The Mary Owens affair also reveals Lincoln’s extraordinary passivity in dealing with women and his scrupulous determination to carry out promises, even bad ones. These traits resurfaced when he became involved with the temperamental, headstrong, volatile Mary Todd. Two years after Mary Owens disappeared from Lincoln’s life, he met Miss Todd, another well-educated Kentuckian from a prosperous family and the cousin of his law partner John Todd Stuart. Evidently, she believed that if her much-admired cousin had chosen Lincoln as a partner, the young attorney must also be an admirable fellow. Mary was short, plump, and, though not pretty, had striking blue eyes and a fine complexion. Friends recalled that she was “impulsive & made no attempt to conceal her feeling, indeed it would have been an impossibility had she desired to do so, for her face was an index to every passing emotion.” She had “an unusual gift of sarcasm” and “now and then indulged in sarcastic, witty remarks, that cut like a Damascus blade.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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