Abraham Lincoln and the Eighth Judicial Circuit

[LincolnToddFan]

(06-14-2014 04:20 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Hi Toia. Thank you for such a wonderful reply, and now I have a much greater understanding. I have always felt he loved his family, and this must have been hard to be away for so long.

P.S. I have been married 47 years, and the longest my wife and I have ever been away from each other is 3 1/2 days! This may have influenced my curiosity on this question!

Roger, you and your wife sound like you have that rarest of treasures...a happy marriage. GOOD FOR YOU!

BTW I have found one of the sources for the "homesick" comment. Daniel Mark Epstein attributes it AL's friend and fellow attorney James Conkling...."I found Lincoln desperately homesick(in Bloomington) and turning his head frequently toward the south".

pg#75 "The Lincolns:Portrait of a Marriage

Author Charles Strozier, in his excellent psycho-biography "Lincoln's Quest for Union" suggests that long absences were essential to AL's emotional health and happiness, as they provided a stabilizing balance against the intimacy he was never quite comfortable with.

Doris Kearns Goodwin seems to endorse that view with "...for the first time, he enjoyed the security and warmth of a family circle without neglecting his devotion to reading, studying, traveling on the legal circuit, and cultivating politics. While the marriage was tumultuous at times, it provided Lincoln with a protected harbor from which he could come and go as he pleased while he continued his lifelong quest to become an educated person."

pgs 104-105 "Team of Rivals" paperback version

Also, it bears remembering that AL was very heavily in debt for at least about a decade after his wedding, debt incurred in New Salem. He would have been very motivated to work constantly not only to provide for his growing family, but to pay off what he called the "national debt".