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territory. Moreover, if slavery were banned from the new territories, free states would join the Union and skew the balance of power. The South, already losing ground in the House of Representatives to the more populous North, would lose its historic strength in the Senate as well. Southern interests would be subject to the dictates of an increasingly hostile North. This was a future the South would never accept. “The madmen of the North and North West,” editorialized the Richmond Enquirer, “have, we fear, cast the die, and numbered the days of this glorious Union.” Thus the debate over the war became a conflict over slavery and a threat to the Union itself.

DURING THIS PERIOD of great political stress and turmoil, Lincoln came to sorely miss the companionship of his wife and the presence of his children. The couple’s correspondence from this time gives us nearly all the direct evidence we have of their relationship. Almost all other information must be gleaned from outside observers, some of whom regarded Mary with extreme hostility or believed that she was unworthy of her husband.

“When you were here,” Lincoln wrote Mary on April 16, 1848, “I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business—no variety—it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me…I hate to stay in this old room by myself.” He recounted with pride that he had gone shopping for the children, and told her how he enjoyed her letters. He was pleased to hear that, for the first springtime since he had known her, she had been “free from head-ache.” Then he added teasingly, “I am afraid you will get so well, and fat, and young, as to be wanting to marry again.”

“My dear Husband,” Mary answered, writing on a Saturday night after the children were asleep. “How much, I wish instead of writing, we were together this evening, I feel very sad away from you.” She described the children and their doings, and coyly needled that Mr. Webb, who had unsuccessfully sought her hand in their Springfield days, was coming to Shelbyville, Kentucky. “I must go down about that time & carry on quite a flirtation, you know we, always had a penchant that way.” In closing, she reassured him: “Do not fear the children, have forgotten you…. Even E(ddy’s) eyes brighten at the mention of your name—My love to all.”

Lincoln quickly responded: “The leading matter in your letter, is your wish to return to this side of the Mountains. Will you be a good girl in all things, if I consent?” Most likely, he was referring here to the problems Mary had experienced with the other boarders, and her unhappiness about the amount of work he had to do. Assuming that she had already affirmatively answered his question, he continued: “Then come along, and that as soon as possible. Having got the idea in my head, I shall be impatient till I see you.” These letters are replete with gossip about their acquaintances in Washington and Springfield, detailed news of the children, some mention of Lincoln’s political activities, gentle teasing, and expressions of longing, both for companionship and, by implication, for intimacy. In the fall of 1848, Mary and the children returned to Washington.

In June of that year, Lincoln joined his fellow Whigs in Philadelphia, where they nominated Mexican War hero General Zachary Taylor for president, hoping that military glory could work its magic once more, as it had for George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and William Henry Harrison. “I am in favor of Gen: Taylor,” Lincoln wrote, “because I am satisfied we can elect him…and that we can not elect any other whig.” He explained to Herndon that the nomination of Taylor would strike the Democrats “on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them, the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to be hanged themselves.”

Seward was not happy with his party’s choice of Taylor, a slaveholder with no political affiliation. Even worse was the selection of his rival New Yorker Millard Fillmore for vice president. Nor did he like the party