The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln by Abraham Lincoln Read Free Book Online Page B

external corroboration. No Springfield paper printed a word about an expected marriage—and a marriage with a member of the important Edwards family would surely have been in the news of the day. Something did happen on January 1, 1841, as Lincoln’s own letters testify, for he refers to this day in a letter to Speed dated more than a year later (March 27, 1842) as “the fatal first of January,” and he says that he is still troubled because “there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make so.”
    There is no doubt, too, that what took place caused a terrible emotional upheaval in Lincoln. His correspondence at this time with his law partner, John T. Stuart, hints at it, and it runs through his letters to Speed again and again. The hypochondria he feared had returned in full force and he said that he was the most miserable man alive. Apparently he did not see Mary Todd all spring and summer; some time in August he went to Louisville to visit Speed, who had sold out his store on that same fatal first of January and had gone to Kentucky, where he also was contemplating marriage.
    Joshua Speed was the one man in Lincoln’s life who was ever really close to him. Herndon, who was actively associated with Lincoln for fifteen years in his law office, came to know his partner well, but only by observing him closely. Lincoln confided much of his political interests to Herndon, but he seldom spoke to him on terms of great intimacy about his personal life. Lincoln’s friendship with Speed slowly cooledafter his marriage to Mary Todd, but during the period just preceding the marriage, Lincoln poured his heart out to Speed in a series of letters that are without parallel in all the Lincoln correspondence. He had never written like this before; he was never to do so again.
    Speed was the recipient of Lincoln’s misery; to him and to him alone, Lincoln confided his next attachment to a woman, for immediately upon breaking off relations with Mary Todd he again needed a woman to whom he could turn. After Ann Rutledge’s death he had sought the company of Mary Owens; now he switched his attentions to a young girl of seventeen named Sarah Rickard. This affair lasted for more than a year, but apparently it never became serious—any more than the Mary Owens affair had. 4 These were simply women sought for on the rebound, sought for in order to forget the women who had really counted.
    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 ofher 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