Mr. Lincoln on marriage: Love for better or worse

It's coincidental that Abraham Lincoln’s birthday falls two days shy of Valentine’s Day, and few would look to our 16th president for wisdom in romance. But Honest Abe gained insights about love and marriage despite never finding much happiness at either pursuit.

Richard J. Behn of the Lehrman Institute once published a reflection on Lincoln’s love life titled “Mr. Lincoln and Cupid.” I’ve enjoyed sharing his delightful insights occasionally in my published essays. Behn characterizes Lincoln as one who “wrestled with issues,” including religious faith.
But “with perhaps no issue did Mr. Lincoln wrestle so strenuously as marriage.”

Abe’s early life resembled a 19th-century soap opera. His mother and beloved sister died while he was young, and his first girlfriend succumbed to typhoid. Abe’s subsequent depression alarmed his friends.

Abe later became engaged twice—and backed out twice. A third young lady unequivocally rejected his proposal. Lincoln wrote to a friend using a line worthy of Groucho Marx: “I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.”

But his second fiancée, the strongheaded Mary Todd, reappeared. She insisted Lincoln had a moral contract to marry her. He objected, but eventually relented. The ring Abe slipped onto Mary’s finger at their wedding was engraved: “Love is Eternal.”

Why did Lincoln go through with it? Behn believes Abe was tormented, fearing he might otherwise cause Mary untold grief and humiliation. He knew heartache, and perhaps he simply decided he had broken enough hearts. Yet after his nuptials, Lincoln expressed nonchalance and marvel at what he had done: “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.”

The Lincoln-Todd union had issues. “Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory,” Abe once said. Though loving, Mary was possessive and difficult, and Abe had his own insecurities. Each suffered depression; Mary, shaken by the deaths of her husband and three sons, would later spend time in a mental institution.

But the Great Emancipator would never free himself from his less-than-blissful marriage. “My old father used to have a saying that ‘If you made a bad bargain, hug it the tighter,’” he once wrote. Behn observes: “Having made his bargain, Lincoln hugged it to the day of his death.”

Lincoln understood marriage as a faithful, permanent union. “I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end,” he once told critics. He was speaking of politics then, but evidently he regarded marriage in a similar way.

“Love is eternal,” said Mary Todd’s ring. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends,” wrote St. Paul (1 Cor 13:7). Abe was unlucky in love, but he knew what it meant to make a lifelong commitment for better or worse.

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana.