“Yours Forever”

Lincoln sometimes signed his letters to Speed with the affectionate line, “Yours forever, Lincoln.” Scholars in the documentary note that he did not sign his letters to his wife Mary Todd this way.

In another letter to Speed, Lincoln describes his disappointment over hearing that Speed and his wife Fanny would live in Kentucky, not near him in Illinois.

“Dear Speed, I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now. You’ll be so exclusively concerned for one another that I shall be forgotten entirely. I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois. I shall be very lonesome without you,” Lincoln wrote.

“How miserable things seem to be arranged in this world. If we have no friends, we have no pleasure. And if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here, but I own I have no right to insist… write me often and believe me. Yours forever, Lincoln.”