Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[Lewis Gannett]

(06-30-2014 12:14 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(06-30-2014 10:11 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  One of the striking things about the [Abell's] testimony is that nobody, not even anyone in the Rutledge family, related an eyewitness memory of Lincoln courting Rutledge.

It is my understanding that there was at least one exception to your statement, and that exception was Mrs. Jeane Berry, sister of Ann Rutledge. Ida M. Tarbell wrote in her book The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln at page 218:

Many years ago a sister of Ann Rutledge, Mrs. Jeane Berry, told what she knew of Ann's love affairs; and her statement has been preserved in a diary kept by the Rev. R. D. Miller, now Superintendent of Schools of Menard County, with whom she had the conversation. She declared that Ann's "whole soul seemed wrapped up in Lincoln," and that they "would have been married in the fall or early winter" if Ann had lived. "After Ann died," said Mrs. Berry, "I remember that it was common talk about how sad Lincoln was; and I remember myself how sad he looked. They told me that every time he was in the neighborhood after she died, he would go alone to her grave and sit there in silence for hours.

I understand that you have a book that you are writing in which I believe that you will be making two related arguments 1) that there was really no significant love relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge and 2) that Abraham Lincoln was gay.

Any evidentiary weakness within the first argument would undoudtedly weaken the second argument. I underlined, italicized, and bolded the most important parts so that you would not miss them.

After Rev. R. D. Miller showed his diary to Ida Tarbell, the diary disappeared. We therefore have no confirmation that Tarbell's quotes from it are accurate. I'm skeptical about this diary. Ann's sister, identified by Tarbell as Jeane or perhaps Jean, was identified by Robert Rutledge to Herndon as Jane Rutledge. Her claim that "they told me" that Lincoln sat in silence for hours by Ann's grave seems odd. Who was "they"? She claimed to have seen Lincoln looking sad; but she didn't herself see Lincoln silently frequenting the grave. I don't recall anyone else in Ann's family talking for the record about Lincoln haunting the grave. This account looks like an invention.

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(06-30-2014 02:03 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(06-30-2014 12:14 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(06-30-2014 10:11 AM)Lewis Gannett Wrote:  One of the striking things about the [Abell's] testimony is that nobody, not even anyone in the Rutledge family, related an eyewitness memory of Lincoln courting Rutledge.

It is my understanding that there was at least one exception to your statement, and that exception was Mrs. Jeane Berry, sister of Ann Rutledge. Ida M. Tarbell wrote in her book The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln at page 218:

Many years ago a sister of Ann Rutledge, Mrs. Jeane Berry, told what she knew of Ann's love affairs; and her statement has been preserved in a diary kept by the Rev. R. D. Miller, now Superintendent of Schools of Menard County, with whom she had the conversation. She declared that Ann's "whole soul seemed wrapped up in Lincoln," and that they "would have been married in the fall or early winter" if Ann had lived. "After Ann died," said Mrs. Berry, "I remember that it was common talk about how sad Lincoln was; and I remember myself how sad he looked. They told me that every time he was in the neighborhood after she died, he would go alone to her grave and sit there in silence for hours.

I understand that you have a book that you are writing in which I believe that you will be making two related arguments 1) that there was really no significant love relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge and 2) that Abraham Lincoln was gay.

Any evidentiary weakness within the first argument would undoudtedly weaken the second argument. I underlined, italicized, and bolded the most important parts so that you would not miss them.

I have done some additional research on this issue and I intend to do more.

Professor Burlingame has added information from three other close relatives of Ann that you appear to have missed in your Lincoln scholarship research on this topic, Ann’s sisters -- Nancy and Sarah and her brother David. (See below Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Vol. One, page 99 - 100.)

“[A]ccording to Ann’s sister Nancy, ‘he [Lincoln] declared his love and was accepted for she loved him with a more mature and enduring affection than she had ever felt for McNamar. No one could have seen them together and not be convinced that they loved each other truly.’” (Source reference: Interview with Nancy Rutledge Prewitt, conducted by Margaret Flindt, Fairfield, Iowa, correspondence, 10 Feb., Chicago Inter-Ocean, 12 Feb. 1899.)

“Ann’s brother David urged her to marry Lincoln even before the return of her whilom fiancé, but she declined so that she could personally explain to McNamar her change of heart.” (Professor Burlingame did not provide a source reference in this instance.)

“According to her sister Sarah, Ann ‘had brain fever and was out of [her] head all the time till about two days before she died, when she came to herself and called for Abe.’ Bowling Green fetched Lincoln. When he arrived ‘everybody left the room and they talked together.’ Emerging from that room, Lincoln ‘stopped at the door and looked back. Both of them were crying.’ (Source reference: Sarah Rutledge Saunders, interview with Katherine Wheeler, Chicago Tribune Magazine, 22 Feb. 1922.)

David: Note that the interviews are dated many decades after Ann Rutledge died. I deal with these sources and these quotes at tedious length in my 2010 JALA article, p. 27. I wonder if I should type out some of it here. That seems ridiculous--it's long--but maybe it's the thing to do. All right, let's see how far I can get. Here goes, from just one footnote, #29, out of 140 footnotes in the article:

As Michael Burlingame puts it, "Few details of that [Lincoln-Rutledge] courtship survive." Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 99. This is an understatement. The number of specific ocasions that Lincoln and Ann Rutledge were recalled to have been seen together are exceedingly few. Her younger sister, Nancy Cameron Rutledge Prewitt, told of helping Ann and Abe fix a bed at the Rutledge Tavern in New Salem that he and one of Ann's brother's had broken during a "romp and scuffle" the night before. See Margaret Flindt, "Lincoln as a Lover. His Courtship of Ann Rutledge of New Salem in 1835," Chicago Inter-Ocean, interview conducted with Nancy Rutledge Prewitt in Fairfield, Iowa, February 10, 1899, page 3 of a typescript transcript of the original article in the Jane Hammond compilation for the Decatur Lincoln Memorial Collection (November 1921), now at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. In this interview (page 5) Nancy Prewitt stated, "No one could have seen them together and not be convinced that they loved each other truly." But the only specific activity Nancy Prewitt reported concerned the repair of the bed. Nancy recalled Lincoln paying respects to the dying Ann: "I can never forget how sad and broken-hearted...."

That's only half of footnote #29. David, I have a suggestion. You've displayed admirable persistence in digging into the Rutledge/Lincoln record. If you really want to find out what I've missed--and I'm the first to acknowledge that I might have missed something--you first must read my article, to find out what I haven't missed. You can Google the article. Easy as pie. Go to Section II, p. 27. Good luck.

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(06-30-2014 12:00 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Just chiming in...the idea that the Lincolns did not share a bed during their WH years has been disproven by two separate eyewitnesses on two separate occasions:

July 12 1861 "....it was 4am on July12, the sixth time that night that Lincoln was awoken by a knock on the door from Colonel Daniel Butterfield, his military secretary. Wearing nothing but a red flannel shirt, which he struggled to hold down in front him, Lincoln answered the door "Colonel, do you ever sleep"?..........the colonel apologized for yet another disturbance, but he was there under orders from General Scott. Lincoln explained that his dressing gown was twisted around his wife's feet and not wanting to wake her, he came out in his shirt instead. "Either I have grown too long or the shirt has grown too short, I know not which," he said, still struggling to hold the shirt down in front of him. (The President's War/Chris DeRose/ pg#91)

So, he was not only sharing a bed with MTL, he was apparently doing so in the nude on this particular occasion. If his dressing gown was tangled around the feet of his sleeping wife, where was his nightshirt? Why did he have to throw on a shirt(that he struggled to cover his modesty with?)

The other occasion is mentioned in Matthew Pinsker's "Lincoln's Sanctuary" when Captain Charles Derickson came to the Soldier's Home in the middle of the night in July 1863 with a message for the president which he delivered directly to Lincoln's bedroom and spoke to him with Mary lying beside him. Charles Derickson was ironically the son of David Derickson, who is alleged by some to have been AL's lover.

In separate letters to Mary Jane Welles and Elizabeth Dixon in the summer of 1865, several weeks after AL's murder, Mary lamented the loss of the man she said had been everything to her..." he was always my all...LOVER(emphasis mine) husband, father...truly, truly my ALL"(emphasis MTL) Leavitt and Turner/ Letters of Mary Todd Lincoln

If the sexual side of her marriage had been over for years, why did Mary make a point to refer to Lincoln as her lover(to two intimate friends) instead of simply calling him husband and father?

They slept in separate bedrooms in the WH and for the last few years of their time in Springfield, but their rooms were always conjoined. According to the memoirs of Emilie Todd Helm (Mary's sister) and Elizabeth Keckly, Lincoln could and did frequent his wife's bedroom and sitting rooms...and he never knocked before entering.

There is no real reason to believe that Lincoln and Mary did not enjoy regular conjugal relations.

In fact perhaps Mary shared his bed more than is believed, and Lincoln simply did not enjoy sleeping alone, which is why when Mary was not at the Summer Home with him Captain Derickson was invited to the place of honor, so to speak? In the White House he did not avail himself of cavalry during MTL's absences. Tad shared his father's bed.

Maybe he was lonely and preferred not to sleep alone.

And yes, Mary was insanely jealous. Everyone knows what happened at City Point when she saw a woman riding beside the president. If any unseemly gossip had reached her ears about AL's peculiar attention to David Derickson, she would have "reacted" to put it mildly.

Toia, you write: "They slept in separate bedrooms in the WH and for the last few years of their time in Springfield, but their rooms were always conjoined." They maintained semi-separate bedrooms?