In the New Salem period occurred his first actual love affair, of which anything is known. Doubtless there is some significance in the fact that he recognized, even if playfully, that the beginning of love for him was the idle dreaming over the girl in the wagon. All his life long there was a certain remoteness in him, a some thing that made him not quite a realist, but which was so veiled by apparent realism that careless people did not perceive it. He did not care whether they perceived it or not, was willing to drift along, permitting circumstances to play the main part in determin ing his course and not stopping to split hairs as to whether his earthly attachments sprang from genuine realistic perceptions of affinity or from approximation more or less to the dreams of his spirit. Of a girl named Ann Rutledge who lived at New Salem and died there in 1835, aged 19, very little is certainly known. She was a daughter of the tavern keeper. Lincoln boarded for a time in her father's house. Young as she was, Ann had had a des perate love affair which turned out badly (the man disappeared) before Lincoln fell in love with her. The affair was cut short by her sudden death from malarial fever. The episode has been mag nified out of all proportion to the known facts by sentimental biographers. It may be safely dismissed as not deeply significant in itself. Traditions of its aftermath have more importance. They reveal the profound sensibility, also the vein of melancholy and the unrestrained emotional reaction which came and went, in alternation with boisterous mirth, to the end of his days. Following Ann's death he fell into a state of morbid depression which ap pears to have given rise to the report that he had a streak of in sanity. Apparently he himself felt a terror of this side of his make-up, a terror that is revealed in the most mysterious of his experiences, several years later. He recovered rapidly from the abnormal condition following Ann's death. Perhaps it was on the rebound from the melancholy affair of Ann that he became en tangled the next year in an affair that caused him almost at once to wish he was out of it. Mary Owens was a bouncing, sensible lass with whom he drifted into an engagement but who was not long in deciding that he was "deficient in those little links that make up the chain of a woman's happiness." This affair over lapped his removal to Springfield. Mary Owens broke the engage ment, greatly to his relief, in the spring of 1838. Two years passed and Lincoln found himself engaged to Mary Todd, a beau tiful young woman, high-spirited, well-educated and much higher in social origin than he. The fact of their engagement is evidence that now at 29 he had either "arrived" or was on the sure road to arrival. The Springfield of 184o contained a wide variety of stocks and characters but all were united in a democracy of endeavour where ability and promise were the prime qualifications for admis sion to society. Though Lincoln, very probably, was accurately described by Mary Owens, although he was undeniably awkward, even crude, the powers that had enthralled Clary Grove had con tinued to develop. Both men and women appear to have trusted him so completely as to pay no heed to his peculiarities and to give no thought to his origin. His melancholy and a curious vein of indecision did not ordinarily manifest themselves. He was still a member of the legislature, and both as politician and lawyer he had captured general confidence. Springfield took his engage ment to Mary Todd as altogether appropriate.
There followed that mysterious experience which has never been explained. On Jan. 1, I841—"the fatal first of January," as he called it—the engagement was broken off. After his death his biographer, Herndon, gave to his other biographer, Lamon, a story he had pieced together, to the effect that a date had been set for the wedding of Lincoln and Mary Todd, that everything was in readiness, the bride dressed for the ceremony, but that no bride groom appeared, that he was discovered by friends in a state of temporary insanity. Infinite controversy has grown out of this story. One of Mary Todd's sisters told a third biographer, Jesse w. Weik, that it was true ; another sister told a fourth biographer that it was false. There can be no doubt that the facts in the story
are all in confusion. No marriage licence for Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd was issued either in 1840 or 1841. But what lay behind the story, and why the two sisters of the bride should have disagreed about it as they did, is an unsolved puzzle. That Lincoln was in a desperate frame of mind in Jan. 1841 is attested in his own letters, especially in one recently made public by Dr. Barton. He wrote to his partner Stuart, on Jan. 20, 1841, "I have within the last few days been making a most discreditable exhi bition of myself in the way of hypochondriasm"; therefore, he was much concerned that a certain Dr. Henry should be induced to remain in Springfield through the gift of the office of postmaster. At the same time he proved not incapable of discharging his duties in the legislature, though speaking of himself as "the most miserable man living." A safe conclusion is that while he had suf ficient control of himself to keep at routine work with an appear ance of steadiness he was suffering from intense nervous excite ment—similar, doubtless, to that which he had experienced in 1835—that it alarmed him deeply, that somehow it upset his engagement and led those who knew about it at all to form the rash conclusion of virtual though concealed insanity. Within nine months he was himself again. His recovery is recorded in a group of letters which form the most remarkable personal monument of him that has survived. A close friend, Joshua F. Speed, had re moved from Springfield to his former home in Kentucky. Lin coln visited him in the summer of 1841. He returned to Spring field in a wholesome frame of mind. The letters of Speed in the next 12 months show that the latter also had fallen into a painful state of introspection, doubting whether he truly loved the woman to whom he was engaged. Lincoln, now in a serenely cheerful mood, analyses his case, roundly lectures him and indirectly draws an outline of his own psychology. He exclaims, "I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you are unhappy; it is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should. What nonsense!" Again he writes, "I have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize." Nevertheless, "I was always superstitious," he concludes later. "I believe God made me one of the instruments for bringing your Fanny and you together, which union I have no doubt He fore-. ordained." While this correspondence was proceeding his re covered cheerfulness found expression in another love affair, a slight, playful episode, with a chit of a girl, Sarah Rickard, 17 or 18 years old when he was 32 and 33—a flirtation more properly than an affair. Which one cried it off it is not known; but it is quite plain that neither suffered as a consequence. In the latter part of 1842 Lincoln was in high good spirits. One of his char acteristics in these earlier years was a love of sarcasm. His politi cal speeches were at times biting. Only an idolizer can escape the conclusion that he indulged this propensity through sheer love of it. He gave it free rein in derisive open letters to the Sangamon Journal making fun of an enemy politician, James Shields. Lin coln pretended to be an illiterate person—a sort of countrified parallel to Yellowplush—and signed himself "Aunt Rebecca." Ironical fate inspired Mary Todd and a girl friend of hers, who presumably thought Aunt Rebecca the essence of funniness, to try their hand at the same sort of thing. Their open letter to Shields also got into print. Shields, in a rage, demanded the authorship of the letters. Lincoln assumed responsibility both for what he had written and for the work of the young women. Shields chal lenged him. Lincoln reluctantly accepted. The duel was prevented through the intercession of friends at the very last moment. Sena tor Beveridge was the first to point out that the incident probably made a lasting impression on Lincoln because thereafter his sar castic vein disappeared. An immediate result was a meeting with Mary Todd, followed by reconciliation and their marriage on Nov. 4, 1842.