“When she used a pen, its point was sure to be sharp, and she wrote with wit and ability. She not only had a quick intellect but an intuitive judgment of men and their motives. Ordinarily she was affable and even charming in her manners; but when offended or antagonized she could be very bitter and sarcastic.
“In her figure and physical proportions, in education, bearing, temperament, history—in everything she was the exact reverse of Lincoln.”
That Mrs. Lincoln was very proud of her husband there is no doubt; and it is probable that she married him largely from motives of ambition. She knew Lincoln better than he knew himself; she instinctively felt that he would occupy a proud position some day, and it is a matter of record that she told Ward Lamon, her husband’s law partner, that “Mr. Lincoln will yet be President of the United States.”
Mrs. Lincoln was decidedly pro-slavery in her views, but this never disturbed Lincoln. In various ways they were unlike. Her fearless, witty, and austere nature had nothing in common with the calm, imperturbable, and simple ways of her thoughtful and absent-minded husband. She was bright and sparkling in conversation, and fit to grace any drawing-room. She well knew that to marry Lincoln meant not a life of luxury and ease, for Lincoln was not a man to accumulate wealth; but in him she saw position in society, prominence in the world, and the grandest social distinction. By that means her ambition was certainly satisfied, for nineteen years after her marriage she was “the first lady of the land,” and the mistress of the White House.
After his marriage, by dint of untiring efforts and the recognition of influential friends, the couple managed through rare frugality to move along.
In Lincoln’s struggles, both in the law and for political advancement, his wife shared his sacrifices. She was a plucky little woman, and in fact endowed with a more restless ambition than he. She was gifted with a rare insight into the motives that actuate mankind, and there is no doubt that much of Lincoln’s success was in a measure attributable to her acuteness and the stimulus of her influence.
His election to Congress within four years after their marriage afforded her extreme gratification. She loved power and prominence, and was inordinately proud of her tall and ungainly husband. She saw in him bright prospects ahead, and his every move was watched by her with the closest interest. If to other persons he seemed homely, to her he was the embodiment of noble manhood, and each succeeding day impressed upon her the wisdom of her choice of Lincoln over Douglas—if in reality she ever seriously accepted the latter’s attentions.
“Mr. Lincoln may not be as handsome a figure,” she said one day in Lincoln’s law office during her husband’s absence, when the conversation turned on Douglas, “but the people are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large as his arms are long.”