“Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it.  Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings.  If so, you must pardon me.  You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it....  I am now fully convinced that you love her, as ardently as you are capable of loving....  It is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize.”

When Lincoln heard that Speed was finally married, he wrote him: 

“It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to hear you say you are ‘far happier than you ever expected to be,’ That much, I know, is enough.  I know you too well to suppose your expectations were not, at least, sometimes extravagant; and if the reality exceeds them all, I say, Enough, dear Lord.  I am not going beyond the truth when I tell you that the short space it took me to read your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all I have enjoyed since the fatal first of January, 1841.  Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy, but for the never-absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make so.  That still kills my soul.  I cannot but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise.”

It is quite possible that a series of incidents that occurred during the summer in which the above was written had something to do with bringing such a frame of mind to a happier conclusion.  James Shields, afterward a general in two wars and a senator from two States, was at that time auditor of Illinois, with his office at Springfield.  Shields was an Irishman by birth, and, for an active politician of the Democratic party, had the misfortune to be both sensitive and irascible in party warfare.  Shields, together with the Democratic governor and treasurer, issued a circular order forbidding the payment of taxes in the depreciated paper of the Illinois State banks, and the Whigs were endeavoring to make capital by charging that the order was issued for the purpose of bringing enough silver into the treasury to pay the salaries of these officials.  Using this as a basis of argument, a couple of clever Springfield society girls wrote and printed in the “Sangamo Journal” a series of humorous letters in country dialect, purporting to come from the “Lost Townships,” and signed by “Aunt Rebecca,” who called herself a farmer’s widow.  It is hardly necessary to say that Mary Todd was one of the culprits.  The young ladies originated the scheme more to poke fun at the personal weaknesses of Shields than for the sake of party effect, and they embellished their simulated plaint about taxes with an embroidery of fictitious social happenings and personal allusions to the auditor that put the town on a grin and Shields into fury.  The fair and mischievous writers found it necessary to consult Lincoln about how they should frame the political features of their attack, and he set them a pattern by writing the first letter of the series himself.