Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[David Lockmiller]

(06-24-2014 12:06 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  Dear RJ Norton and LincolnToddFan,

The idea that Lincoln had a mental breakdown in 1836 is almost certainly a mistaken reference to travails he experienced in August and September of 1835. What happened during that time? Many historians have accepted Herndon's conclusion that Lincoln grieved deeply for Ann Rutledge, who died on August 25, probably of typhus. But that conclusion has had its ups and downs.

I do not understand 1836 being Lincoln's mental breakdown year. Is that just a typographical error?

The well-respected Lincoln scholar Ida Tarbell published a book in 1896 entitled The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln. She interviewed many of the same Rutledge family members and residents of New Salem that Herndon interviewed for his famous lecture on the Abraham Lincoln-Ann Rutledge love story and thus had the first-hand opportunity to measure credibility of her witnesses familiar with the story. The last chapter of the book is entitled "Lincoln's First Acquaintance with Ann Rutledge--The Story of Their Love." I quote from the last section of that chapter entitled "Ann's Engagement to Lincoln" (pages 214-18). Ida Tarbell wrote:

The lovers passed an hour alone in an anguished parting, and soon after, on August 25, 1835, Ann died.

The death of Ann Rutledge plunged Lincoln into the deepest gloom. That abiding melancholy, that painful sense of the incompleteness of life,which had been his mother's dowry to him, asserted itself. (emphasis added) It filled and darkened his mind and his imagination, tortured him with its black pictures. One stormy night he was sitting beside William Greene, his head bowed on his hand, while tears trickled through his fingers; his friend begged him to control his sorrow, to try to forget. "I cannot," moaned Lincoln; "the thought of the snow and rain [falling] on her grave fills me with indescribable grief."

He was found walking alone by the river and through the woods, muttering strange things to himself. He seemed to his friends to be in the shadow of madness. They kept a close watch over him; and at last Bowling Green, one of the most devoted friends Lincoln then had, took him home to his little log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem, under the brow of a big bluff.

Here, under the loving care of Green and his wife Nancy, Lincoln remained until he was once more master of himself.

But though he had regained self-control, his grief was deep and bitter. [this was in 1835, not 1836] Ann Rutledge was buried in Concord cemetery, a country burying-ground seven miles northwest of New Salem. To this lonely spot Lincoln frequently journeyed to weep over her grave. "My heart is buried there," he said to one of his friends.

When McNamar returned (two months after Ann Rutledge died) and learned of Ann's death, he "saw Lincoln at the post-office," as he afterward said, and "he seemed desolate and sorely distressed." On himself, apparently, her death produced no deep impression. Within a year he married another woman; and his conduct toward Ann Rutledge is to this day a mystery.

Many years ago a sister of Ann Rutledge, Mrs. Jeane Berry, told what she knew of Ann's love affairs; and her statement has been preserved in a diary . . . . She declared that Ann's "whole soul seemed wrapped up in Lincoln," and that they "would have been married in the fall or early winter" if Ann had lived. "After Ann died," said Mrs. Berry, "I remember that it was common talk about how sad Lincoln was; and I remember myself how sad he looked. They told me that every time he was in the neighborhood after she died, he would go alone to her grave and sit there in silence for hours."

In later life, when his sorrow had become a memory, he told a friend who questioned him: I really and truly loved the girl and think often of her now." There was a pause, and then he added : "And I have loved the name of Rutledge to this day." [this friend would have been Isaac Cogdal at the White House]

Ida M. Tarbell is a well-respected Lincoln scholar and author. What important alleged facts contained within the foregoing narrative do you intend to dispute in your about-to-be-published book? And, if "1836" is not a typo within your statement at the beginning of this post, please inform us of the event(s) which caused Lincoln's relapse.