Abraham and Mary Lincoln

Introduction: A House Divided

1 Introduction: A House Divided For a century and a half, the prevailing image of the marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln, among both historians and the American public in general, has included disagreement and discord between the two as its central motif. Biographers and historians have chronicled dozens of contemporary observations and even more, perhaps hundreds, of posthumous reminiscences that portray Mary Lincoln as unrelentingly demanding, difficult, and even at times disruptive as Abraham Lincoln’s marriage partner and as Civil War America’s First Lady. This by now well-documented discord, which was real, arose from dramatic differences between the husband and wife in personality and temperament that led Lincoln’s longtime law partner, William Herndon, to label her without reservation “the wild-cat of the age.” Most historians have followed suit in characterizing Mary Lincoln as difficult to live with, by turns head-strong and frivolous, fickle and resolute, extravagant and miserly, and ironically as both an asset and a liability in helping to advance her husband’s career. The oft-struck comparison between the Lincolns’ marriage and the national “House Divided” that helped to define it is apt indeed. Yet the Lincolns’ marriage, while a “House Divided” like the Union itself, ultimately did not dissolve but persevered in spite of the continual, and during the war, escalating demands and tensions that undermined and threatened to destroy it. There can be no doubt that the differences dividing Abraham and Mary Lincoln were fundamental. The central questions for a dual 2 | introduction biography of this couple are how and why the two marriage partners were so different, how and why they formed such a stormy yet ultimately enduring and functional marital union, and how and why Mary Lincoln contributed to or detracted from her husband’s success as a great American president during our nation’s gravest trial. Like the nation that they inhabited during the entire course of their marriage , with its sectional conflict, ideological divergence, and eventual civil war, Abraham and Mary Lincoln endured personal divisions of their own that they continually confronted and struggled with but always managed to resolve and transcend. Abraham Lincoln’s greatest goal as president was to preserve the Union, to ensure its continuation and indeed to prove for all the world to see that it was and should be perpetual. His greatest challenge as a husband and a father was to fulfill the pledge that defined his own marital union, the inscription on the gold band that he presented to Mary Todd on their wedding day—“Love is Eternal.” In both respects, Lincoln succeeded admirably. ...