When one hears the name Mary Todd Lincoln, what comes to mind is unlikely to be “a shrewd investor.” A more common impression of her is that she was a spendthrift who died broke and eventually became too crazy to function. A recent musical was actually called “Crazy Mary Lincoln,” and it’s one of several plays about her widowhood in recent years. Mary’s “amplified life” is perfect for the stage, as the ways in which she “salvaged her existence” in the seventeen years after Lincoln’s death provide “exquisite possibilities for drama.”¹
It was quite an existence. Reading the press coverage of her life from beginning to end made me think that it’s time to rewrite the headlines about her, or at least take into account all the ones that were written.² An outstanding feature of Mary’s life is how her own reputation “caved in on itself”³ after Lincoln’s assassination, and how the political and media elite pushed a narrative that she did not “deserve” sympathy or recognition (financial or otherwise) as Lincoln’s widow. But no one could ever write Mary Lincoln out of the story completely. Her story was and remains “bound up with the story of the nation,” revealing its insecurities and divisions. Mary Lincoln continues to strike a nerve.
If the phrase “nevertheless, she persisted,” describes anyone, it describes Mary Lincoln. She should be recognized as a fighter, for better or worse, and the story of her final years exemplifies why. As a widowed woman, Mary was expected to have no public future, and to quietly fade into obscurity. She had no sanctioned outlets for expression, so she expressed herself in ways that violated the dominant sense of propriety of the time period. When she kept up the combative attitude she’d had her whole life, she felt the full force of indignation some felt toward a woman being conspicuous and and vocal. Then, after seeing her husband murdered and watching three sons die of long, painful illnesses, she lost all credibility when she was committed to an insane asylum. This estranged her from her sole surviving son, who initiated the proceedings. For a while, it seemed as if she had faded into the background for good.
But Mary Lincoln always achieved her objectives, and she wanted recognition as Lincoln’s wife. But by 1880, Mary also had the melancholy benefit of not having a reputation left to lose. This allowed her to single-mindedly campaign for what she wanted much more than praise: for the American people to put their money where their mouths were, and grant her greater compensation for the services of Abraham Lincoln.
With no close family relationship to take into consideration, she realized she could be more persistent than ever. After being the center of scandals for so long, she knew how to manipulate news cycles to maximize the pressure on her targets and get her message out. She understood the power of the press and became increasingly bold about using it to achieve her own ends. Excluded from the Lincoln narrative in practice, Mary Lincoln focused on obtaining compensation that, at least in theory, recognized her as the rightful survivor and partner of Abraham Lincoln.
The most familiar story of Mary remains that she squandered money, and she often seems to stand alone as the symbol of the corruption and patronage issues of the Civil War years. Her White House spending may define her historical life, but it was a blip on the radar to Mary and those around her. She had the debts paid within a few years, and the issue came to public attention after Lincoln’s assassination and was paired with other revelations that got more coverage. Namely, Mary’s behavior in the Old Clothes Scandal⁴ and as reported in Behind the Scenes.⁵ “It is my comfort to know,” Mary had written her friend in 1868, “that I do not owe a dollar in the world — but what little I have, I intend enjoying[.]” This is what she did, to the best of her ability, and by the 1880s, there was little mention of her debts.
The period between the expiration of her conservatorship⁶ in 1876 (discussed later) and her death in 1882 has not been examined in detail. Many accounts of her life end with a sentence about her being confined in an insane asylum until shortly before her death in Springfield. In 1928, a biography about Mary was published by her niece. Here is the family-sanctioned “official” story of her final years post-conservatorship:
“So Mary Lincoln, restless, hoping to find forgetfulness in travel abroad, went to France, to Germany, to Italy. At Pau, France, in December, 1879, she fell from a stepladder while hanging a small picture over her mantelpiece and seriously injured her spine. Fearing now that she might die among strangers, in October, 1880, she sailed for America. Her nephew met her in New York and escorted her back to Springfield to the home of her sister, Mrs. Edwards. There, shrinking and sensitive, seeing no one — even when she was persuaded to take a drive the carriage curtains must be drawn — she spent the remainder of her broken, clouded life in the home filled with memories of her sparkling, happy girlhood, merciful death claimed her; the death she prayed for.”⁷
Much of this is accurate, but she did not spend the last years of her life steadily “shrinking” away into oblivion. As was usual with Mary Lincoln, the story wasn’t that neat. It was not simply a matter of the circle of life playing out, as poetic as it sounds for her to have died in the same house where she’d married Abraham Lincoln. Even in her last year, she had significant ups and downs. This period is often overlooked, but it is when Mary gave her most extensive interviews. She finally said what she needed to say and got the hearing her self-proclaimed friends so wanted to deny her.
I’ve tried to portray the saga using press reports, because, like many events in Mary’s life, it was largely a media battle. The result is a very confusing and sometimes amusing narrative. Through it all, Mary was very much herself, and continuously defined the terms of her life. In writing this, my probably unanswerable question is, what exactly was everybody up to? At the very least, watching the story unfold shows how little has changed with regard to which topics Americans debate, and the rhetoric they use to do so.
And, as her biographer Jean Harvey Baker declared, “I found much to admire (and not to admire) about a woman who was occasionally an agent provocateur in some of the most lacerating episodes of her sixty-four years.” This article provides more insight into one of these episodes in which Mary was definitely the agent provocateur, and she was unapologetically after justice as she saw it.
When people have tried to write sympathetically, or more likely apologetically, about Mary Lincoln, they usually do so by emphasizing her lack of emotional control. Mary is repeatedly distanced from “normal people” — what is offered is “gentle pity”, not empathy. But Mary could control herself when she had an object in mind, and her quest for recognition and acknowledgement is something anyone can relate to. Acknowledging that Mary had mental health problems is not the end of the discussion, but simply one facet of her story. Mary was no doubt unusual in many ways, but she was also very capable. Contemporary journalist Mary Clemmer Ames put it best when she said “She had very keen perceptions, and when her fancies did not interfere with them read human nature accurately as she gave ample proof in her judgment of Abraham Lincoln[.]” Chronically underestimating Mary’s ability to gauge and adjust her own behavior is what left a lot of people blindsided.
Another contemporary female writer spoke of the controversial Lincoln engagement and marriage by noting that the capacity to strategize “seems to have been essentially left out” of Mary’s “impulsive composition.”⁸ Speaking of the assertion that Mary married Lincoln out of revenge for jilting her, she continued “There was little room in Mary Todd’s excitable, undisciplined temper for so cool and calculated a plan.”
But there was plenty of room in Mary Lincoln; she had the capacity for many things. Traits, talents, moods, acquisitions, accomplishments, eccentricities — she had more than her fair share of all of them. She may have had a dearth of coolness, but she had an abundance of calculated plans.
Saying someone “calculates” raises all sorts of implications, but the meaning of the word is merely to put the pieces together, as in a math problem. It does not imply dishonesty, although that connotation seems never far away. Abraham Lincoln had called for “cold, calculating reason,” and was a calculating politician. Thank God for that — he was awash in a sea of calculating politicians, generals, journalists, and members of the public.
Calculation implies a level of competence and resourcefulness, an ability to know what is going on. That is one skill that Mary Lincoln never lost, no matter her mental state or the opinions of those who would have rather she been a little more “off” than she was, a bit more incompetent. And some of the reputation-conscious men around her, desperate to keep her out of the Lincoln legend, may have actively tried to push her over the edge mentally.
Her last battle, while half-paralyzed and half-blind (well, maybe), filled her final year of life with criticism and anxiety, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. The authorized biography by Mary’s niece explained that “Mary would fight fate to the last gasp; though nervous and frightened, she would be happier to die fighting.” The family attributed this spirit to the Todds’ genetics: “Mary’s inherited instinct from her Indian-fighting ancestors was fired at the prospect of battle, and battle was chance. Why not take the chance?” Historian Michael Burlingame put it another way: “Mary Lincoln did not mellow with age.”
But it wasn’t only the Todd side that gave her such a fighting spirit. She unapologetically followed her husband’s advice: “you know what you want — go and get it.”
The next part is here. Questions welcome.
[1] Baker, Jean Harvey. Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (Kindle Locations 138–139). W. W. Norton & Company.
[2] I don’t mean to say press reports are the best source for historical insights, as just like they are today, they are biased towards the sensational and often flat-out wrong. But contemporary evidence is definitely interesting, even when extracted from competing newspaper headlines, which inevitably are accompanied by agendas and distortions of events. Who tells the story, what the story is, and why the story is being told are the relevant questions.
[3] Clinton, Catherine. Mrs. Lincoln: A Life.
[4] Mary tried to get politicians and businessmen who had profited under Lincoln’s administration to buy her clothes and relieve her financial situation. She wrote letters complaining of their mistreatment and called attention to the matter in order to embarrass them. They did not comply, and someone gave the letters to a newspaper, which printed them on the front page and sensationalized the story into a political drama. It was a month of scandal that played out in newspapers across the country.
[5] Mary’s closest friend and seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley, wrote a sympathetic but embarrassing tell-all after helping Mary in her Old Clothes debacle. They seem to have had a falling-out over financial compensation, but the publication of the book ended the relationship.
[6] For a detailed explanation of the conservatorship, see Jason Emerson’s The Madness of Mary Lincoln.
[7] Helm, Katherine. The true story of Mary, wife of Lincoln; containing the recollections of Mary Lincoln’s sister Emilie (Mrs. Ben Hardin Helm), extracts from her war-time diary, numerous letters and other documents. New York and London, Harper & brothers.
[8] Republican, Salem, Illinois, Thu, Feb 9, 1905
