Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[LincolnToddFan]

(05-24-2014 07:12 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(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.

Burlingame is a highly respected scholar but he is the last person I would go to for a balanced view of Mary Lincoln or her relationship with her husband. He seems to do pretty much the same thing he accuses pro-MTL writers of doing. He cherry picks information to support his view that Mary was the Anti-Christ and the marriage was the worst mistake of Lincoln's life. "Obsessed" is quite the right word, and you are not the only person who has wondered what is behind his attitude.

Herndon comes off a little like a jealous, spurned lover when he discusses the marriage and when he attacks his friend's blameless young children he loses all credibility. RTL visited him when he started his Rutledge tour, pleading with him to cease and desist with the attacks on his mother for the sake of compassion if nothing else. Herndon responded with a torrent of abuse against the young man. Herndon's lectures were part of the reason MTL took her youngest child and fled the country to live abroad for years.

Do any of these men...Herndon, Davis, and Speed who allegedly "knew him better than anyone"...believe that AL would have approved this brutal, loutish treatment of his widow and by extension his adored children?

Even if she deserved the opprobrium heaped upon her, how can anyone who has genuinely studied Abraham Lincoln's character and personality believe that he would not have been horrified by how she was treated (by Herndon especially) after she was alone and defenseless?