agreement between families. By way of comparison in the 1730’s Benjamin Franklin sought a dowry from a possible bride in order to pay for his printing press, and when the mother of his intended refused, he promptly ended the courtship.¹² But in the new republic of the United States arranged marriages disappeared.
 

Indeed European travelers pointed to the freedom of mate choice as one of the signal differences between Europe and the United States. But within an institution in which men enhanced their standing and satisfied their wants, American wives often lost their ambitions. Alexis de Tocqueville, the perceptive French observer of the United States, noticed as much in Democracy in America: “In America a woman loses her independence forever in the bonds of matrimony. . . a wife submits to stricter obligations.. .her husband’s home is almost a cloister.” Mary Lincoln had observed as much about an institution she once called “the crime of matrimony.” “Why is it,” wrote Mary Todd to one of her friends, “that married folks always become so serious?”¹⁴
 

Even if they could choose their mate without parental interference, still young middle-class women had to marry because they were denied any respectable means of earning a living save as teachers and governesses, at the same time that any means of self- protection within marriage was denied them. But their courting power was solely that of a veto. As one young American woman Eliza Southgate noted, “We have the liberty of refusing those we don’t like, but not of selecting those we do.”¹⁵ Mary Todd had done that to several suitors. Once married, women were without rights as citizens, but in a Catch 22, if they stayed single they were ridiculed as spinsters. Thus for young American women marriage was a necessity; it was the way they earned their living. But they surely had reasons to hesitate.
 

In an era when divorce was not a recognized statutory procedure and required in most instances special legislative action or a petition to a special court, marriage to a bad husband—to an alcoholic (and this was a period of the highest per capita alcohol consumption in our history) or to a wife-beater was a life-threatening mistake. The annals of 19th century misery were full of women who fled their husbands to avoid abuse and were ordered home by the courts.
 

Meanwhile men had reasons to hesitate before marrying, for as breadwinners they were responsible for providing for their wives and children. For a man like the upwardly mobile and very conscientious Abraham Lincoln, such circumstances gave cause for concern. As Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1837, “whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented.”¹⁶ And that required a sufficient income to establish a household with a young woman who was accustomed to a standard of living far above that of Lincoln’s childhood. “Men,” writes a student of courtship, “hesitated to commit themselves to marry—until they felt emotionally ready and could be sure of acquiring the necessary
 

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