Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[David Lockmiller]

(06-24-2014 04:33 PM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  Here's the key Billy Herndon quote:

From Herndon's Life of Lincoln, Da Capo ed., pp. 105-106:

"I knew Miss Rutledge myself, as well as her father and other members of the family, and have been personally acquainted with every one of the score or more of witnesses whom I at one time or another interviewed on this delicate subject.... My father was a politician and an extensive stock dealer in that early day, and he and Mr. Rutledge were great friends."

I always wonder when people use ellipses what they are omitting and why. And, since Mr. Gannett is quoting from the same book as I did, it was easy to locate the complete quote and the text that preceded this quote.

Other Lincoln authors that had preceded any Lincoln biography written by Herndon (but after his "Ann Rutledge" lecture in 1866) had cast doubt on the Ann Rutledge romance. Herdon immediately preceded the "key" quote cited by Mr. Gannett with a discussion about how other published Lincoln biographers had treated this subject and immediately thereafter made his own argument in disagreement with their conclusions regarding Lincoln's Ann Rutledge romance:

"Arnold says: 'The picture has been somewhat too highly colored, and the story made rather too tragic.' Dr. Holland and others omit the subject altogether, while the most recent biography--the admirable history by my friends Nicolay and Hay--devotes but five lines to it."

Of course later prominent Lincoln authors such as Ida Tarbell, Professor David Herbert Donald, Professor Michael Burlingame, and I do not know how many others supported Herndon's conclusion regarding the importance to Lincoln of the Ann Rutledge romance. I quote from Professor Donald's Pulitizer Prize winning book Lincoln at page 57 on this subject matter:

"They had more reason to worry about Ann's [health], for in August she fell ill with 'brain fever'--probably typhoid, caused when the flood contaminated the Rutledge well--and was put to bed. Though her doctor prescribed absolute quiet, she insisted on seeing Lincoln. A few days afterward she became unconscious, and on August 25 she died.

Lincoln was devastated.This terrible blow must have brought to his mind memories of earlier losses: his brother Thomas, his sister Sarah, and, above all, his mother. His nerves already frayed by overwork and too much study, began to give way, and he fell into a profound depression. He managed to hold himself together for a time, but after the funeral it began to rain again and his melancholy deepened. He told Mrs. Bennett Abell, with whom he was staying, 'that he could note bare[sic] the idea of its raining on her Grave.' So distraught was he that his friends persuaded him to visit his old friend Bowling Green . . . ."

Following Herdon's discussion of how contemporary Lincoln biographers had either ignored the topic or minimized its life effect upon Lincoln, Herndon continued with his narrative which Mr. Gannett quoted in part.

What Mr. Gannett leaves out of importance to Herndon's key quote is the following sentence and the footnote content referenced thereto:

From my own knowledge and the information thus obtained, I therefore repeat, that the memory of Anne Rutledge was the saddest chapter in Mr. Lincoln's life. Footnote 2: The original edition contains the following footnote: "In a letter dated Dec. 4, 1866, one of Miss Rutledge's brothers writes: 'When he first came to New Salem and up to the day of Anne's death Mr. Lincoln was all life and animation. He seemed to see the bright side of every picture.'"