Another point made about Mary in the book ???House of Abraham: Lincoln & the Todds, A Family Divided by the War??? by Stephen Berry is that her family represented the divided nation. Some of her family members sided with the Union and some with the Confederacy. Two of Mary???s brothers and one brother-in-law were killed in the war. Her family also received negative press coverage, scandals were exposed, because of their connection to the President and because they were an example of what was happening to the nation. This is another part of Mary Lincoln???s life that possibly affected how the public perceived her. Perhaps people would have been more sympathetic towards Mary if she wasn???t from the south.
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The Other Lincoln
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When Mary Todd Lincoln and her husband went to the White House, and the Civil War took his attention away from her, her thwarted nature found sad expression. Like many a bored and underemployed woman before and since, she shopped: china, silver, wallpaper, lace, jewelry. She traded in influence, too, taking gifts from those who wanted access to the president. Even her grief was considered unseemly; she buried three of her four sons, systematically losing the only real job she'd ever known, but was criticized for exhibiting passionate bereavement instead of the pious acceptance then in fashion. "Keep that woman out of here," one of the men was said to have snarled as her husband lay dying. Is there anything sadder than the fact that she had once told a girlhood friend she had to marry a man who would take her to the theater?
By the standard of our times most of what Mary did is, if not acceptable, at least understandable. But in our times her life would have been different. Her son would not have been able to commit her to a lunatic asylum because she bought gloves in multiples, was worried she was being watched—she was, by detectives he had hired—and was, according to one witness, "not like ladies in general." Calculating and ambitious, she might have dreamed of being president instead of marrying one.
Of all the things to admire about Abraham Lincoln, one of the most human and touching is his way with his wife. When he learned the presidential election results in the Springfield telegraph office in 1860, he ran home, crying, "Mary, Mary, we are elected." When he wrote to her at the beginning of April 1865, he paid her the compliment of significance: "At 4:30 p.m. today General Grant telegraphs that he has Petersburg completely enveloped from river below to river above, and has captured, since he started last Wednesday, about 12,000 prisoners and 50 guns." Two weeks later, and he had become a god and she a pariah, an unruly and inconvenient woman.
© 2009
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