At ten-fifteen on the night of April 14, 1865, Mary Todd Lincoln sat in the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre and felt her fragile world shatter. John Wilkes Booth’s shot had found her husband, and for nine agonizing hours she waited for Abraham Lincoln to die. Once every hour she left the front parlor of the Peterson House, where the president had been carried, made her way to the small room where he was slipping away, and tried to kiss him into consciousness. The kisses eventually gave way to overpowering emotion, and after one scream, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton stated firmly, “Keep that woman out of here.
” When Vice President Andrew Johnson tried to enter the room, he was asked to leave. She hated him and made it clear that the sight of the new president disturbed her greatly. She never got over that night, and in the seventeen years that followed, she wore nothing that was not mourning apparel—except once, for her son Tad’s birthday. Three of her four children did not live to adulthood, and her husband was assassinated while he held her hand.
James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, said simply: “She had the most tragic public life in American history. ” This is the story of the woman who once said, “I wish I could forget myself. ” This is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln. The first ladies who held the title before her would have told her their role was a most challenging one.
Abigail Smith Adams was harshly criticized for allegedly dominating her husband John. Dolly Payne Todd Madison was attacked for being too flirtatious and thought crude for her use of snuff. Elizabeth Courtright Monroe was too haughty. Louisa Katherine Johnson Adams was criticized for being too partisan, too opinionated.
Sarah Childress Polk was attacked for her looks. Margaret Mackall Smith Taylor, the wife of Old Rough and Ready Zachary Taylor, was thought too rough, too Western. That brings us to the sixteenth president’s first lady. Mary Todd.
Molly to some. To others, Hellcat. She came into this world on a Sunday, December 13, 1818, the third and youngest daughter of Robert Smith and Eliza Parker Todd, born in Lexington, Kentucky. Her parents chose Mary to honor her mother’s only sister.
Early on, events began to mold her adult years. At about the time she turned one, Mary was abruptly weaned when a little brother was born. Another brother was born when Mary was four, but he soon died—her first physical loss. Shortly thereafter, a sister, Anne, was born.
With an Anne now in the family, at five Mary was called Mary Todd to cut down on confusion with her younger sister. Another loss, this time her own name, and for that she resented her younger sister. At six and a half, more scars when her mother passed. At seven, more parental alienation: her father remarried, to Elizabeth “Betsy” Humphreys, and with his gain Mary lost something—her father’s attention.
His second marriage spawned nine more children, so Mary Todd was one of thirteen. Her father busy, her stepmother unfriendly, perhaps both conditions precipitated what happened when she was almost nine: Mary Todd was sent to a female academy for girls. In her day, an opportunity, but she interpreted it as being orphaned. In the meantime, in 1832, her family moved to an elegant fourteen-room house at 578 West Main Street in Lexington.
There, the Todd family had one slave per family member. Then her oldest sister, and the one closest to her, Elizabeth, married and moved to Illinois. More alienation. At school and away from her family, her dearest sister absent, Mary felt isolated.
The result was an insatiable lust for notoriety. Taken together, trouble for a woman rendered insecure by family abandonments. She constantly denied this desire for attention, but psychologically she craved it. During her formative years, the enslaved mammy Sally was her most constant adult presence.
It was she who taught Mary Todd that the dead could return to comfort those left behind. As a young lady, she was pretty, plump, with ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and long lashes. She danced well and was an excellent conversationalist—according to some, perhaps too much so for a proper Southern belle. To win attention from her father, she immersed herself in politics.
She could be picky when peeved, she mimicked others, and that cost her friends. In 1837, at eighteen, she moved to Springfield, Illinois, where two of her older sisters lived. The move did not go well, so she returned home in the fall of that same year. Yet she returned to Springfield in June of 1839, when yet another sister married and took up residence there.
Her sister Elizabeth took her in, and so it would be that Mary Todd would remain in Springfield for the next twenty-two years. Among the 2,200 who lived there was cousin John Todd Stewart’s new law partner, arrived from nearby New Salem. A Lincoln had moved to Springfield in April of 1837. He was lonely.
Mary Todd was not, and in her many associations she was known to be a handful. As one put it, “Mary could make a bishop forget his prayers. ” The two were made aware of one another sometime in 1839. Though there was some interest, Mary continued to see others.
One was attorney and state legislator Edwin Webb, and another was five-foot-four and at the time a nine-pound Stephen A. Douglas. Mary knew what she wanted. She wanted, as she put it, a good man with a hand for position, fame, and power.
And how ironic: she wanted someone who would take her to the theater. Sometime in 1840, the friendship between Mary and Mr. Lincoln evolved into courtship, and then wooing for two years. Her sister Elizabeth tried to break them up—she thought Lincoln primitive.
It didn’t help when once he was heard to exclaim at a gathering, “Oh boys, how clean these girls look! ” The two did indeed seem worlds apart. Mary Todd was aristocratic; Lincoln was plebeian. She was fashionable; he was rustic, scruffy.
She was a ruddy pine knot with periodic exuberance of flesh; he was long and lanky. To quote Lincoln, he was the long and she the short of it. She was a talker; he listened. She was a dancer; he wanted to dance with her in the worst way, as she put it, and according to Mary Todd, he did—in the worst way.
She would use theatrics to get attention; he withdrew. She was quick to anger, vindictive; he was given to melancholy. She was on ill terms with many; Lincoln was liked by almost everyone. She held grudges, and as collected injustices mounted, she rehearsed her anger.
For example, New Year’s Day 1841. Lincoln was late for a party they planned to attend together. Mary Todd went ahead. He arrived late to find her flirting with the attorney Edwin Webb.
Angry, he ended the relationship, and Mary Todd quipped, “Go and never come back. ” Lincoln later called it the Fatal First. A state legislator at the time, he was so distraught he missed six straight days of the Illinois legislature. He was so devastated a friend removed his razor.
He left for Louisville on business, but the absence was beneficial: it allowed Mary Todd to see beyond his roughness. She found out she missed him. Advocates for the two brought them back together, and marriage soon followed. They wed one rainy night, November 4, 1842, oddly enough in the home of her sister Elizabeth, who had done so much to try to keep them apart.
His ring to her was inscribed with the words “Love is Eternal. ” Although about thirty friends and relatives were there, both sets of parents were absent. Mary and Mr. Lincoln began their married life at a boarding house that cost them eight dollars a week.
His legal duties meant circuit riding, and that took him away for weeks at a time. However, that did not hinder their plans for the future. Mary Todd was immediately delicate, as they put it, or as the saying went, she was in the family way. On August 1, 1843, nine months minus three days after their wedding, Robert Todd Lincoln was born.
He was named for Mary Todd’s father. Mr. Lincoln had little input in the decision—in fact, she would name all their children. She also nursed every child she had for as long as two years.
A growing family needed greater quarters, so in May of 1844 the Lincolns moved to the corner of Eighth and Jackson in Springfield. They paid $1,200 for what was at the time a one-story, five-room house. In the summer of 1856, a second floor was completed at a cost of $1,300. From day one, the two had separate bedrooms, and from day one, Mary Todd ruled the house.
In March of 1846, Edward Baker Lincoln was born. It was noted that Mary was a caring mother, although many thought she and Mr. Lincoln were far too lenient with their children—some even called them brats. Edward’s time in this world was sadly short: he died February 1, 1850, after fifty-two days of pulmonary tuberculosis.
Only the summer before, Mary Todd had lost her father to cholera. Two deaths made her distraught and made her angry. She refused to accept the reality of the situation. But in December of 1850 there was a new child, William Wallace Lincoln, and it brought her a renewed sense of reality and responsibility.
He was named for Mary Todd’s brother-in-law. Then in April of 1853, Thomas was born—Tad, for short, from tadpole. At sixteen, the eldest, Robert, left for Harvard, despite failing fifteen of sixteen entrance exams. However, to improve his academic standing, he did spend a year at Exeter.
Meanwhile, Lincoln rode the Eighth Illinois circuit. Some 600 of their letters survive, and from them we know she pushed him politically. If one knocked on their front door, her voice would send from the second floor: “Business or politics. ” In 1846, Mr.
Lincoln was elected as a Whig to Congress, and Mary Todd was intent on going. Of 239 congressmen at that time, only 73 wives accompanied their husbands, and by God, Mary Todd Lincoln was going to be one of them—with three boys, too. They stayed at a boarding house where the Library of Congress stands today. There, Mr.
Lincoln drew attention when he opposed the Mexican War, asking for the exact spot, in his words, where American blood had been shed on American soil. After the war, his opponents called him Spotty Lincoln. That may have contributed to his failure to be reelected. Mary also may have contributed: she linked her husband’s supporters to friendship.
If you failed in one, you failed in the other. She was ecstatic when her husband’s career was rejuvenated in 1856. At the Republican convention that year, he received 110 votes for the vice presidency, though not nominated. In 1858, he chose to ride that wave of notoriety by running against rival Stephen A.
Douglas for the United States Senate. Mr. Lincoln made 63 speeches from August 12 to October 30, 1858, and seven of them during their famous head-to-head debates. Despite all the stumping, the state senate of Illinois voted 52 to 46 in favor of the five-foot-four judge.
Exhausted and disappointed, Abraham and Mary lived with the result. Defeat. Down in spirit, Mary had an interesting answer when coping with personal or political defeat: she would shop. Two years later, that activity slowed, we must presume, for Mr.
Lincoln was nominated for the presidency by his Republican party. Unlike previous wives of presidential candidates, Mary Todd, to no one’s surprise, was unique. She was going to be involved. So much so that when the Republicans carried Pennsylvania, her elated husband said, “Mary, Mary, we are elected.
” She was elated. But with the victory she lost something: she soon learned that she no longer held the same preeminence in her husband’s ear, for him it was near civil war. It was a dangerous time. Letters arrived with skull and crossbones.
As for Mary, a head-turning time. Her level of participation as first lady was without precedent. Earlier, William Henry Harrison’s wife Anna opposed her husband’s career. The wife of Zachary Taylor, Margaret, reluctantly brought herself and her corn cob pipe to Washington City.
Millard Fillmore’s Abigail, and Sarah, wife of James Knox Polk, did not look forward to first lady social duties, and both despised ceremonial entertainment. Jane Pierce, the wife of Franklin, despised it all so much she voluntarily declared herself an invalid. Not Mary Todd Lincoln. It began March 4, 1861, when 30,000 braved a raw and windy Inaugural Day.
Afterward there was the ball. Mary Todd entered on the arm of Stephen A. Douglas. She planned to be visible, and she needed the trappings to do it in style.
The executive Mansion was in great need of repair, and Mary Todd was just the lady to revitalize it. To refurbish the 31-room mansion, she pushed for and received a four-year allowance totaling $20,000. Eleven trips were made just to buy furnishings. Chinese and French wallpaper accounted for over one half the financial allotment.
The $20,000 ran out in less than a year. Not deterred in the least, she mastered the art of shifting allocations. The executive Mansion was just a start. As first lady, she had to dress properly to properly reflect position and power.
She shocked many by choosing dresses that bared her arms and neck. She did so because she wanted to show off her expensive jewelry. She loved pearls, she loved jasmine, often she weaved flowers into her hair. Some thought her a garden in motion.
By early 1862 she had sixteen new dresses and hefty bills, and she looked for ways to have somebody else pay for them. She had an interesting shopping strategy: the more she owed someone, the more she shopped with the same merchant to keep the bill from being called in. She could be brutal if one failed to meet her shopping desires. Once, when a merchant did not have matching lavender ribbon for one of her bonnets, she demanded that Mrs.
Taft return her purchased bonnet that did have the right color ribbon. She refused to wear browns, grays, or black; she preferred canary, magenta, bold blue. Many were appalled. They thought that during a time of civil war she should be frugal, understated.
Out West, people thought how dare she bear her shoulders. After one gathering, one lady blurted she had “her bosom on exhibition, a flower pot on her head. ” Through it all, her husband was well trained—Mr. Lincoln always showered her with compliments.
One night she wore a dress with a low neckline. Mr. Lincoln quipped, “Whipped cat has a long tail tonight. If some of that tail was nearer the head, it would be in better style.
”
Because of her, parties could become battles. For the first diplomatic dinner, which the Secretary of State traditionally hosted, Mary Todd debated, shouted, pouted, and finally won the right to host it. And after the gathering, she sent the $900 bill for a New York caterer to Secretary of State William Seward. Seward and his staff simply called her the Hellcat.
She loved having her image captured; almost all were made by the famous photographer Matthew Brady. He made many images of her; few she kept. Those not selected, she demanded be destroyed. Her vanity made her the perfect accomplice for patronage: many gave her gifts hoping for favor with the president, and she would indeed try to sway her husband’s decision making.
This caused nasty arguments. Once she pushed to get a relative a collector-ship. No-nonsense Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, took her note, tore it up, and then marched to the executive Mansion to berate her. By January of 1862 she had redecorated the presidential residence, had modified presidential entertaining, had outfitted herself like a queen, and had become the patronage maven.
In her defense, she also had reviewed troops and had visited countless hospitals. Still, many ridiculed her behavior, and it certainly did not help that she had three half-brothers in Confederate service, one who loved to entertain. On February 5, 1862, the Lincolns threw a party to restore sagging morale. A composer penned the “Merry Lincoln Polka” for the gathering.
Five hundred guests were invited and a lavish meal was served from midnight to 3 a. m. It cost the Lincolns $11,000, but for Mary a success because it was critiqued a success. Yet upstairs, her son young Willie was running a high fever during the party.
Both excused themselves to spend time with their eleven-year-old. Two weeks and one day later, on the 20th, he died at 5:30 a. m. A grieving Mr.
Lincoln said he was too good for this Earth. It was believed to be typhoid fever. He was Mary Todd’s favorite. Laid out in the Green Room, it was a room she refused to enter.
There was another, the second-floor guest room where he died. Despite power and attention, once again abandoned—her mother, brother, father, mother, stepmother, and now a second son—she stayed in bed for three weeks. Her grief was such that, the story goes, Mr. Lincoln finally led her to a window, parted the curtains, and said: “Mother, do you see that large white building on the hill yonder?
Try and control your grief, or it will drive you mad, and we may have to send you there. ”
No question, Lincoln himself was also terribly affected. Every Thursday he locked himself in Willie’s room to reflect. Mary Todd went into high mourning for a year, although the social manual called for six months.
When finally she graduated to the next stage of mourning, black gave way to lavender, gray, then somber purple. For her loss she railed against God’s injustice. She cancelled summer concerts, and she began to see spiritualists. After all, mammy Sally had told her the departed could return, and Queen Victoria sought their aid.
It is believed there were as many as eight séances in the executive Mansion. There was more grief when, two months after Willie’s death, her Confederate half-brother Sam was killed. There would be more grief: her half-brother David mortally wounded at Vicksburg, her half-brother Alec who died in the fall of 1863, and at Chickamauga, her younger half-sister’s husband, Confederate Brigadier General Benjamin Hardin Helm, was killed. These losses affected not only Mary Todd’s stability but her marriage.
It was different. Though grief brought them together, the relationship became more businesslike, less passionate. The election year of 1864 brought more stress when rumors surfaced that the Democrats were going to expose her spending. Despite the threat, Mr.
Lincoln was reelected. Mary Todd was elated yet wary, for it always seemed that bad fortune followed good. At the second inaugural ball, more of her maddening behavior: she chose Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner to escort her into the grand ballroom, and she refused to allow Mr. Lincoln to have an escort—an example of her jealousy, which could be monstrous.
City Point, near Petersburg, Virginia, March 24, 1865. She was late for a military review. When she finally arrived, she saw her husband on horseback conducting the review, and Major General Edward O. C.
Ord’s wife mounted and beside him. Approaching the party in a rage, she leaped from the ambulance wagon that conveyed her and physically attacked the commander-in-chief in front of the Army of the Potomac’s high command. It was dreadfully painful to watch. Yet she believed her public display of anger was justified, for her public embarrassment was justified, and soon thereafter demanded that Ord be relieved of his command.
Fortunately, he was not. The end of the war was near, as we all know—and so was her time together with her husband. To celebrate Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Mrs. Lincoln wanted to go to Ford’s Theatre, where the 1,000th presentation of Our American Cousin was featured.
The Grants were invited, but they were the first of three couples and nine individuals who could not or would not attend. Socialite Clara Harris and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, accepted. The party of four’s vantage was from boxes 7 and 8. It was there, around 10:15 that evening, April 14, 1865, that Mary Todd Lincoln’s fragile world was shattered.
For the next forty days after Mr. Lincoln’s death she remained in bed, racked with migraines and suffering from weak limbs, swollen eyes, back pain, and congestion. To put things in perspective: first lady Jackie Kennedy remained in the White House for ten days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Mary Todd Lincoln lingered for forty. She left at the very hour of the planned grand military review, May 23rd, in Washington City. As for Lincoln’s final resting place, she argued with the Lincoln Monument Association. With an “alas, all is over with me,” she moved to Chicago, where she was consumed by the assassination—it became her daily crucifixion.
Then more grim reality: no longer the first lady, merchants called in her debts, estimated at $10,000. To meet them, she began writing what one called begging letters, and lobbied Congress for her husband’s pro-rated second term salary. She received $22,200. But he had left no will.
Mr. Lincoln’s lifelong friend, her personal enemy David Davis, handled the estate, and decided her share would be one-third. Another of Lincoln’s lifelong friends, William Herndon, dropped another bomb, November 16, 1866, when in an address he stated that Ann Rutledge of New Salem was his friend’s only love, and he added that for the last twenty-three years Mr. Lincoln had no joy and that he lived in, in Herndon’s words, domestic hell.
To raise money, on September 16, 1867, she traveled to New York City to hopefully sell her wardrobe in a public showing. One newspaper called it “Mrs. Lincoln’s second-hand clothing sale. ” At its entrance was a book that asked for pledges.
One visitor pledged $75 but, rather than sign his name, wrote “a member of the committee to save us from disgrace. ” Little was sold, little was pledged. Many thought the clothes tainted—originally accepted to help buy political favor. Her reaction: if no one valued her clothes, no one valued her.
Her critics were merciless; they called her a mercenary prostitute. In November of 1867 she did receive $36,000 from the estate, but the timing of that award doomed any more potential sales. She believed her oldest son Robert deliberately timed the decision to sabotage her attempts to make money. No question, he believed his mother could not handle money, and he was frankly embarrassed.
She sought the use of spiritualists. More attacks came in the spring of 1868. An associate that had not been paid in some time, Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress Elizabeth Keckley, published a tell-all book, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Keckley wrote of behavior that was most unflattering to the former first lady.
Mary immediately renounced their friendship. Fed up with it all, she made plans to leave, as she put it, this ungrateful Republic. In October of 1869, she left with fifteen-year-old Tad. When they boarded the City of Baltimore, no one saw them off.
They traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, where for the next two years a fifty-one-year-old lady told others she was forty-six. She traveled to spas while pushing Charles Sumner back in the States to work on a congressional pension for her. He was successful. In May of 1870, the House voted her a $3,000 annual pension.
To put that amount in perspective, a common soldier received $151. 80 a year, an officer only $600 a year. On July 14, 1870, after much debate, the Senate, in strictly a partisan vote, agreed to give her the largest individual annuity ever granted to an American citizen. Eventually she longed for home and returned to the States in May of 1871.
Back in Chicago, she and Tad lived with son Robert and his wife. That arrangement—two strong-willed women in the same house—quickly soured. And tragedy struck again: Tad, now eighteen, had caught a cold on the trip back. It worsened.
He died of pleurisy at 7:30 in the morning, July 15, 1871—the day after the Senate okayed her pension. To Mary Todd, it all made sense again: good fortune, then disaster. And coincidentally, her ill-fated fortune seemed to infect the whole city, for on October 8, 1871, there was the great and tragic Chicago Fire: 2,100 acres scorched, nearly 200 dead. Her days were spent with constant trips to spas, encounters with spiritualists, and suffering through anniversary panics—for example, the death of her firstborn, the passing of Willie, her husband’s assassination, the death of Tad.
And the blows continued. Lincoln’s former law partner William Herndon published a biography about this time. In it, Herndon questioned Lincoln’s legitimate birth and his religious conviction, and he portrayed Mary as a lying madwoman. As noted earlier, she shopped when she felt low.
At this point in her life, she shopped often, and when she did, she bought multiples of the same articles and always haggled with the merchant over price. Her seemingly erratic behavior was such that on May 19, 1875, she was visited by a party of men. One was Leonard Swett, the Chicago lawyer who fifteen years earlier nominated her husband for president. They took her to the Cook County Courthouse to answer a charge of lunacy.
Her son Robert had sworn out the warrant. Under oath, he testified: “I have no doubt my mother is insane. She has long been a source of great anxiety to me. She has no home.
” And referencing her shopping sprees, he continued, “No reason to make these purchases. ” Her accusers documented grief, the sale of old clothes, eccentric buying, and behavior. An all-male jury took less than ten minutes and agreed. The former first lady of the United States was sent to Batavia, Illinois, the next day, where she was committed to the Bellevue Place Sanatorium.
There she was confined on the second floor, in a twelve-by-twenty-one-foot room. Three months and three weeks later, she was released to the general population of the sanatorium. Her release from confinement angered her son Robert. He hired people to watch her, and using the courts, he gained legal control of her money.
Finally, two individuals came to her assistance: Judge James B. Bradwell and Myra Bradwell. Robert, however, blocked not only their legal efforts but his aunt Elizabeth’s attempt to have her sister live with her. Throwing up his hands, he left for a summer vacation at Rye Beach, New York.
While away, the Bradwells threatened a writ of habeas corpus to produce Mrs. Lincoln. That helped to outmaneuver Robert, and on September 11, 1875, his mother was released. Mary went to her sister Elizabeth’s in Springfield, Illinois.
Though released, Robert continued to believe his mother insane and wanted another court appearance. This time, Mary wanted it too. On June 15, 1876, the court reversed its stand. Mary Todd Lincoln was, in their words, restored to reason and capable to manage and control her estate.
Back in control of her money and life, she wrote her oldest son—there was no “dear” before his name in her letter. She wanted returned everything she had ever given to him. She, in return, sent back gifts he had given her. The man her eldest, the one she called “a monster of mankind” son, returned some of what she asked.
She, in turn, returned everything he had given her. It wasn’t much, for honestly she had little from him anyway. The gift-giving and affection had always been one-sided. She never forgave him.
Now free, she traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, then Philadelphia for the nation’s Centennial. On October 1, 1876, she crossed the Atlantic once again and returned to southwestern France. Finally back in Lexington, people found her withdrawn. One commented that he believed her will to live came solely from the absolute hate she held for her son.
Her sister Elizabeth pleaded with Robert to write her, but he refused. In the autumn of 1880, Mary went yet again to stay with Elizabeth in Springfield. The former first lady was feeble, half paralyzed, and suffered from cataracts. Her oldest son Robert relented, paid her one final visit.
It was a quick one. There was no reconciliation. But an event demonstrated she still had some fire: Mary learned that Mrs. James Garfield, wife of the gunned-down twentieth president, was to receive a $5,000-a-year pension.
Feeble but not finished, by any account she, at sixty-three years of age, asked for $115,000. She never collected a cent. Six months later, in 1882, on yet another painful anniversary—the 11th, of Tad’s passing—she collapsed. The next morning, July 16th, in the same house in which she was married, a stroke took her.
Her tortured existence ended three days later. To honor her passing, the mayor of Springfield declared a holiday, stores closed, and thousands lined the streets. In the obituaries that followed, the phrase “respected wife” was repeated. She would have liked that.
Like her husband, she left no will. The object of her hatred, Robert, inherited her estate—two years later, eighty-four trunks filled with sixty-four dresses. He had her money and her belongings. But this time she had something far more important, something that could not be measured in dollars and cents.
There, at Oak Ridge Cemetery, where her loved ones rested, Mary Todd Lincoln, repeatedly abandoned in life, would in death have what she cherished the most. Never again would she be separated—not from her husband, not from three of her four sons. This time, and for all eternity, Mary Todd Lincoln would be surrounded by family.
