Are those stories about Mary abusive to Abraham overstated???

[David Lockmiller]

(01-09-2020 10:24 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Quoting Professor Burlingame:

"The abuse didn't end once the Lincolns got to Washington."

"She would regularly — we have testimony from more than one source — she would insult him. She would berate him in front of other people, and say, 'That's the worst speech I've ever heard anybody give. I don't see how a man could get up in front of the public and speak such venal things," says Burlingame, who's readying a monograph on the Lincoln marriage. "And if she does that in front of other people, what does she do in the privacy of her own home? Or in this case, the White House?"

Does anyone know Burlingame's original source for Mary's comment on President Abraham Lincoln's speech?

https://history.howstuffworks.com/histor...incoln.htm

Does anyone know Burlingame's original source for Mary's comment on President Abraham Lincoln's speech?

From “The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln,” by Michael Burlingame, at page 281:

Mary Lincoln did not mellow with age; she continued to berate her husband in the White House. On February 22, 1864, while attending a Patent Office fair to benefit the Christian Commission, Lincoln was caught off guard by the crowd’s insistence that he make a speech. According to his friend Richard J. Oglesby, who had prevailed upon him to attend the meeting only by promising that he would not have to speak, Lincoln reluctantly acceded to the crowd’s importuning and delivered a few remarks. [footnote 105] Afterward, while the Lincolns and Oglesby awaited their carriage, Mary Lincoln allegedly said to her husband, “That was the worst speech I ever listened to in my life. How any man could get up and deliver such remarks to an audience is more that I can understand. I wanted the earth to sink and let me go through.” The President did not reply; in fact, during the ride home, no further words were spoken by Oglesby or the Lincolns. [footnote 106]

footnote 105: Basler, CWL, 7: 197-98.

footnote 106: Sandburg and Angle, “Mary Lincoln,” 110-12, citing “a responsible Illinois citizen” who had heard the story from Oglesby. Cf. Sidney Kramer, “Lincoln at the Fair,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 3 (June 1945): 340-43.