"Our One Common Country" author talk in Stratford, CT

[LincolnToddFan]

Well it looks like we have contradictory evidence on MTL's views on Emancipation. But I still think the most reliable is the first hand documentation...her own letters, and the statements of people who actually knew and spoke with her like Swisshelm and Keckly, as opposed to the memories of a supposed friend of RTL's several decades after the fact.

Yes Roger, it is true that before she became First Lady she was certainly no abolitionist. I remember a letter she wrote to one of her Todd relatives where she laments finding decent household help in Springfield, and says something about how she hopes her husband's death never finds her living outside a slave state. And of course when she and AL visited the Todds in Lexington together, neither of them ever objected at all to the care and attention lavished upon them by the familys' legion of slaves.

But she had certainly changed her tune by the time of Fort Sumter, which is why the charges that she was a Confederate sympathizer have always struck me as ironic.

Thanks David and Roger, for the information.