Mary Todd Lincoln's faux pas (plural), worse, and much worse

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-13-2014 01:19 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  From a woman's perspective, I should want to know how does such a highly-respected man "love" a difficult woman such as Mary Todd Lincoln?

Well then, back to bashing by Burlingame and Billy. Let's see what else they offer (and I say sorry in advance for coming up with some of the dirtiest linen they washed). If Mary was such an overall rotten character - why did A. L., a highly-respected free man with a free will, marry her?

Ye reap what ye sow - maybe he just got his just deserts? Truth to be told, I, and I'm sure any highly-respected gentlewoman either, wouldn't like to marry or remain married to a man who was that morally lax that he (according to Herndon) "could scarcely keep his hands off them [women]", who as a married man while on the circuit made "improper advances to a young woman", "his host's grown daughter" who "fell on Lincoln's pillow" and "put it [his hand] where it ought not to be", and let girls satisfy him on the basis of prior financial agreement (before and during his marriage). Not to forget the 1861 episode with Hanna Armstrong, who recalled "that it was not every woman who had the good fortune & high honor of sleeping with a president".
All this and way more is to be found where? Surprise, surprise, in M. Burlingame's "A Life":
Please download chapter 6 and see pp.591- 596:
http://www.knox.edu/academics/distinctiv...-life.html (Pp. 198-200 in the paperback edition.)

How disillusionating in case you believe everything contemporaries told and historians analyzed - David, what do you think about all this?