From “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln,” by Alex Ayres.

 

President Lincoln butted heads on many occasions with General George B. McClellan, who eventually ran against him for president in 1864. When McClellan was commander of the Union forces, Lincoln demanded that the general report to him frequently, and McClellan re­sented it. The general once sent Lincoln the following telegram from the field:

 

President Abraham Lincoln Washington, D.C.

Have just captured six cows. What shall we do with them?

George B. McClellan

 

Lincoln immediately wired back:

 

General George B. McClellan Army of the Potomac

Milk them.

A. Lincoln

 

 

Abraham Lincoln's first love, and perhaps the greatest love of his life, was Anne Rutledge. The daughter of one of the founders of New Salem, Illinois, she was born in Kentucky and possessed all the charm of a Southern belle in addition to the practicality of a pioneer woman.

 

Lincoln was still working in a store in New Salem when he first met her and proposed to her. She ac­cepted, and they were engaged to be married. However, Lincoln thought he was too poor to support her prop­erly, so he asked her to wait until he could improve his financial condition. During this time he was studying intensively to learn the law.

 

Before their wedding day arrived, Anne Rutledge was attacked by a sudden and fatal fever. Her death was such a blow to Lincoln that his friends feared for his sanity.

 

One stormy night two friends found Lincoln standing over her grave. With tears streaming down his face he said, "I cannot bear to let the rain fall on her."

 

This poem, written by Edgar Lee Masters, is engraved on her tombstone at Petersburg, Illinois:

 

I am Ann Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,

Wedded to him, not through union,

But through separation.

Bloom forever; O Republic,

From the dust of my bosom.

 

 

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

-Attributed

 

 

Abraham Lincoln's engagement to Anne Rutledge of New Sa­lem, his first love, is ended by her death from a sudden illness. Searching for another mate, Lincoln courts Mary Owens, but the romance is an ambivalent one that is never consummated in marriage. Lincoln's account of this sad affair illustrates his character more than his common sense.

 

Without apologizing for seeming egotistical, I shall make the history of so much of my own life, as has elapsed since I saw you, the subject of this letter. . . .

 

It was . . . in the autumn of 1836, that a married lady of my acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to pay a visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed to me, that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with her, upon condition that I would engage to become her brother-in­-law with all convenient dispatch. I, of course, accepted the proposal; for you know I could not have done oth­erwise, had I really been averse to it; but privately between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, thought her intelligent and agree­able, and saw no good objection to plodding life through hand in hand with her. Time passed on, the lady took her journey and in due time returned, sister in company sure enough. . . .

 

In a few days we had an interview, and although I had seen her before, she did not look as my imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over-size, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff; I knew she was called an "old maid," and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation; but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat, to permit its contracting into wrinkles; but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran into my head, that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy, and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-­five or forty years; and, in short, I was not all pleased with her.

 

But what could I do? I had told her sister that I would take her for better or for worse; and I made it a point of honor and conscience in all things, to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to act on it, which in this case, I doubted not they had, for I was now fairly convinced that no other man on earth would have her, and hence the conclusion that they were bent on hold­ing me to my bargain.

 

Well, thought I, I have said, and be consequences what they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it. At once I determined to consider her my wife; and this done, all my powers of discovery were put to the rack, in search of perfections in her, which might be fairly set-off against her defects. I tried to imagine she was handsome, which, but for unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this, no woman that I have seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself, that the mind was much more to be valued than the person; and in this, she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been acquainted.

 

Shortly after this, without attempting to come to any positive understanding with her, I set out for Vandalia, where and when you first saw me. During my stay there, I had letters from her, which did not change my opinion of either her intellect or intention; but on the contrary, confirmed it in both…

 

After my return home, I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in any particular. She was the same and so was I…

 

After I had delayed the matter as long as I though could in honor do, which by the way had brought it round into the last fall, I concluded I might as well bring it to a consummation without further delay; and mustered my resolution, and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to relate, she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it through an affection of modesty, which I thought but ill-become her, under the peculiar circumstances of her case; but on my renewal the charge, I found she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it again and again, but with the same success, or rather with the same want of success.

 

I was finally forced to give it up, at which I very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection, that I had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly; and that she whom had taught myself to believe no body else would have had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness and to cap the whole, I then, for the first time, began to suspect that I was really a little in love with her. - Letter to Mrs. Orville Browning, April 1838