Lincoln writes to Speed: "When this shall reach you, you will have been Fanny's husband several days. . . . I am now fully convinced, that you love her as ardently as you are capable of loving. . . . If you went through the ceremony calmly . . . you are safe, beyond question, and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men."Abraham Lincoln to Joshua F. Speed, 13 February 1842, CW, 1:269-70.

[Bowling Green, Lincoln's close friend of New Salem years, dies.]