In the spring of 1835 the young representative from Sangamon returned
to New Salem to take up his duties as postmaster and deputy surveyor,
and to resume his law studies. He exchanged his rather exalted
position for the humbler one with a light heart. New Salem held all
that was dearest in the world to him at that moment, and he went back
to the poor little town with a hope, which he had once supposed honor
forbade his acknowledging even to himself, glowing warmly in his
heart. He loved a young girl of that town, and now for the first time,
though he had known her since he first came to New Salem, was he free
to tell his love.
One of the most prominent families of the settlement in 1831, when
Lincoln first appeared there, was that of James Rutledge. The head of
the house was one of the founders of New Salem, and at that time the
keeper of the village tavern. He was a high-minded man, of a warm and
generous nature, and had the universal respect of the community. He
was a South Carolinian by birth, but had lived many years in Kentucky
before coming to Illinois. Rutledge came of a distinguished family:
one of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence; another
was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by
appointment of Washington, and another was a conspicuous leader in the
American Congress.
The third of the nine children in the Rutledge household was a
daughter, Ann Mayes, born in Kentucky, January 7, 1813. When Lincoln
first met her she was nineteen years old, and as fresh as a flower.
Many of those who knew her at that time have left tributes to her
beauty and gentleness, and even to-day there are those living who talk
of her with moistened eyes and softened tones. "She was a beautiful
girl," says her cousin, James McGrady Rutledge, "and as bright as
she was pretty. She was well educated for that early day, a good
conversationalist, and always gentle and cheerful. A girl whose
company people liked." So fair a maid was not, of course, without
suitors. The most determined of those who sought her hand was one John
McNeill, a young man who had arrived in New Salem from New York soon
after the founding of the town. Nothing was known of his antecedents,
and no questions were asked. He was understood to be merely one of
the thousands who had come West in search of fortune. That he was
intelligent, industrious, and frugal, with a good head for business,
was at once apparent; for he and Samuel Hill opened a general store
and they soon doubled their capital, and their business continued
to grow marvellously. In four years from his first appearance in the
settlement, besides having a half-interest in the store, he owned a
large farm a few miles north of New Salem. His neighbors believed him
to be worth about twelve thousand dollars.
John McNeill was an unmarried man--at least so he represented himself
to be--and very soon after becoming a resident of New Salem he formed
the acquaintance of Ann Rutledge, then a girl of seventeen. It was a
case of love at first sight, and the two soon became engaged, in spite
of the rivalry of Samuel Hill, McNeill's partner. But Ann was as yet
only a young girl; and it was thought very sensible in her and very
gracious and considerate in her lover that both acquiesced in the
wishes of Ann's parents that, for some time at least, the marriage be
postponed.
Such was the situation when Lincoln appeared in New Salem. He
naturally soon became acquainted with the girl. She was a pupil in
Mentor Graham's school, where he frequently visited, and rumor says
that he first met her there. However that may be, it is certain that
in the latter part of 1832 he went to board at the Rutledge tavern and
there was thrown daily into her company.
During the next year, 1833, John McNeill, in spite of his fair
prospects, became restless and discontented. He wanted to see his
people, he said, and before the end of the year he had decided to go
East for a visit. To secure perfect freedom from his business while
gone, he sold out his interest in his store. To Ann he said that he
hoped to bring back his father and mother, and to place them on his
farm. "This duty done," was his farewell word, "you and I will be
married." In the spring of 1834 McNeill started East. The journey
overland by foot and horse was in those days a trying one, and on the
way McNeill fell ill with chills and fever. It was late in the summer
before he reached his home, and wrote back to Ann, explaining his
silence. The long wait had been a severe strain on the girl, and
Lincoln had watched her anxiety with softened heart. It was to him,
the New Salem postmaster, that she came to inquire for letters. It was
to him she entrusted those she sent. In a way the postmaster must have
become the girl's confidant; and his tender heart, which never could
resist suffering, must have been deeply touched. After the long
silence was broken, and McNeill's first letter of explanation came,
the cause of anxiety seemed removed; but, strangely enough, other
letters followed only at long intervals, and finally they ceased
altogether. Then it was that the young girl told her friends a secret
which McNeill had confided to her before leaving New Salem.
He had told her what she had never even suspected before, that John
McNeill was not his real name, but that it was John McNamar. Shortly
before he came to New Salem, he explained, his father had suffered a
disastrous failure in business. He was the oldest son; and in the hope
of retrieving the lost fortune, he resolved to go West, expecting
to return in a few years and share his riches with the rest of the
family. Anticipating parental opposition, he ran away from home; and,
being sure that he could never accumulate anything with so numerous a
family to support, he endeavored to lose himself by a change of name.
All this Ann had believed and not repeated; but now, worn out by
waiting, she took the story to her friends.
With few exceptions they pronounced the story a fabrication and
McNamar an impostor. Why had he worn this mask? His excuse seemed
flimsy. At best, they declared, he was a mere adventurer; and was
it not more probable that he was a fugitive from justice--a thief, a
swindler, or a murderer? And who knew how many wives he might have?
With all New Salem declaring John McNamar false, Ann Rutledge
could hardly be blamed for imagining that he was either dead or had
transferred his affections.
It was not until McNeill, or McNamar, had been gone many months, and
gossip had become offensive, that Lincoln ventured to show his love
for Ann, and then it was a long time before the girl would listen
to his suit. Convinced at last, however, that her former lover had
deserted her, she yielded to Lincoln's wishes and promised, in the
spring of 1835, soon after Lincoln's return from Vandalia, to
become his wife. But Lincoln had nothing on which to support a
family--indeed, he found it no trifling task to support himself. As
for Ann, she was anxious to go to school another year. It was decided
that in the autumn she should go with her brother to Jacksonville and
spend the winter there in an academy. Lincoln was to devote himself
to his law studies; and the next spring, when she returned from school
and he was a member of the bar, they were to be married.
A happy spring and summer followed. New Salem took a cordial interest
in the two lovers and presaged a happy life for them, and all would
undoubtedly have gone well if the young girl could have dismissed the
haunting memory of her old lover. The possibility that she had wronged
him, that he might reappear, that he loved her still, though she now
loved another, that perhaps she had done wrong--a torturing conflict
of memory, love, conscience, doubt, and morbidness lay like a shadow
across her happiness, and wore upon her until she fell ill. Gradually
her condition became hopeless; and Lincoln, who had been shut from
her, was sent for. The lovers passed an hour alone in an anguished
parting, and soon after, on August 25, 1835, Ann died.
The death of Ann Rutledge plunged Lincoln into the deepest gloom. That
abiding melancholy, that painful sense of the incompleteness of life
which had been his mother's dowry to him, asserted itself. It filled
and darkened his mind and his imagination, tortured him with its black
pictures. One stormy night Lincoln was sitting beside William Greene,
his head bowed on his hand, while tears trickled through his fingers;
his friend begged him to control his sorrow, to try to forget. "I
cannot," moaned Lincoln; "the thought of the snow and rain on her
grave fills me with indescribable grief."
He was seen walking alone by the river and through the woods,
muttering strange things to himself. He seemed to his friends to be in
the shadow of madness. They kept a close watch over him; and at last
Bowling Green, one of the most devoted friends Lincoln then had, took
him home to his little log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem,
under the brow of a big bluff. Here, under the loving care of Green
and his good wife Nancy, Lincoln remained until he was once more
master of himself.
But though he had regained self-control, his grief was deep and
bitter. Ann Rutledge was buried in Concord cemetery, a country
burying-ground seven miles northwest of New Salem. To this lonely
spot Lincoln frequently journeyed to weep over her grave. "My heart is
buried there," he said to one of his friends.
When McNamar returned (for McNamar's story was true, and two months
after Ann Rutledge died he drove into New Salem with his widowed
mother and his brothers and sisters in the "prairie schooner" beside
him) and learned of Ann's death, he "saw Lincoln at the post-office,"
as he afterward said, and "he seemed desolate and sorely distressed."
McNamar's strange conduct toward Ann Rutledge is to this day a
mystery. Her death apparently produced upon him no deep impression.
He certainly experienced no such sorrow as Lincoln felt, for within a
year he married another woman.
Many years ago a sister of Ann Rutledge, Mrs. Jeane Berry, told what
she knew of Ann's love affairs; and her statement has been preserved
in a diary kept by the Rev. R.D. Miller, now Superintendent of Schools
of Menard County, with whom she had the conversation. She declared
that Ann's "whole soul seemed wrapped up in Lincoln," and that they
"would have been married in the fall or early winter" if Ann had
lived. "After Ann died," said Mrs. Berry, "I remember that it was
common talk about how sad Lincoln was; and I remember myself how sad
he looked. They told me that every time he was in the neighborhood
after she died, he would go alone to her grave and sit there in
silence for hours."
In later life, when his sorrow had become a memory, he told a friend
who questioned him: "I really and truly loved the girl and think often
of her now." There was a pause, and then the President added:
"And I have loved the name of Rutledge to this day."