artificial contraception, what is interesting about the Lincoln
marriage is that the couple controlled their fertility. Robert Todd was
born in August 1843, followed by Eddie in early 1846. There were no more
children until after Eddie’s death in 1850, and then immediately so. Willie
was born in December 1850, followed, because he needed a playmate, by the
fourth and last Lincoln son Thomas “Tad” in April 1853. Compare this to
Mary Lincoln’s family of origin. Her father Robert Smith Todd had seven
children by his first wife and when she died after childbirth, another
eight by his second wife.
But by the 1850’s especially in towns and cities couples
like the Lincolns were responding to the fact that children were not potential
units of labor available for work on the family farm as Lincoln had been
for his father, but rather were projects that required considerable venture
capital. That is one reason why the American fertility rate dropped from
seven in 1800 to a fraction over six in 1820 and to a little over four
in 1850. The reason was birth control, by which I mean any kind of action
taken to prevent having children whether it be coitus interruptus, long-term
breast feeding, or the devices such as condoms and “womb veils” that arrived
in the Springfield post-office in mysterious brown paper wrappers.
36
Planning a family requires an intimacy about sexual relations
that for aspiring couples meant shared companionate power over reproduction,
as sex, according to a recent student, “became a powerful pervasive subject
in the 19th century with birth control a part of it.”
37
In an age when sexuality was being separated from reproduction and partners
discussed the timing of their children, there was mutuality and openness
about a critical aspect of the intersecting lives of wives and husbands.
At home there was also little tension in the Lincolns’ life
as parents, and parenting, sex, and money matters are the habitual arenas
in which couples of both the 19th and 20th centuries disagree. As we know
from them and from their neighbors, both Mary and Abraham were permissive
parents. Once on a train to Lexington, a fellow traveler was appalled at
the behavior of what Lincoln affectionately called “the Little codgers.”
38
Eddie and Robert were racing through the train, disturbing the other passengers.
Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon has left disgruntled accounts of
the boys’ visits to the law office he shared with Lincoln where they dropped
orange peels and pulled out legal files—with never a reprimand from their
ever-approving father. In the White House the children’s antics which included
once waving a Confederate flag and aiming a toy cannon at the Cabinet,
continued unchecked by any parental intervention. According to Mary Lincoln,
her husband took pleasure that his children were “free-happy and unrestrained
by parental tyranny.. . Love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its
parents.” Or as Mary Lincoln said, “We never controlled our children much.”
39
Fully engaged with the children—in a way that more traditional
parents were not— Mary and Abraham gave birthday parties in their honor
at a time when such celebrations
23