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00:00In 1882, an old woman was living on a hill on the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois.
00:16She kept her curtains drawn, never went outside, never received visitors.
00:24Neighborhood children pointed up at her window and hurried past, frightened by the crazy lady in the upstairs room.
00:39Forty years before, she had been married in the parlor of this same house to a tall, awkward lawyer,
00:46and still wore his ring inscribed with the words, love is eternal.
01:00Once, she had been the most eligible young woman in Springfield, the pampered daughter of Kentucky aristocrats.
01:08My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I, a poor nobody then, fell in love with her.
01:16And what is more, I have never fallen out.
01:24He had been a dirt farmer's son, determined to make something of himself in law and politics.
01:31He is to be president of the United States someday.
01:36If I had not thought so, I never would have married him.
01:39For you can see, he is not pretty.
01:45Their marriage survived sharp differences of personality and temperament,
01:50endured the deaths of children.
01:52They reached the White House as partners.
02:02But the civil war that tore the country apart divided them as well.
02:06In the end, an assassin's bullet plunged Mary Lincoln into grief and madness.
02:23And made Abraham Lincoln, the obscure prairie politician who had pledged to love her forever, into a legend.
02:31The End
02:32The End
02:34The End
02:37In this temple,
03:04as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved,
03:09the union, the memory of...
03:13Abraham.
03:14Abraham Lincoln is...
03:16Entried.
03:17Entried forever.
03:27If you go to the Lincoln Memorial and you look at that figure,
03:30seated on a throne in this marble temple,
03:35I remember going as a child and thinking,
03:38that's what God looked like.
03:40The story of the real Abraham Lincoln has receded so far into the nation's memory
03:55that what remains seems little more than a dream.
04:00The man Mary Lincoln knew and loved and mourned has faded into myth.
04:06He was born February 12th, 1809,
04:21in a cabin in the Kentucky wilderness.
04:24But Lincoln remembered little of his life there.
04:27And what he did remember, he didn't care to talk about.
04:30It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.
04:35It can be condensed into a single sentence from Gray's elegy.
04:39The short and simple annals of the poor.
04:42Lincoln's childhood world is mostly gone,
04:46except the land around Knob Creek.
04:48The land around Knob Creek.
04:49The land of the poor.
04:50The poor.
04:51The poor.
04:52The poor.
04:53The poor.
04:54The poor.
04:55The poor.
04:56The poor.
04:57The poor.
04:58The poor.
04:59The poor.
05:00The poor.
05:01The poor.
05:02The poor.
05:03Lincoln's childhood world is mostly gone.
05:05Except the land around Knob Creek,
05:08and sinking Spring Farm.
05:10And the stories people still tell there.
05:12I have listened to tales about Lincoln my whole life.
05:21I listened to my aunts, my dad,
05:27was, some way or another, talked about Lincoln all the time.
05:32My grandmother, she was born in 1885,
05:35and got to talk to a gentleman that his parents played
05:40with Abraham Lincoln and his sister when they lived here.
05:44And he told stories.
05:46Different people around here kind of passed them down.
05:48They may be twisted one way or another,
05:50but they're fairly accurate, we think.
05:54It can't be gospel because there were not very many records back then.
06:01Neighbors remembered very little about Abraham's mother,
06:05Nancy Hanks Lincoln.
06:07Some said she used to sing him mournful Scottish ballads.
06:12Lincoln himself once told a friend
06:15she was an intellectual woman, sensitive and somewhat sad.
06:24I don't think we know a lot about Lincoln's mother.
06:29I see her as a soft-spoken, reflective person.
06:37They claimed she was, you know, thin, she was tall, dark-haired.
06:43Those were descriptions that people that knew her gave.
06:46So you, you know, you assume then you get your own picture.
06:54They all agreed that she was, quote, intellectual.
07:00I don't know what that means in the old recollections.
07:03I think it meant that she must have thought about things carefully
07:06and talked rather well.
07:09Her communication with Lincoln would seem to have been,
07:14at an early age, one of telling stories.
07:19It's certainly interesting that all of Lincoln's great writings
07:23were written to be read aloud.
07:25They're all basically oral communications,
07:27pieces of poetry, political poetry.
07:30Abraham's father, Thomas, could barely read or write.
07:37One neighbor remembered him as a plain, unpretending, plodding man.
07:44Year after year, Abraham watched his father work the fields,
07:49tied to the land, at the mercy of the seasons.
07:53It was tough, but it was tough for everybody at the time.
07:58You got to understand that there were several families
08:03all living on Knob Creek at the same time,
08:06and they were all more or less equal.
08:08They were poor, but they were equal.
08:11And probably they didn't realize they were poor
08:15because that's the way that was on the frontier.
08:21A boy would have a lot of responsibility then.
08:25I would imagine Lincoln came back in this valley
08:28looking for berries, hickernuts, walnuts,
08:33probably herbs to make some of their medicine with,
08:36and maybe a swim and try to catch the chipmunks.
08:44I mean, that's just what boys do, you know.
08:46We run the hills, and he was there.
08:50I'm sure I've stepped in his tracks many times.
08:59The Lincoln cabin stood alongside a wilderness road.
09:03Abraham could listen to travelers tell stories of the wider world.
09:07and see slaves driven south to be sold.
09:23His mother and father were much opposed to slavery.
09:29They belonged to a fundamentalist Baptist group
09:31that was anti-slavery.
09:36And he undoubtedly got from them a sense that slavery was wrong
09:39even before he'd ever seen slaves anew about slavery.
09:43He said later on that there's never been a time
09:46when I was not anti-slavery.
09:48And I think that is true.
09:50When Abraham was seven and his older sister Sarah was nine,
09:59the Lincolns packed their few belongings
10:01and set out in the dead of winter for Indiana.
10:05Thomas Lincoln had always disliked living in a slave state
10:09and had grown weary of disputes over the ownership of his land.
10:13It was a frontier area, so unsettled that there was no real road
10:21to the plot of ground that Thomas Lincoln laid claim to.
10:26He had to cut a path, in effect, for his family to follow.
10:36When they reached their wilderness claim,
10:38the Lincolns huddled around a fire.
10:44Their nearest neighbor was more than a mile away.
10:49Abraham later remembered his terror
10:52of the wild animals prowling the undergrowth,
10:56the howling of wolves and the scream of panthers.
11:00The clearing away of surplus wood was the great task ahead.
11:16I, though very young, was large for my age
11:20and had an axe put into my hands at once.
11:23And I was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument.
11:26Life on the frontier was punishing.
11:32The ceaseless work.
11:34The isolation.
11:36And always the threat of sickness and death.
11:51In 1818, a mysterious illness spread across the Indiana countryside.
11:57And found its way into the Lincoln home.
12:04Nancy Hanks Lincoln was just 34 when she died.
12:09Abraham was nine.
12:10Abraham was nine.
12:11He suffered deeply.
12:12He suffered deeply.
12:13This fed in his blood.
12:14He suffered deeply.
12:15This fed in his blood.
12:16He suffered deeply.
12:17This fed in his mind and spirit a kind of fatalism.
12:20He suffered deeply.
12:38This fed in his mind and spirit a kind of fatalism.
12:50And a dark brooding.
12:59He never got over the loss.
13:01For the rest of his life, Abraham would struggle with depression.
13:11She was my angel mother.
13:15All that I am or hope ever to be, I owe to her.
13:19The same year that Abraham Lincoln's mother died, 1818,
13:32Mary Todd was born on December 13th in Lexington, Kentucky.
13:49Surrounded by luxury the young Lincoln could scarcely have imagined.
13:54The world in which Mary Todd grew up could not have been more different from Abraham Lincoln's.
14:03She's living in a mansion with several parlors and a dining room.
14:07Separate bedrooms, servant quarters, a coach house, a beautiful garden in the back.
14:13She's got all the clothes that she needs and she's got all the material resources that one could have needed to feel herself a lucky young woman.
14:22Her father was a wealthy aristocrat, Robert Todd, a descendant of the Todd's who had founded Lexington less than 50 years before.
14:37There was a certain trait about all the Todd's.
14:41They were very proud people.
14:44I know they used to say about them, God only had one deity's name, but the Todd's had to have two.
14:50All that remains of Mary's mother, Eliza Todd, is a letter she wrote to her grandfather.
14:58Little more is known about her, except that she began having babies with what was then described as becoming regularity.
15:05The Todd's had six children.
15:11Mary, the fourth, was said to be a lively, free-spirited, impetuous little girl.
15:17In 1825, Mary's mother died giving birth to her seventh child.
15:37Mary was only six years old and had already shown signs of a high-strung, sensitive nature.
15:50So, at six years old, she's motherless.
16:02She took this very hard, according to some of the family legends.
16:08And indeed, she was going to take all of the deaths that littered her life's course very, very hard.
16:15Only weeks after Mary's mother's death, Robert Todd was looking for a new wife.
16:26Six months later, he proposed to Elizabeth Humphreys.
16:30The following year, he married her and began having still more children, nine of them.
16:36Stepmothering, I suppose, is never easy family business, but in the case of Robert Smith Todd's second wife, it was a disaster.
16:48All of the first Todd's hated her.
16:52Mary is certainly the most rebellious, and there are some family stories of Mary dressing up in her stepmother's clothes,
17:01and her stepmother calling her Satan's limb.
17:10There were a lot of children in that household, and Mary felt lost.
17:15She seemed to have experienced the new mother as hateful and spiteful.
17:20Mary became full of rage, she became tantrum-y.
17:27She couldn't find her place in this household, and she was screaming, crying out for attention.
17:37Mary yearned for her father's attention most of all.
17:40She saw in his marriage a betrayal.
17:44In the chaos of an ever-increasing family, the little girl was bereft.
17:53You have a feeling with Mary that the wounds festered.
17:57And for a young girl who loved attention, who craved attention and needed support,
18:02I think there was a great sense of loss that stayed with her the rest of her life.
18:14Mary would one day say that her whole childhood had been desolate.
18:19After Abraham's mother died, Thomas Lincoln seemed unable to care for his two grieving children.
18:39Overcome with misery, he went back to Kentucky, leaving them behind in the care of a cousin.
18:52Six months later, he came home with a new wife, Sarah Bush Johnston,
18:57recently widowed with three small children of her own.
19:02She came upon this bedraggled little family out in southern Indiana
19:06and looked at them and was just appalled.
19:10She went to work cleaning them up.
19:23She civilized the little family that had been really almost disintegrating.
19:30Created a family where they'd been none before.
19:32Abraham flourished under his stepmother's care.
19:39Sarah herself could not read or write,
19:42but she encouraged Abraham to get what education he could find in the Indiana backwoods.
19:48All told, Abraham had less than a year's formal schooling.
19:54There were some schools, so-called,
19:56but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond reading, writing, and ciphering to the rule of three.
20:04There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.
20:08But Abraham was ambitious.
20:10He taught himself,
20:13poring over whatever books and newspapers he could find.
20:25His stepmother remembered that he was unusual.
20:28He had to understand everything, repeated facts to himself until they were fixed in his mind.
20:34He always regarded himself as quite different from his peers and family, smarter than most of the other people in his environment.
20:45There are reports that he could write out documents for what were obviously mostly illiterate neighbors.
20:51He would come home from church and he would stand on a stump and then repeat the minister's sermon, but humorously, to the delight of all the assembled children.
21:04So that you see a kind of a testing, a sort of an opportunity to be special and unique, which after all he was.
21:12Abe would lay on his stomach by the fire and read out loud to me and Aunt Sarah, a cousin recalled.
21:20His father would come in and say,
21:22see here, Abe, your mother can't work with you of bothering her like that.
21:27But Aunt Sarah always said it didn't bother her none, and she'd tell Abe to go on.
21:32She was kind, she was gentle, and she played a really, really important role in carrying him through his adolescence.
21:40Psychologically, I think Sarah Bush Johnson saved Lincoln's life.
21:48When Sarah Lincoln was an old woman, someone asked her about her famous stepson.
21:54I never gave him a cross word in all my life, she said.
21:58His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to move together in the same channel.
22:03In the year 1828, when Abraham was 19, he got a chance to earn some money helping take a flatboat loaded with cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
22:18He stood six feet four inches, strong and wiry, all arms and legs.
22:31That same year, his sister Sarah had died in childbirth.
22:35One neighbor remembered he was moody, witty, sad and reflective by turns.
22:44He'd never been to a big city.
22:54New Orleans would be like nothing he had ever seen.
22:59New Orleans would be like nothing he had ever seen.
23:03New Orleans would be like nothing he had ever seen.
23:05In New Orleans, Abraham saw for the first time
23:32human beings bought and sold.
23:35In Lexington, sites like that were nothing new to Mary Todd.
23:53Mary would see slaves being chained and brought in, in a gang.
23:58And the auction was right there on Cheapside, who's right next to the courthouse.
24:02So it was just a couple of blocks, really, from where they lived.
24:07For Mary, slaves were a constant presence.
24:13She was raised, since her mother died when she was a child, by her Mammy Sally, who coddled
24:21her, dressed her, and doted on her.
24:28Mary Todd was the daughter of a slaveholder, a Whig banker.
24:33So she accepted slavery.
24:35She just simply thought it was part of life.
24:37Heated words about slavery and politics flew back and forth across the Todd dinner table.
24:49Robert Todd was a slave owner, but he argued against slavery.
24:54Mary took her father's part and made clear that she opposed slavery, too.
25:04Henry Clay was a frequent guest.
25:07As a leader of the Whig Party, Speaker of the House longer than any other man, he, too, deplored slavery.
25:14Clay burned with ambition to be president.
25:17And at 14, Mary was his fiery supporter.
25:24Mary felt that as long as she could go to the dinner table and respond in an interesting way to her father's conversations with his male friends, he would look at her.
25:32He would pay attention to her.
25:33So she developed very early on an undue sense of understanding and interest in politics, which must have made her a pretty interesting little figure.
25:41As Mary grew to womanhood, she enjoyed parties and shopping for fashionable clothes and appeared high-spirited.
25:58What we have is an intelligent, well-dressed, somewhat spoiled young girl who was very popular with the boys.
26:09On the other hand, we have a young girl who stays in school longer than almost all American women do.
26:19She learned French, she learned English literature, had a classical kind of education.
26:23She was always noted for quoting poetry, great pages of classical poetry.
26:28She had an impeccable Parisian accent.
26:32For young girls in her world, she was way ahead of them.
26:38Despite the emotional difficulties, easily getting lost in this huge household, she made something for herself.
26:51Having just completed my 21st year, we left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois.
27:03Our mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox teams, and I drove one of the teams.
27:10We settled a new place and built a log cabin, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year.
27:23In the autumn, all hands were greatly afflicted with ague and fever.
27:28We remained through the succeeding winter, which was the winter of the deep snow.
27:37Another difficult move to a new homestead, another grueling round of seasons.
27:43This was not the life Abraham Lincoln imagined for himself.
27:49Lincoln spent most of his early life trying to get beyond his humble origins.
27:56He seemed to have to position himself as better than, as separate from, and really not identified with in any way what his father represented.
28:09The kind of ignorant past out of which he had come.
28:16He simply did not like the life that his father lived.
28:25Whatever happened, he was not going to be like his father.
28:29He was going to do something to make a name for himself.
28:37He had a sense of himself as being different from other people from the beginning.
28:45He doesn't like farm work.
28:47He doesn't make any bones about it.
28:52He wanted recognition.
28:58He aspires for something more.
29:10In 1992, Lincoln left home for good and rarely saw his father again.
29:16He never looked back.
29:20I was a friendless, uneducated, penniless boy.
29:26A piece of floating driftwood.
29:31Lincoln eventually came to rest at New Salem in central Illinois.
29:36Population 100.
29:39The biggest town he had ever lived in.
29:42He was a gawky fellow, ill-dressed, funny-looking.
29:47A rube, they thought.
29:49He was rough-looking in a rough-looking crowd.
29:53He simply looked like nothing they had ever seen.
29:56A real hayseed.
29:58But as soon as he started talking, you were aware that he was very literate.
30:03He was well-informed.
30:05To them, he sounded educated.
30:07He went to work in a general store in Gristmill.
30:17But that was only meant to be a stepping stone.
30:21Just eight months after he got to town, he was running for the state legislature.
30:26March 9, 1832.
30:30To the people of Sagamont County, I am young and unknown to many of you.
30:36I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.
30:41I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me.
30:45If elected, I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.
30:50But if the good people and their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background,
30:55I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much a grim.
31:02What was remarkable was that having just arrived in a community
31:07where he hadn't really established himself,
31:10he should think of himself as a state legislator.
31:13They tell something about a driving ambition
31:17that this young man had at an early age.
31:20Politics was his way of breaking out of that life that he didn't want to lead.
31:25It was the road for a young man to become something in life
31:29that other people would respect and understand.
31:32Politics was the world that was available to him.
31:35Other worlds weren't quite as easily available.
31:38That one was right within his reach.
31:40In 1832, Illinois politics was wide open,
31:45and Lincoln thought his chances were as good as any man's,
31:49even though he had no education and was just 23.
31:53He campaigned for the improvement of the Sangamon River.
31:57He believed government should promote economic progress.
32:01If steamboats could reach New Salem, Lincoln argued,
32:04the little settlement could become a thriving port.
32:08He never stood much of a chance.
32:10Running against older, better-known men, Lincoln lost.
32:16But almost all his New Salem neighbors voted for him.
32:20He won 277 of their 300 votes.
32:24Most people who got to know Abraham Lincoln liked him.
32:33My ever-dear Merce, we expect a very gay winter.
32:39Evening before last, my sister gave a most agreeable party.
32:42Upwards of a hundred graced the festive scene.
32:45When she was 20, Mary Todd left behind the stepmother she so disliked
32:54and moved to the growing city of Springfield, Illinois.
32:58She moved into the hilltop home of her sister,
33:01who had married the son of the former governor.
33:06She was so charming, so flirtatious, her brother-in-law said,
33:10she could make a bishop forget his prayers.
33:14She was amusing and funny.
33:17She could quote from Shakespeare.
33:19She could quote from the poets.
33:21And she was steeped in politics.
33:28In fact, I think she intimidated some of the young men.
33:31She was so much smarter than most of them.
33:34She didn't think she was pretty or attractive.
33:37She really wasn't.
33:38She was aware of her physical shortcomings,
33:40but she was attractive enough and young enough
33:43and sprightly and intelligent
33:45to be quite a sought-after young woman.
33:49She was a girl of much vivacity and conversation,
33:52one friend remembered,
33:54but was subject to spells of mental depression.
33:58She was either in the garret or in the cellar.
34:01She was lying.
34:03The first time she was buried in themoon.
34:04At 23, Abraham Lincoln had lost his first election.
34:11But, New Salem offered other possibilities.
34:14On the frontier, a man could try his hand at things,
34:17change his mind, scramble for a living.
34:20New Salem was Lincoln's college campus.
34:23There was a village poet, two doctors,
34:26a debating society, small industry.
34:29He was able to serve in a variety of professions.
34:32Blacksmith, postmaster, surveyor, store owner.
34:38He tried them all, and he became everyone's friend.
34:43He could beat any challenger at weightlifting,
34:48wrestling, horseshoes.
34:50And he loved to tell funny stories.
34:53And he called himself a retail dealer
34:56because he would take the funny stories from other people,
34:59from the humorous whose works he read,
35:02but he would tell them in such a way
35:04that he would have everyone else guffawing.
35:07He just loved to tell jokes.
35:10I mean, he brought stories.
35:12He was a great storyteller.
35:14He was a Paul Bunyan-esque kind of figure,
35:16and it was an absolutely essential part of his character.
35:21You always have the feeling that Lincoln,
35:23without being in motion,
35:24was not a very attractive sort of fellow,
35:27that he was the homely person that people described him as.
35:30But the moment he started talking,
35:31the moment that voice attached to his heart
35:34and to his mind,
35:35he became something entirely different.
35:37His whole body would convulse with laughter.
35:40His gray eyes lit like a lantern.
35:44The people in that town grow to respect him.
35:47They see him as something more
35:49than the shuffling, penniless, gangly character
35:51that he appeared when he first walked on the streets.
35:54It's hard to imagine
35:55that one wouldn't be attracted to young Lincoln.
35:57Two years after his first try,
36:00he ran for state office again.
36:02My politics is short and sweet,
36:04like the old woman's dance.
36:07This time, he won.
36:10From that moment on,
36:14politics would be his life.
36:16He was perfectly suited for it.
36:18He spoke plainly
36:20and had a knack for making friends.
36:22He was a member of the Whig Party now
36:27and was soon matching wits
36:29at the Illinois State Capitol
36:31with the other lawmakers,
36:33making speeches and backroom deals.
36:37But to pay the bills,
36:38he set out to become a lawyer
36:40in the same way he had got most of his schooling,
36:43on his own.
36:46He was a man of practical ambition,
36:49but he loved poetry
36:51and spent hours brooding
36:53on lines from Shakespeare's tragedies.
36:56Come, sealing night,
36:58scarf up the tender eye
37:00of pitiful day
37:02and with thy bloody and invisible hand
37:05cancel and tear to pieces
37:08that great bond which keeps me pale.
37:11The light thickens
37:13and the crow makes swing to the rookie wood.
37:17Lincoln would later write
37:20that he pondered the meaning of life
37:22with such intensity of thought
37:24that he wore ideas threadbare
37:28and turned them to the bitterness of death.
37:37As Lincoln's neighbors remembered it,
37:40the rains never seemed to stop
37:42in the summer of 1835,
37:45the summer Abraham fell in love.
37:49He was already 26,
37:51shy,
37:52awkward around women.
37:55Her name was Ann Rutledge,
37:58the 22-year-old daughter
37:59of the New Salem innkeeper.
38:03Abraham Lincoln had difficulties
38:06in his relationship with women.
38:08He liked Ann Rutledge
38:10perhaps the more
38:12because he knew
38:13she was engaged to another man.
38:16This meant that there was no danger
38:19in approaching her
38:21because she belonged to somebody else.
38:23The details have long since been forgotten,
38:29but as time went by,
38:31Lincoln and Ann seemed
38:32to be drawing closer together.
38:35Then Ann became sick
38:37with what neighbors described
38:38as brain fever,
38:40probably typhoid.
38:45It was said that she called Lincoln
38:47to her bedside.
38:48A few days later,
38:51she died.
38:59He responded to the loss
39:02of what seems to have been
39:03his first love
39:04with great despair
39:08because it had had to have evoked
39:10the sudden and tragic loss
39:11of his mother.
39:12And he was adrift.
39:14He was really adrift.
39:16He went into a sustained period
39:17of melancholia,
39:18seemed even emotionally unbalanced
39:20by the loss,
39:21unable to function
39:22for a long period of time.
39:26His friends feared
39:27that he would never recover,
39:28that he might even kill himself.
39:32They were astonished
39:33to find the tough young man
39:34from the backwoods
39:35so tender-hearted,
39:37so undone by the loss.
39:41He was strong.
39:42He was resilient.
39:43He could take on anybody.
39:45He wasn't afraid of anything,
39:46but he discovered something
39:47that really had the power
39:49to knock him for a loop.
39:54He had to cope
39:55with this vulnerability
39:57that he didn't even know he had.
40:02He told one friend
40:04he could not bear the idea
40:07of rain falling on Ann's grave.
40:09When he was 28,
40:28Lincoln packed everything he owned
40:30into two saddlebags,
40:32borrowed a horse,
40:33and said goodbye forever
40:35to New Salem,
40:36the town that had given him his start.
40:39He was headed
40:40to the new Illinois State Capitol
40:42at Springfield.
40:44He had twice won re-election,
40:46become a Whig party leader,
40:49and had finally become a lawyer.
40:52He was, one friend remembered,
40:54a rising man.
41:05By the time she was 21,
41:07Mary Todd was one of the most popular
41:09young women in Springfield,
41:12courted by eager politicians
41:14and bright young lawyers.
41:17But she wanted more.
41:19She told her sister
41:21she planned one day
41:22to be the wife of a president.
41:29One evening at a party
41:30at her sister's house,
41:31Mary noticed a man
41:33who said he wanted to dance
41:34with her in the worst way.
41:37And she added,
41:38he certainly did.
41:40He is still a somewhat uncouth,
41:43rather awkward
41:44and ugly young man.
41:48But one who is ready to be accepted
41:49into the best social circles
41:51of the State Capitol.
41:56He sees her first dancing
41:57with a whole bunch of bows
41:59surrounding her.
42:00She's sensual.
42:01She's talking.
42:03Really the center of attention.
42:07And here he is,
42:08still the gangly character,
42:09unsophisticated about women,
42:11unsure about women,
42:12awkward around women.
42:16She's five feet tall,
42:17he's six feet four tall,
42:19and most unlikely physical couple.
42:26She was a gentle lady
42:27and he was just one step up
42:29from a rube.
42:32She had position in society
42:33and he didn't.
42:34He was still a wannabe.
42:40Some even thought
42:41maybe he was courting her
42:42for financial advancement.
42:44But they had politics
42:45in common
42:46from the very beginning
42:47and it got them
42:48over many a rough spot.
42:54In 1840,
42:55the Whigs nominated
42:56for president
42:57a Virginia aristocrat
42:58whose supporters
42:59liked to claim
43:00that he lived
43:01in a log cabin,
43:02William Henry Harrison.
43:05Lincoln stumped
43:06Illinois for him
43:07and again ran
43:08for the legislature
43:09while Mary cheered
43:12them both on.
43:14I've become quite
43:15a politician,
43:16rather an unladylike
43:17profession,
43:18yet at such a crisis
43:19whose heart
43:20could remain untouched.
43:22She loved politics
43:23for its own sake
43:25because Mary liked
43:27a challenge
43:28and she liked excitement
43:29and I don't think
43:30you could find
43:31too many young women
43:32who were willing
43:33to talk about politics.
43:36It's no accident
43:37that she fell in love
43:38with Abraham Lincoln.
43:39She sensed
43:41both his ambitions
43:42and his capacity
43:43to realize those ambitions
43:44of which she would be a part.
43:47When the campaign
43:47was over,
43:48Lincoln had won
43:49and so had his log cabin
43:51candidate,
43:52William Henry Harrison.
43:54By then,
43:55Lincoln's friendship
43:56with Mary Todd
43:57had ripened
43:58into something more.
44:03Lincoln,
44:04Mary's sister wrote,
44:05would listen
44:06and gaze
44:07gaze on Mary
44:09as if drawn
44:09by some superior power.
44:13He called her Molly.
44:15She called him
44:16Mr. Lincoln.
44:18They shared a love
44:19of poetry.
44:20One can imagine
44:21them reading poetry
44:22aloud to one another
44:23and really loving it,
44:25not just reading it,
44:26but it touching
44:27some part of their heart.
44:32They shared
44:33a certain melancholy.
44:34They both had
44:36these emotional moods,
44:37these blackened periods.
44:40They shared a sense
44:41of loss
44:42in their mothers
44:43having died
44:43when they were young.
44:46She somehow
44:47saw the depth
44:48of this man.
44:53She saw inside
44:54of Lincoln.
44:55Lincoln.
44:58Not long after Election Day,
45:00Lincoln asked
45:01Mary to marry him.
45:02And she agreed.
45:09Then,
45:10just a few weeks later,
45:11he abruptly told her
45:13he had changed his mind.
45:16He wrote a friend
45:17that the thought
45:18of marriage
45:19was indescribably
45:20horrible and alarming.
45:21He was a very confused
45:25young man.
45:26Struggling
45:27for love
45:28and intimacy.
45:30This is not a man
45:31who easily
45:33established
45:35intimate relationships.
45:37He did not know
45:38how to make
45:39close bonds
45:40with really anybody.
45:42He never told
45:44his private thoughts.
45:46He's terrified
45:49of getting married.
45:50His insecurity
45:51with women,
45:52his concern
45:53about intimacy
45:55all made him,
45:56I think,
45:57just shy away
45:58from this commitment.
46:00There must have been
46:01a feeling
46:02that if he did
46:03give himself
46:04over to a woman
46:05again,
46:06as he had
46:07to his mother,
46:08as he had
46:09to Ann Rutledge,
46:10that perhaps
46:11the only result
46:12that he had
46:13to his mother
46:14to Ann Rutledge
46:15that perhaps
46:16the only result
46:16of that would be
46:17the loss
46:17of this woman
46:18that he loved.
46:20Lincoln again
46:21fell into
46:22a black depression.
46:24He spent days
46:25locked in his room,
46:27unable to move,
46:29unable to sleep.
46:31I am now
46:32the most miserable
46:34man living.
46:36If what I feel
46:37were equally distributed
46:38to the whole
46:39human family,
46:41there would not be
46:42one cheerful face
46:43on the earth.
46:45whether I shall
46:47ever be better,
46:48I cannot tell.
46:50How awfully
46:51foreboding
46:52I shall not.
46:53To remain
46:54as I am
46:55is impossible.
46:56I must die
46:58or be bitter.
47:00They took the razors
47:03out of his room
47:04because they were
47:05afraid he was
47:06going to commit
47:06suicide.
47:09He was in utter
47:10despair.
47:11Utter and total
47:12despair.
47:19Mary eventually
47:20reappeared
47:21in Springfield
47:22society.
47:23Lincoln did his best
47:26to avoid her.
47:27He deems
47:28me unworthy
47:29of notice.
47:30I would
47:31that the case
47:32were different.
47:33That he would
47:34once more
47:35resume his station
47:36in society.
47:37That he should
47:38be himself again.
47:39Despite
47:40Lincoln's
47:41rejection,
47:42Mary waited.
47:43There's absolutely
47:45no indication
47:46that he asked her
47:47to wait for him.
47:48On the contrary,
47:49there's every indication
47:50that he was not
47:51in touch with her
47:52at all.
47:53And she waited through
47:56all of 1841
47:58and half of 1842
47:59she waited for
48:00an entire year
48:01and a half
48:02for him to
48:03wrestle his demons
48:04to the ground
48:05before he would
48:06come back to her.
48:09On November 4th,
48:111842,
48:12to everyone's
48:13surprise,
48:14Abraham Lincoln
48:15and Mary Todd
48:16stood side
48:17by the way
48:18to the end
48:19of the day.
48:20On November 4th,
48:211842,
48:22to everyone's surprise,
48:23stood side
48:23by side
48:24and exchanged
48:25vows.
48:29They were beginning
48:30a marriage
48:30which would be
48:31at times
48:32even more turbulent
48:34than their courtship.
48:42Nothing new here
48:43except my marrying
48:45which to me
48:47is a matter
48:48of profound wonder.
48:53and I'm going to
48:53see you next time
48:54to the end
48:55of the day.
48:56I'm going to
48:57see you next time
48:58to the end
48:59of the day.