Book Speculates Lincoln Was Seduced to Wed : Presidents: Mary Todd, fearing spinsterhood, may have gotten pregnant to catch a husband, scholar Wayne C. Temple contends.

Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd announced abruptly one morning that they would be married that same night. And their firstborn arrived nine months to the day after the ceremony.

Now a Lincoln scholar suggests that Todd, fearing a life of spinsterhood, may have seduced the marriage-shy Lincoln and gotten pregnant to catch herself a husband.

“This cannot be proved of course. It’s speculation. But if there’s a little bit of smoke, there may be a little bit of fire,” said Wayne C. Temple, author of “Abraham Lincoln From Skeptic to Prophet.”

The seduction theory is a small part of the 446-page work by Temple, a Lincoln scholar since 1949 who is chief deputy director of the Illinois State Archives.

The wedding had been preceded by a courtship with secret trysts in the home of Lincoln’s close political ally, newspaper publisher Simeon Francis. Francis and his wife, Eliza, had no children, and their home had plenty of room.

On Nov. 4, 1842, the couple announced they would be married that day, and nothing could deter them. When he asked James Harvey Matheny to be his best man, Lincoln said: “I shall have to marry that girl.”

Lincoln, Matheny reported, “looked and acted as if he were going to the slaughter,” according to the book. While dressing for the nuptials, the son of his landlord asked where he was going. “To hell, I suppose,” Lincoln responded.

Lincoln later described his firstborn son, Robert Todd Lincoln, as “the offspring of much animal spirits.”

Temple cites one account stating that Mary Todd was the aggressor in the courtship. At a time when most young ladies married by 17 or 18, she at 24 was drawing closer to spinsterhood. (Lincoln was well into his 30s.) Men may have been frightened off because she wasn’t very likable.

“The Todd temper wouldn’t have helped too much. She was a little bit plump. She had no money,” Temple said.

Harold Holzer, chief communications officer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the author of nine books about Lincoln, said there has been wide-ranging speculation on Lincoln’s passion for women.

“Either that he found women irresistible and had to control himself all the time or that he was totally inexperienced when he married Mary,” Holzer said.

Still, he said, Todd did give birth nine months after the wedding.

“I think the assumption one makes is that they had a wonderful wedding night,” Holzer said.