In 1842, in his thirty-third year, Mr. Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd,
a daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky. The
marriage took place in Springfield, where the lady had for several
years resided, on the fourth of November of the year mentioned. It is
probable that he married as early as the circumstances of his life
permitted, for he had always loved the society of women, and possessed
a nature that took profound delight in intimate female companionship.
A letter written on the eighteenth of May following his marriage, to
J. F. Speed, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky, an early and a life-long
personal friend, gives a pleasant glimpse of his domestic arrangements
at this time. "We are not keeping house," Mr. Lincoln says in his
letter, "but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now
by a widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr.
Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a
week.... I most heartily wish you and your Fanny would not fail to
come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a
room prepared for you, and we'll all be merry together for awhile." He
seems to have been in excellent spirits, and to have been very hearty
in the enjoyment of his new relation. The private letters of Mr.
Lincoln were charmingly natural and sincere. His personal friendships
were the sweetest sources of his happiness.
To a particular friend, he wrote February 25, 1842: "Yours of the
sixteenth, announcing that Miss ---- and you 'are no longer twain, but
one flesh,' reached me this morning. I have no way of telling you how
much happiness I wish you both, though I believe you both can conceive
it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now, for you will be so
exclusively concerned for one another that I shall be forgotten
entirely. My acquaintance with Miss ---- (I call her thus lest you
should think I am speaking of your mother), was too short for me to
reasonably hope to be long remembered by her; and still I am sure I
shall not forget her soon. Try if you can not remind her of that debt
she owes me, and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her paying
it.
"I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois. I
shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be
arranged in this world! If we have no friends we have no pleasure; and
if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the
loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here, yet I own I
have no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times
more sacred than any you can owe to others, and in that light let them
be respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to
remain with her relations and friends. As to friends, she could not
need them anywhere--she would have them in abundance here. Give my
kind regards to Mr. ---- and his family, particularly to Miss E. Also
to your mother, brothers and sisters. Ask little E. D. ---- if she
will ride to town with me if I come there again. And, finally, give
---- a double reciprocation of all the love she sent me. Write me
often, and believe me, yours forever,