The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (7 page)

During the year 1842, Mary Todd and Lincoln were brought together once more. The matchmaking wife of a friend, Simeon Francis, editor of the
Sangamon Journal
, served as intermediary; one of the most ridiculous incidents in Lincoln’s life helped to throw him again into the arms of Mary Todd. This was a threatened duel with a rival politician, a comic-opera affair that Lincoln was later ashamed of and disliked to hear mentioned.

The political rival was James Shields, the Democratic State Auditor of Public Accounts. One of his rulings on a banking matter was made the object of an attack by the Whigs. Then a series of four letters lampooning Shields appeared in a Springfield paper. They were signed “Rebecca” and purported to come from the “Lost Townships.” Actually they had been written by Lincoln with the help of Mary Todd and one of
her friends. They infuriated Shields. Egged on by his friends, he challenged Lincoln to a duel. Lincoln’s seconds maneuvered him into a position in which he had to accept the challenge. Fortunately, some sensible friends interceded, and the affair was called off just as the contestants were getting ready to go into battle.

It was all very silly and stupid, but the duel apparently clinched the match between Lincoln and Mary Todd. Lincoln wrote one last desperate letter to Speed, asking how he liked marriage now that he had tried it. A quick answer was requested. We do not know what Speed said, but whatever it was, it did not delay the marriage. The farce-comedy of the duel had taken place in September. On November 4, 1842, Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln were quietly married in the Edwards’s home.

The marriage between Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln has been much commented on by partisans of both sides who have been eager to make a good case for their own favorite by denigrating the other party to the match. The evidence, judged as impartially as one can under the circumstances, would seem to indicate that, although the abstracted and psychologically twisted Lincoln was probably difficult to live with, his wife was hardly an ideal companion for wedded bliss. Lincoln became broken to the harness, resigned to the perpetual differences between himself and his wife. In order to avoid trouble he simply let her have her own way in almost everything. Mary Todd, however, became not more easy to live with, but more difficult. As her husband rose to power she became more aggressive in her demands on life. As mistress of the White House she was one of the most domineering and headstrong women ever to have presided in that famous residence. Nor did she stand up well under the blinding light of national publicity.

Much of our information about the Lincoln-Todd marriage comes from Herndon, who hated Mrs. Lincoln. According
to him she was “the female wildcat of the age,” “a tigress,” “a she-wolf” who “woman-whipped and woman-carved” her long-suffering husband. Yet Herndon said of her: “In her domestic troubles I always sympathized with Mrs. Lincoln. The world does not know what she bore or how ill-adapted she was to bear it.”

One thing that must be kept in mind in judging the woman who was Abraham Lincoln’s wife is the fact that she later became insane and some years after her husband’s death was actually confined for a while in an asylum. The seeds of this dark malady may well have been present during her earlier life. She was, perhaps, not responsible for her erratic behavior, her wild bursts of temper and her unreasonably jealous attitude toward her husband.

Immediately after their marriage, the ill-assorted couple went to live at a tavern in Springfield where they paid only four dollars a week for their board and lodging. One week later, Lincoln, in a letter to Samuel Marshall wrote: “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.” This was the only written comment he ever made about his marriage.

Nine months after their marriage a son was born to the Lincolns whom they named Robert Todd Lincoln. The responsibilities that Lincoln had dreaded closed around him quickly. He was thirty-three years old when he married Mary Todd. His prospects were good but he was still terribly poor. His ambition, however, had never slackened. He had served four terms in the Illinois General Assembly. He now determined to run for the United States Congress. He had good reason to believe that he would be successful; he was already powerful in the Whig party in Illinois; he had friends and a following. He began to pull the necessary wires to obtain the nomination. In this he was bitterly disappointed. He twice saw the nomination given to others—one of them his close
friend, Edward D. Baker, after whom he named his second son, born in 1846.
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Lincoln did not give up his Congressional ambitions. He devoted himself to law while he waited his chance, but meanwhile he kept in touch with every aspect of the political scene throughout the county and the state. While he waited he also indulged himself—as so many other disappointed men have—in the writing of poetry. He corresponded with a friend, one Andrew Johnston, and exchanged poems with him. Some of Lincoln’s poetical attempts have been preserved. They are generally heavy with gloom—even his taste for the poetry of others ran to the more funereal kind.

It was during the period after his marriage that Lincoln formed his partnership with Herndon. He had broken with Stuart in 1841 to form a short-lived association with Stephen T. Logan which ended in 1844. Herndon had not yet been admitted to the bar when Lincoln asked him to join him; as soon as he was, Lincoln made him his partner.

Herndon was politically useful to Lincoln. He had many friends and he could make friends easily, so that he could rally even the “wild boys” of the town to Lincoln’s support. Whenever Lincoln had to be away from Springfield, Herndon kept him posted on developments on the home front. He acted as Lincoln’s publicity manager, as his scapegoat when necessary, as his political under-cover man and, finally, as the preserver of his life record, energetically seeking out everything that was of interest in connection with the man who had been his partner.

Of the two men, Herndon was unquestionably the more forthright, the more passionately idealistic. He was ready to fight at the drop of a hat, and equally ready to forget his quarrels as soon as they were over. Lincoln’s slower nature,
which required him to weigh every phase of any situation before taking action, seems less admirable than Herndon’s “happy warrior” attitude—but it was to take him farther. His was a mind that could function over a long series of carefully planned moves; it was like his ability to learn and memorize—slow, steady and sure. Lincoln never possessed wide learning, but what he did learn he never forgot.

The slow but stolidly ambitious Lincoln bided his time during the years after his marriage. Then, on May 1, 1846, he finally received the long-coveted nomination. His opponent on the Democratic ticket was Peter Cartwright, picturesque Methodist circuit-rider, who attacked Lincoln as an infidel throughout the whole hotly contested campaign. The two men met one day in Springfield. Cartwright hoped to embarrass his opponent publicly. “If you are not going to repent and go to heaven, Mr. Lincoln, where are you going?”

“To Congress,” Lincoln said quietly. He was right, and he was elected by a large majority.

Before he could go—before his election actually—war with Mexico was declared. With its declaration, and with his election to an office in the Federal Government, Lincoln’s career became associated for the first time with national issues. Hitherto he had been an Illinois man; his interests had never gone beyond the borders of his own state; his experience had touched local legislation only; his training had been provincial, restricted to the narrow boundaries of one small segment of the nation. He went to Chicago for the first time in his life to attend the Rivers and Harbors Convention there. He met such men as Horace Greeley, Thurlow Weed, Schuyler Colfax and Dudley Field. The world was beginning to open up before him, and his eyes reached beyond the horizon of the prairies to see the problems that were confronting a nation.

The Mexican War was no isolated incident in American
history. It was fought not merely for patriotic reasons or to protect the lives and rights of American citizens in the newly admitted state of Texas. It was in reality a part of a great and tremendous movement that was to tear the country in two—it was part of the slavery issue that was then building up to the conflict that was to be fought fifteen years later under the leadership of this obscure Illinois Congressman who went to Washington late in 1847 to serve his first and only term.

The Mexican War was an imperialistic move on the part of the pro-slavery forces to gain more territory for their expansion. Cotton land was rapidly being depleted under slave labor, and fresh soil was needed to grow new crops. Almost instinctively, Lincoln seems to have grasped the essential nature of the Mexican War. He opposed it from the beginning, and his opposition nearly wrecked his political career.

Lincoln’s sojourn in the nation’s capital must have had an important influence on him. He left Springfield in November, 1847, in company with Mrs. Lincoln and their two sons, Robert and Edward. The journey to Washington gave Lincoln his first view of the eastern part of the country. In Washington he came in contact with slavery, for the District of Columbia was an important slave-trading center, and the auctioning of human beings could be seen from the windows of the Capitol itself.

On December 6, the new Congressman from Illinois took his seat in the House of Representatives. On December 22, he introduced a series of resolutions sharply questioning whether or not the “spot” on which the first blood of war had been shed was Mexican or United States territory. The border between Texas and Mexico was in dispute, so the question was not without significance. He spoke again on January 12. On this occasion he not only attacked the war policy of the President and the Administration but went on to generalize about revolution.

The Democratic newspapers in Illinois immediately seized
upon these two speeches and used them in an attack on Lincoln and the Whig party. Illinois had enthusiastically supported the War, sent armies and supplied leaders. Shields and Baker had gone to win glory on the field of battle. Mass meetings were held at which Lincoln was attacked and his “Spot” resolutions held up to scorn. The word “Spot” was to stick to him for many years in all sorts of derisory connotations, and his theories of revolution were to be used against him even during his campaign for the Presidency. His own native honesty and his inexperience had defeated him. It was obvious that he could not hope for re-election. He had been rash enough to oppose a war and support an unpopular cause without compromise or equivocation.

Nevertheless, during the remainder of his term in Congress, he threw his efforts into furthering the political cause of the Whig party. He worked for the election of Zachary Taylor; he traveled in New England; he wrote letters and kept in touch with party affairs throughout the country. The Whig party was dying. Its principles were no longer valid, for the issue of the day, rising steadily into greater and greater prominence, was slavery, and the issue could no longer be avoided. The Democratic party stood for the extension of slavery; the Whigs stood for nothing except opposition to the Democrats. A new party was being born, a party composed of all those who hated slavery. This was the Free Soil party, which was attracting all the liberal-minded people of the Northeast. The Free Soil party was short lived; it accomplished little of importance, but it was indicative of the revolt against the inaction in the old Whig party. It died out in 1852, and its members became absorbed in the new Republican party which was to sweep into power in 1860 with Lincoln as its Presidential nominee. Yet, by one of those curious turns of historical circumstance, Lincoln now went to New England to try to put down this revolt—to attempt to strangle at its very inception the political movement that eventually was to carry him to
greatness. And to compound inconsistency he went there in behalf of Zachary Taylor, whose chief claim to the Presidency was his military record in the Mexican War that Lincoln had opposed.

During this political campaign in New England, Lincoln first met William H. Seward and heard him deliver a speech against slavery. Lincoln was not only impressed by the nature of Seward’s argument, he was even more impressed by the manner of Seward’s speaking, for he spoke quietly, without the flamboyance or rhetoric that was so popular at the time. Seward was a man of importance in the East; his star was rising daily as the political leader of the anti-slavery forces. Lincoln’s own speaking technique shows Seward’s influence from this time on. He had never been given to excessive rhetoric, but now his words became even simpler and more direct.

Lincoln went on to Springfield, where he made certain that his popularity with his constituents had vanished. Taylor was elected in November—an appointive Governmental office was all that Lincoln could hope for. He returned to Washington for the session beginning on December 7, 1848. During this session Lincoln sponsored an unsuccessful bill that was intended to restrict slavery in the District of Columbia; otherwise he took no part in the growing anti-slavery movement. Taylor was inaugurated; the session came to a gloomy close, and Lincoln returned to Springfield, hopeful that he would be appointed to the Commissionership of the General Land Office. Again he pulled wires. He even returned to Washington to further his claims, but again he was disappointed. The position was given to someone else, and Lincoln was finally offered a minor position as Secretary of the Oregon Territory. He had no heart for the job, and Mrs. Lincoln was inalterably opposed to moving to the far West. His political fortunes were at their lowest ebb. There was nothing left for him to do but return to the law.

In February, 1850, his second son, Edward, died after
four short years of life. Everything seemed to be crumbling away from this man who had got so far and who now seemed to be pushed back, losing ground at every step. He buried himself in his law practice, riding the circuit through the small towns of Illinois while Herndon held down the home office.