Encounters
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In late 1840, Lincoln broke his engagement to Mary Todd. According to a friend, he had concluded that they “were not congenial, and were incompatible” and “ought not to marry.” He may well have doubted his ability to satisfy her intense emotional neediness. After his death, she stated that, despite his “deep feeling” and his “amiable nature,” Lincoln was “not, a demonstrative Man, when he felt most deeply, he expressed, the least.” Elizabeth Edwards called Lincoln “a cold man” with “no affection,” and her husband concurred, saying: “Lincoln was not a warm hearted man.” Herndon declared that Lincoln “ought never to have married,” for he “had no quality for a husband. He was abstracted, cool, never loved, and could not from his very nature.” Henry C. Whitney agreed, stating that “so great & peculiar a man as Lincoln could not make any woman happy,” for “he was too much allied to his intellect to get down to the plane of the domestic relations.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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