Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Lewis Gannett]

I must back up a bit in my reply to David Lockmiller, who wrote:

Yet, Professor David Herbert Donald states in his Pulitzer Prize winning book Lincoln at page 57: "[Lincoln] told Mrs. Bennett Abell, with whom he was staying, 'that he could not bare [sic] the idea of its raining on her grave.'"

As David says, it is indeed true that Donald, in Lincoln, endorsed the academic revival of the Ann Rutledge story. Absolutely true, and I apologize for casting doubt on David's observation. But there's a major twist here: Donald had changed his mind, and then changed it again. In his very first book, Lincoln's Herndon, his justly celebrated bio of Herndon, he ridiculed the Rutledge story, in Lincoln he reversed himself and accepted the story, and in "We Are Lincoln Men" he once again rejected it. (Incidentally: he gave Tripp partial credit for the final rejection.) Why did Donald go back and forth? That's way too complicated to get into here. The main point is that, after much thinking, David Donald concluded that the Rutledge story didn't happen, and based that conclusion to a large degree on Elizabeth Abell's statement that she knew nothing about a Lincoln/Rutledge love affair.