Blog Posts about Mary Lincoln

[Steve]

(03-04-2020 12:58 AM)kerry Wrote:  I have considered an article on Mary and Herndon---some of it is written. I feel like something's off with how that is understood. I do have something somewhat related to it that I hope to reveal soon. One thing I will point out is that before Ida Tarbell got involved, they weren't consistently portrayed as nemeses.

A better characterization, I suspect, is that Herndon just had a lot of fixations because of the way his mind worked and his personality. He was brilliant, obsessive, and eccentric. Two of his many obsessions were Ann Rutledge and Lincoln's domestic life. He was prone to a great deal of speculation, sometimes insightful and other times not so much. I don't think his actions that caused "the clash" were mainly motivated by a desire to strike at Mary Lincoln. He was caught up in certain ideas.

But it is striking to me that in the early 1890s, several people noted that Herndon had at least tried to be fair to her, as compared with an opportunistically faux-moralizing press. Her oft-quoted cousin Eliza Norris's letter to Emilie Helm makes this point, but that part is never published.

Kerry, bringing up Ann Rutledge reminded me of this thread from last year about Herndon and the reliability of his sources that you might want to check out:

https://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussi...l#pid76353

(Note: My viewpoint on Herndon's "defaulting bridegroom" account of the events of Jan. 1, 1841 have changed since my posts in that thread. I now think Mary's sister, Elizabeth, might have been remembering preparations for something like a New Year's party but confusing them for wedding preparations years later. But I still remain somewhat skeptical of the Ann Rutledge romance story, there's enough evidence for it to be "possible" but not yet enough for it to be "probable".)

I do think Herndon was trying to be fair in his evaluation of Mary in his role as an historian. I can see where his source may have led him astray in the "defaulting bridegroom" story. Even though he was only reporting what his source told him, it's easy to see why Mary would be upset about it and him -- if it weren't true. Herndon's emphasis on the Ann Rutledge story seems hard to base on the vague and contradictory stories his sources told him about Lincoln and Rutledge. I'm sure Herndon believed it to be true but I can't help but feel his own feelings toward Mary helped tint his glasses on the evidence. And the emphasis he placed on the Rutledge story does come off like an attack on Mary, even if he tried to be fair to her and bring up what he felt were Mary's good qualities.