Daily Gazette & Comet [Baton Rouge, LA], August 9, 1860
It is an interesting fact in connection with the several candidates for the Presidency, that they all have Southern wives. Lincoln married a lady of Lexington, Ky., where his opponent Breckinridge was born and married; Mr. Bell’s wife, is, we believe, also a native of Kentucky; and Mr. Douglas married a native of Maryland—his first wife was a native of North Carolina. If is a creditable fact in the histories of these several candidates, which will go far to redeem the errors and shortcomings of some of them, that they should come to the South for wives. Doubtless their success and prominence have been as much due to their wives as to themselves. Southern ladies far surpass others in the quality of winning friends for their husbands, and in promoting their advancement in public favor. They are more thoroughly identified with their husbands, guard their interests with a more devotee zeal, and cultivate in a larger degree those gentle and captivating traits which often extend a shield over a public man, protecting him from violent assaults, and at the same time affording him a solace for the annoyances and disgusts of his position.
We had almost forgotten to add that General Houston, who is also a candidate for the Presidency, is married to a Southern lady, and furnishes in his own case a splendid illustration of the influence of a devoted wife. The excesses and dissipation which threatened at one time to make a miserable wreck of this remarkably gifted man no longer stain his character and disgrace his position.