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heretofore been kept from the world; but in doing so I feel sure I am treading on no person's toes, for all the actors in this domestic drama are dead, and the world seems ready to hear the facts.
As his married life, in the opinion of all his friends, exerted a peculiar influence over Mr. Lincoln's political career there can be no impropriety, I apprehend, in throwing the light on it now. Mrs. Lincoln's disposition and nature have been dwelt upon in another chapter, and enough has been told to show that one of her greatest misfortunes was her inability to control her temper.
Admit that, and everything can be explained.
However cold and abstracted her husband may have appeared to others, however impressive, when aroused, may have seemed his indignation in public, he never gave vent to his feelings at home.
He always meekly accepted as final the authority of his wife in all matters of domestic concern.1 This may explain somewhat the statement of Judge Davis that, “as a general rule, when all the lawyers of a Saturday evening would go home and see their families and friends, Lincoln would find some excuse and refuse to go. We said nothing, but it seemed to us all he was not domestically happy.”
He exercised no government of any kind over his household.
His children did much as
1 One day a man making some improvements in Lincoln's yard suggested to Mrs. Lincoln the propriety of cutting down one of the trees, to which she willingly assented. Before doing so, however, the man came down to our office and consulted Lincoln himself about it. “What did Mrs. Lincoln say?” enquired the latter. “She consented to have it taken away.” “Then, in God's name,” exclaimed Lincoln, “cut it down to the roots!”
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
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