Lincoln, the unknown

LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN•51was good enough for God, but that the Todds had to have two.The Todds boasted of a genealogical chart extending backto the sixth century. Mary Todd's grandfathers and greatgrandfathersand great-uncles had been generals and governors,and one had been Secretary of the Navy. She, herself, had beeneducated in a snobbish French school in Lexington, Kentucky,conducted by Madame Victorie Charlotte Le Clere Mentelleand her husband—two French aristocrats who had fled fromParis during the Revolution in order to save their necks fromthe guillotine. They had drilled Mary to speak French with aandParisian accent, and had taught her to dance the cotillionthe Circassian Circle as the silken courtiers had danced them atVersailles.Mary was possessed of a high and haughty manner, an exaltedopinion of her own superiority, and an abiding convictionthat she would one day marry a man who would become Presidentof the United States. Incredible as it seems, she not onlybelieved that, but she openly boasted of it. It sounded silly, andpeople laughed and said things; but nothing could shake herconviction and nothing could stop her boasting.Her own sister, speaking of Mary, said she "loved glitter,show, pomp and power," and was "the most ambitious womanIever knew."Unfortunately, Mary had a temper that was frequently out ofcontrol; so one day in 1839, she quarreled with her stepmother,slammed the front door, and walked out of her father's homein a rage and came to live with her married sister in Springfield.Ifshe was determined to marry a future President, she hadcertainly chosen the right place,in allfor there wasn't another spotthe world where her prospects would have been brighterthan there in Springfield, Illinois. At that time it was a dirtylittle frontier village, sprawling out over the treeless prairie,with no pavements, no lights, no sidewalks, no sewers. Cattleroamed about the town at will, hogs wallowed in the mud-holesof the principal streets, and piles of rotton manure filled the airwith a stench. The total population of the town was only fifteenhundred; but two young men who were destined to be candidatesfor the Presidency in 1860 lived there in Springfield in1839—Stephen A. Douglas, candidate for the Northern wing ofthe Democratic party, and Abraham Lincoln for the Republicans.