Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Eva Elisabeth]

(05-24-2014 01:08 AM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  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.

Well worded. As much as I appreciate Prof. Burlingame's works and research as for the many facts and info he provides, regarding this topic I don't agree on his conclusions. There are sure accounts to argue pro and con as well, and all will remain speculation in the end, but I wonder what makes him that obsessed to prove an unhappy marriage by all means.
As for Herndon I once read the theory that a great deal of Herndon's charge that the Lincoln household was a "domestic hell" rooted in Herndon's dislike of their undisciplined children ("brats"). But the fact that others considered the Lincoln children from their own point of view as some sort of torture does also not allow to conclude they were such for Abraham Lincoln - and I'm sure everyone will agree it was right the opposite. So I think one cannot simply draw similar conclusions on Lincoln's feelings for Mary because oneself wouldn't have gotten along with her or coped with her behavior. In dubio pro reo.