Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln

1. "I Was Born in the Globe Tavern"

5 1 “I Was Born in the Globe Tavern” The town of Springfield, just west of the geographic center of the state of Illinois, was a pristine, untilled, lonely prairie in the early nineteenth century. It was set within the midst of nine hundred square miles of Sangamon County, on part of territory originally claimed by Kickapoo and Pottawatomie Indians and far from the major American settlements of Chicago and St. Louis.1 The early pioneers of Springfield began filtering into the Sangamon Valley of central Illinois in 1819, not long after the end of the War of 1812, and less than one year after Illinois officially became a state of the American Union. Settlers were lured by the descriptions of miles of “gently undulating” prairie with rich quality soil interlaced by numerous branches of the Sangamon River.2 One early settler marveled at the heavy forests on the prairie’s edges “festooned with grape vines and fringed with plum and haw bushes, crab-apples, hazelnuts, elders and blackberries, and encircled by millions of strawberry vines.”3 By 1843, Sangamon County had a population of about sixteen thousand settlers, while Springfield, by then the county seat as well as the state capital, had about three thousand inhabitants.4 Just four years earlier, one traveler’s directory had lauded how “the rough and unseemly cabin is giving place to comfortable framed or brick tenements,” and Springfield soon would be the richest, most populous city in the west.5 The town, comprising nearly thirty blocks and a town square, boasted dozens of stores, groceries, and public houses; numerous lawyers’ and physicians’ offices; and industrial sites for mechanics and trades of various descriptions, including printing offices for two weekly newspapers. The town’s public buildings included a courthouse, jail, market house, several schools, and six churches of various denominations.6 Into this Illinois city, what easterners considered a frontier town, was born the oldest child of Abraham and Mary Lincoln on August 1, 1843. chapter one 6 The Lincolns were a well-known couple in Springfield. Abraham was a friendly, gregarious attorney, known for his devotion to Whig politics and renowned for his ability as a raconteur. Lincoln also had been a member of the state legislature for four terms and was one of the leading forces behind getting the state capital moved to Springfield from Vandalia in the late 1830s. He moved to Springfield from the little hamlet of New Salem in 1837, the year Springfield officially became the capital. Mary Todd was a Kentucky belle, daughter of Robert Smith Todd, a wealthy banker and politician from Lexington . She moved to Springfield in 1839 and lived with her sister Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Ninian Edwards, son of the former Illinois governor. The Edwardses were the social leaders of the town, presiding over the soirees of the town’s most influential people, known as the Springfield “coterie.” Abraham was well liked in town, and while accepted into the coterie, he was not considered a social equal of the town’s more aristocratic members. He was from the backwoods, tall, gaunt and gawky, poor, uncouth, self-educated, and dressed in ill-fitting clothes. Lincoln was “cold” and “abstracted,” not social, said his sister-in-law Elizabeth Edwards; he “could not hold a lengthy conversation with a lady, was not sufficiently educated and intelligent in the female line to do so.”7 Mary, on the other hand, was an enchantress, full of charm, culture, and grace, with a high intelligence, a quick wit, and a noticeable beauty.8 “She is the very creature of excitement,” one young lawyer wrote in 1840; Mary’s brother-in-law Ninian Edwards said of her, “She could make a bishop forget his prayers.”9 She intoxicated the bachelors of the town and counted among her suitors a grandson of Patrick Henry, future U.S. Senators Stephen A. Douglas, Edward D. Baker, James Shields, and Lyman Trumbull, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln. Abraham and Mary met at one of the Edwards’s many parties. As their niece described it years later, the two made eyes at each other across the room until Lincoln approached and said, “Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way”; and Mary, after the party, “with a roguish smile and twinkle in her eyes,” told her cousin, “[a]nd he certainly did.”10 Most of the townspeople thought the pairing of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd an incongruous one. Yet, the...