come up with is that like many(male) Lincoln admirers he feels that Mary Todd was unworthy of his hero. That may or may not be true, but Abraham Lincoln apparently did not agree. And the more Burlingame et. al. denigrate her, the worse they make AL look in my opinion. Because at the end of the day, HE is the one who chose her and he married her. If he was such a wimp that he could be manipulated into a marriage he didn't want ,then he deserved the unhappiness he got from it.(IF he was unhappy in it, which I don't agree he was).

The person who would be most astonished and offended at the charge that he did not love and cherish the woman he married is Abraham Lincoln himself.

"President Lincoln loved the mother of his children deeply and tenderly....we are indifferent to those we do not love, and he never ever treated her with indifference." (From Elizabeth Keckly, seamstress and close companion to MTL during the White House years)

With all due respect to Herndon, Davis, Speed and the estimable Burlingame...to imply that they knew Lincoln better than MTL is presumptuous enough to almost make me laugh. Herndon spent a few hours a day with AL in their law office. Speed shared a friendship with him that was very intense for a few years, then he married and moved away. David Davis was a close friend of AL, but not did not live in Washington during the WH years and spent months at a time without seeing or writing to him.Michael Burlingame was born a century after the man died and obviously never met him.

None of them were present in the marital bed of this couple, nor privy to the intimacies and life altering experiences that any marriage of 20+ years must include. None of them were present at the births of four children, nor endured the agony of having to bury two of them...together. None of them were in the trenches with this man and woman in the hellish Civil War White House. Mary and AL saw one another at their best and at their worst... during illnesses, depression, grief. The love they had for the four children they conceived together bound them even tighter. Mary was almost certainly bi-polar, and Lincoln seemed chronically depressed and morbid even before he met her. The marriage most assuredly was not a fairy tale, but it was a marriage after all, with two very flawed people involved....not a saintly husband and a harridan wife as these guys would have us believe.

Marriage is for flesh and blood men and women. Not gods and myths.