RTL's birth

[Linda Anderson]

Thanks, Donna. This may be one of those things we will never have an answer to.

This is from Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Vol 1 Chapter 6. pp. 588-589. http://www.knox.edu/documents/pdfs/Linco...ap%206.pdf

"The circumstances surrounding the wedding are curious. Its abruptness startled Elizabeth Edwards, who told an interviewer that the “marriage of Mr L & Mary was quick & sudden – one or two hours notice.”320 The license was issued on the day of the ceremony.321 Three years earlier, Mrs. Edwards had given her sister Frances an elaborate wedding – “one of the grand affairs of its time” – and counted on providing one for Mary.322 Springfield aristocrats like the Edwardses and Todds customarily held elaborate weddings.323

"On his wedding day, Lincoln appeared and acted “as if he were going to the slaughter.” He said to one of his groomsmen, James Matheny: “I shall have to marry that girl.” Matheny reported that Lincoln “often” confided “directly & indirectly” that “he was driven into the marriage.”324 While dressing for the ceremony, he was asked where he was going. “I guess I am going to hell,” came the reply.325

"All this, coupled with the fact that Mary gave birth slightly less than nine months after the wedding, tends to confirm historian Wayne C. Temple’s hypothesis that she seduced Lincoln the night before and made him feel obliged to wed her immediately in order to preserve her honor.326 She could not, of course, have known if she were pregnant, but she might have been, and this knowledge could have impelled a man with an exceptionally tender conscience and highly developed sense of honor to marry her, despite strong misgivings."