Lincoln’s conduct toward Mary Owens may have been affected by his distrust of women, stemming from the death of his mother. The “bitter agony” that Lincoln experienced as a 9-year-old in Indiana seems to have crippled his capacity for trusting and loving women lest they abandon him as his mother had done. Throughout life he harbored irrational fears of abandonment. When Joshua Speed married, Lincoln plaintively told the newlyweds, “I feel som[e]what jealous of both of you now; you will be so exclusively concerned for one another, that I shall be forgotten entirely.” In 1858, after his defeat by Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln remarked to a friend: “I expect everybody to desert me.” In 1839, as already noted, he concluded a speech on banking with a strange peroration, envisioning himself abandoned in his defense of the right, alone, boldly hurling defiance at his country’s enemies. In politics, his greatest anger was directed at former allies who had abandoned his party.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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