[Abraham] and his stepmother [Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln] grew remarkably close. “I can say what scarcely one woman—a mother—can say in a thousand, and it is this—Abe never gave me a cross word or look and never refused in fact, or Even in appearance, to do any thing I requested him,” she remembered. She and Abe, she thought, were kindred souls: “His mind & mine—what little I had [—] seemed to run together—move in the same channel.” Abe “was dutiful to me always he loved me truly I think.” She compared him favorably to her own son John: “Both were good boys, but I must Say...that Abe was the best boy I Ever Saw or Ever Expect to see.” [...]
Lincoln reciprocated the love of his stepmother, whom he called mama. In 1861, he told Augustus H. Chapman that “she had been his best Friend in this world & that no Son could love a Mother more than he loved her.” [...] Joshua Speed, Lincoln's closest confidant, recalled that Lincoln's “fondness for his stepmother and his watchful care over her after the death of his father [in 1851] deserves notice. He could not bear to have any thing said by any one against her.” Near the end of his life, Lincoln told Speed “of his affection for her and her kindness to him.” To Herndon [his law partner] and others, Lincoln said she was “considerate and attentive,” a “kind, tender, loving mother” and a “noble woman” to whom he was “indebted more than all the world for his kindness—amiability, etc.”
In January 1861, shortly before his inauguration, Lincoln visited his beloved stepmother for the last time. According to a letter written by Augustus Chapman (the husband of Sarah Lincoln’s granddaughter) in 1865: “The parting between him & his Mother was very affectionate. She embraced him when they parted & Said she would never be permitted to see him again that she felt that his enemies would assassinate. he replied No No Mama (he always caled [sic] her Moma) [sic] they will not do that trust in the Lord and all will be well. We will See each other.”