he war also opened up new vistas for Mary Todd Lincoln. We have often heard that she was a temperamental wife and a reckless spendthrift whose purchases for herself and the White House led to overspending and possibly corrupt practices. Her shifting moods indeed made her erratic, but they revealed a woman who enacted many female roles—some subversive, some entrepreneurial, some conventional—that had been gathering force in American culture for decades.
She was so unpredictable that she resisted easy categorization—or easy control by Lincoln. Her behavior, varied at best and chaotic at worst, provided him with home practice in the kinds of issues that he confronted publicly. He strove to maintain union and direction at home even as he tried to restore them to the nation. But the control was not all from his side. At key moments, she helped him focus on political and military issues that mattered most.
The picture that is generally drawn of their marriage is one of increasing separation during the White House years. It is true that the war pulled them apart to some extent, absorbing his energies even as Mary had dealings with men in her White House coterie. But the couple had long been accustomed to spaces in their togetherness ever since the Springfield years, when Lincoln was on the law circuit for months at a time.
Although the war changed their marriage, it did not alienate them from each other. In some ways, it brought them closer together. It forced Mary to choose between her Confederate relatives and her husband’s cause. It stimulated the couple’s shared hospitality to White House visitors. It also brought deaths that bonded them in tragedy—the ongoing casualties of the war and the devastating loss of their eleven-year-old son Willie, who died of typhoid in 1862. Willie’s death resulted in her communicating with his spirit through mediums at séances that the president sometimes attended. He got surprising answers from spiritualists—not about the afterlife but about politics and the world around him.
LADY PRESIDENT
We understand the variety of roles Mary Lincoln played when we compare her to previous first ladies, who can be roughly separated into four groups: invalids, hostesses, apolitical wives, and political helpmates or advisers.
Among the invalids, the most reclusive ones were Letitia Tyler, largely restricted, after a paralytic stroke, to an upstairs room in the White House, and Jane Pierce, incapacitated by depression and catatonia after the death in a train accident of her only surviving son. (Hawthorne, a friend of the Pierces’, called her “that death’s head” in the White House.)1 Depressive disorder also hobbled Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams. Elizabeth Monroe was well enough to give receptions, but her snobbishness turned off visitors, and various illnesses—apparently rheumatoid arthritis, epilepsy, and gastrointestinal disease—curtailed her activities. Even the formidable Abigail Adams, that pioneering promoter of women’s equality, was beset with maladies that kept her at home in Quincy, Massachusetts, away from John Adams’s presidential residences in Philadelphia and then in Washington for all but eighteen months of his four-year term. Also, Abigail chafed against the public exposure of the role, which she compared to being “fastend up Hand and foot and Tongue to be shot as our Quincy Lads do at the poor Geese and Turkies.”2
Martha Washington also felt trapped by publicity. She hosted presidential receptions but lamented, “I think I am a state prisoner more than anything else,” explaining that although she occupied “a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be prodigiously pleased,” she would “much rather be at home.”3 Margaret (Peggy) Taylor, in effect, did stay home, even in the White House. She had not wanted Zachary to be the Whig nominee for the presidency, and when the Whigs chose him anyway, he joked that his wife prayed for his defeat in the election. During his abbreviated term, Peggy Taylor managed the enslaved workers in the White House, took care of the garden, attended church every day, and cared for her family. She refused to act as the hostess for receptions. She left that to her young daughter, Elizabeth Taylor Dandridge, popularly known as “Miss Betty.”
This turning over social duties to a relative other than one’s wife occurred among other presidents, including Andrew Jackson, who lost his wife during the 1828 campaign and took on his capable niece Emily Donelson as a surrogate first lady; Martin Van Buren, whose wife had died in 1819 and whose young daughter-in-law Angelica Van Buren served as the White House hostess; John Tyler, whose daughter-in-law, an actress, stood in for the sickly Letitia until John married the sparkling Julia Gardiner; and the bachelor James Buchanan, whose niece, the blond, blue-eyed Harriet Lane, became a much photographed celebrity who enlivened the scene with parties and distinguished guests.
The gold standard among early first ladies was Dolley Madison. A warm hostess who made guests feel relaxed and at home, she also redecorated the Executive Mansion, did charity work for orphaned girls, and was a fashion doyenne who wore colorful dresses, a turban, and scarves. Dolley often guided political conversations. Nor was she alone among first ladies to do so: Emily Donelson, for instance, was not shy about standing up to Andrew Jackson, and even the aloof Peggy Taylor kept apprised of her husband’s political doings.
How does Mary Lincoln compare with the earlier first ladies? She had things in common with many of them. Although she was never an invalid for long periods, she did remove herself from the public arena twice: in the months immediately following the death of Willie on February 20, 1862; and for about three weeks after she injured her head in a carriage accident on July 2, 1863. As a White House hostess, she shined. At the many events she hosted, she dressed elegantly and put to use her talkativeness and charm. Her cultured background gave her a worldly sparkle. The one group of former first ladies she bore little resemblance to were the apolitical ones. She often gave political advice to her husband, and she met regularly with Washington politicians. William Herndon remarked that she was like a toothache, keeping her husband “awake to politics day and night.”4
To mention politics is to raise the issue of slavery. James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Zachary Taylor, after all, were slaveholders, and their wives accepted slavery, as did those of other slaveholders, such as Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Tyler, and Polk. (Sarah Childress Polk is an instance of a presidential wife who quietly but powerfully supported her husband’s position as a slaveholder.)5 Because twelve American presidents owned enslaved workers, eight of them while in office, it was rare that an early first lady did not condone the South’s peculiar institution. Jane Pierce, who was from an abolitionist background, was an exception, but her timid, dour nature and her husband’s resistance to abolition minimized her influence—in contrast to Mary Lincoln, who wrote, “I never failed to urge my husband to be an extreme Republican.”6 That is, she always pushed him toward a strongly antislavery position.
It is notable that one of Mary’s closest friends in Washington was Elizabeth Keckly, her African American dressmaker. Formerly enslaved by a Virginian who manumitted her, Keckly, who was forty-three in 1861, had a light-complexioned son who enlisted as a white man in the Union army and died in battle in August of that year. A skilled tailor, Lizzy Keckly worked faithfully for Mary, making elaborate dresses and helping tend to the Lincolns’ two boys. The kindly, intelligent Keckly was a ubiquitous presence, and Mary confided in her, especially in times of crisis. Mary also contributed to Keckly’s Contraband Relief Association, which found housing, medical care, and clothing for freed people in Washington.
Among political figures in the capital, Mary’s favorite was Charles Sumner, the fervently antislavery Republican senator from Massachusetts. A tall, handsome bachelor in his fifties, Sumner could be stiff, but the loquacious Mary drew him off his pedestal. She said she was pleased that this “cold & haughty looking man to the world . . . visited no other lady,” and “we would have such frequent and delightful conversations & often late in the evening—my darling husband would join us.”7 Among the topics discussed were slavery and writings by Sumner’s antislavery friends, including Whittier, Emerson, and Longfellow. Not only was Sumner a Radical Republican, but he was a famous antislavery martyr whom a Southern politician had beaten nearly to death in the Senate in 1856.
While friendly to Sumner, Mary did not feel the same about all the antislavery politicians she knew. She lashed out against competitors for her husband’s position. She harshly criticized two ambitious cabinet members, Salmon Chase and William Henry Seward. Seeing Chase as a selfish politician, not a true patriot, she warned Lincoln “not to trust him too far.”8 And she called Seward “worse than Chase.” When she heard Lincoln tell someone that he was appointing Seward as his secretary of state, Mary exclaimed, “Never! Never! Seward in the Cabinet!” She insisted that Seward would get the credit if things went right, while her husband would be blamed if they did not.9 Lincoln told her, “Mother, you are mistaken; your prejudices are so violent that you do not stop to reason. Seward is an able man, and the country as well as myself can trust him
The dialogue was typical: Mary made a passionate outburst that prompted his rational reaction. As was often the case, Mary’s tirade contained some truth. After all, Seward announced himself early on as the “Premier” of the government, and Chase schemed to run against Lincoln in 1864. She was also not far off when, in the midst of the cabinet upheaval of early 1863, she told Francis Blair Sr. “that there was not a member of the Cabinet who did not stab her husband & the Country daily” except his son Montgomery.11 Lincoln, when warned about such “intermeddling” by his wife, explained that she was just that way, adding, “Tell the gentleman not to be alarmed, for I myself manage all important matters.”12
Disputes also arose over generals. Lincoln probably came to agree with Mary that George McClellan was “a humbug” who “talks so much and does so little.”13 But he differed from her about Ulysses S. Grant. During the Overland campaign, Mary complained, “Grant is a butcher and is not fit to be at the head of an army.” She insisted that if the war continued for four more years “and he should remain in power, he would depopulate the North.” She added brashly, “I could fight an army as well myself”—prompting Lincoln’s reply, “Well, Mother, supposing that we give you command of the army. No doubt you would do much better than any general that has been tried.”
He said this with a smile, but he had made a similar remark when venting his own frustration after Meade let Lee’s army escape after Gettysburg: “If I had gone up there, I could have whipped them myself.”14 He knew that Mary had strong enough feelings against the Confederacy to share his passing fantasies of military action. Some women, after all, did fight in the Civil War. About four hundred to seven hundred women disguised themselves as men and went to the war front.15 The best-documented case of a female soldier, the Union volunteer Sarah Edmonds, gives us a clue about women who assumed military roles. Edmonds said she was inspired when as a girl she had read Maturin Murray Ballou’s popular novel Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain (1845), about a woman sea captain who fights the British during the American Revolution.16 Ballou emphasizes the traditionally manly capabilities of his heroine: “Fanny could row a boat, shoot a panther, ride the wildest horse in the province, or do almost any brave and useful act.”17 Fanny Campbell typified the bold, adventurous woman character of popular literature who took on male roles.18 This character was featured in much of the writing of the period, from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Catharine Sedgwick to pulp adventure fiction to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, where the speaker extols women who “know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves.”19 Sarah Edmonds, patterning herself after Fanny Campbell, volunteered for the Union army and in the course of the war donned eleven disguises, including that of a black contraband, in order to go to the battlefront.
Mary Lincoln, of course, did not seriously entertain volunteering for the army, but she probably knew of adventurous heroines from her wide-ranging reading. Also, she got a closer look at military life than had most previous first ladies. She got to know the Zouaves who stayed in the grand rooms of the White House early in the war. She met wounded veterans who lived at the Soldiers’ Home, an enclave on the outskirts of Washington that became the Lincolns’ summer retreat. She made visits to the war hospitals in Washington, handing out food, flowers, and reading material to wounded soldiers, and writing letters for them. She reviewed troops with her husband, often along with her excited boys, and she sometimes went to the front with him.
The male role Mary Lincoln was most commonly said to have assumed was that of Lady President. While she claimed that politicians like Chase and Seward were trying to take the place of her husband, journalists made the same point about her. As early as September 1861, five months into the war, the Springfield Republican reported that “Mrs. Lincoln’s political influences are the theme of all who returned from Washington”; she was “ambitious of having a finger in every government pie; being much in conversation with cabinet members, and holding correspondence with them on political matters; making the political fortunes of men; suggesting to the president some of his ideas and projects.”
All of this was true. Mary did have regular dialogues with politicians, and she often gave her husband advice. What was most surprising was that this political involvement by a woman did not raise more eyebrows than it did. After all, this was a time when women were expected to keep out of political discussions. Women’s rights lecturers were roundly denounced, and even the popular Harriet Beecher Stowe shied from public speaking; when huge crowds greeted her on an 1852 tour after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she had her husband or brother speak for her.
What saved Mary Lincoln from wholesale public rejection were her seemingly ambiguous political views and her domestic and hostessing activities, which were at the time typed as “womanly.” She was far removed from Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, or other controversial women who preached radical reform. Mary’s background as the daughter in a slaveholding family actually helped her. A reporter speculated that she was probably “neutral” politically because she was from the border state of Kentucky and had Confederate relatives.21
Such statements provided a cover for Lincoln, who wanted to avoid appearing as a dangerous abolitionist. Mary’s Southern background, like his, helped shield him from being typed as an extremist. The Confederate sympathizers in Mary’s family were often mentioned in the press, as in a widely reprinted article, “Mrs. Lincoln’s Secession Relatives” (sometimes titled “Old Abe’s Kentucky Relatives”).22 Through this article and similar ones, her Southern connections became familiar to the public. Of her seven half brothers and half sisters who were living at the time of the Civil War, all but one supported the Confederacy, as did their mother (Mary’s stepmother). One of her Confederate half brothers, Sam, died at Shiloh in April 1862; another, Aleck, died that August by friendly fire near Baton Rouge; a third, David, was seriously wounded at Vicksburg. Her full brother George, another staunch Confederate, served as a surgeon in the Army of Northern Virginia and was with Lee at Gettysburg and other battles. Her brother-in-law, Benjamin Hardin Helm, having rejected Lincoln’s offer to serve as paymaster for the Union army, fought for the South and was killed at Chickamauga in 1863.
Although these deaths were publicly known, Mary’s reaction to them was not until it was revealed two years after the war. She did not make much of the deaths. In fact, she shocked a friend who visited her in the Executive Mansion by saying that she hoped her Confederate relatives would die or be captured, because “they would kill my husband if they could, and destroy our government—the dearest of all things to us.”23 As for Aleck, despite her past affection for him, she said, “He made his choice long ago. He decided against my husband, and through him against me. He has been fighting against us; and since he chose to be our deadly enemy, I see no special reason why I should bitterly mourn his death.”24 When the press reported that her half brother David Todd had tortured Union captives while in command of Richmond’s Libby Prison, she remarked that “by no word or act of hers should he escape punishment for his treason against her husband and government.”25
Her common references in these statements were her husband and his cause. Her love for Lincoln merged with her patriotic fervor, providing her—and him—with a sure anchor in a time of national crisis.
The death of Benjamin Hardin Helm hit the Lincolns especially hard. Ben had refused the president’s offer of the paymastership reluctantly, feeling that his true loyalty was with the South. Lincoln was deeply disturbed by his choice, and when he received the news of Helms’s death in battle, he said, “I feel as David of old did when he heard of the death of Absalom. ‘Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’”26 Lincoln invited Emilie Todd Helm, Ben’s widow, to Washington, and she stayed in the White House for three weeks. “Little Sister” Emilie was dear to Mary; she and Abe tearfully embraced the widow and offered her and her three children a permanent home. She returned to Lexington, though, and by the next year she was blaming the Lincolns for the deaths of her husband and her half brother Levi. She told a Union general and Northern senator that if she had twenty sons “they would all be fighting yours.”27 In 1864, she wrote the Lincolns, begging for money and declaring, “I also would remind you that your Minnie bullets have made us what we are.”28 This statement ended the relationship. Mary never contacted her again.
The painful situation of a family torn by divided loyalties during the Civil War was not uncommon. Four of Henry Clay’s grandsons fought for the Confederacy, and three others for the Union. Francis Lieber had one son who died while fighting for the South; two other sons served the North. One of Senator John J. Crittenden’s sons was a Union general, another a Confederate one. D. W. Griffith would exploit the divided-family motif in his film The Birth of a Nation (1915).
However, loyalties were definitely not divided in the White House. The deaths in Mary’s family, though sad, were vivid reminders that millions of Southerners were willing to die in order to defend slavery and destroy the Union—anathema to both of the Lincolns. In the end, it was an advantage to Lincoln to be married to a woman with Confederate relatives. If retaining Kentucky, a slaveholding border state, was, in his view, crucial to the North’s success in the war, being married to a woman who chose the Northern cause over her Confederate relatives showed that antislavery commitment and loyalty to the Union could trump family ties.
MARY’S MANY ROLES
Mary’s loyalty to her husband and his cause fed into her jealousy of potential rivals for his affection. Elizabeth Keckly considered her “extremely jealous,” explaining that “if a lady decided to court her displeasure, she could select no surer way to do it than to pay marked attention to the President. These little jealous freaks were often a source of perplexity to Mr. Lincoln.”29 One evening when he asked her before a party whom he should talk with that night and mentioned a “Mrs. D.,” she lambasted her as a “deceitful woman” who merely flattered him. When he inquired if there was anyone else he should talk with, she said that he should “not talk to anybody in particular,” adding, “you know well enough, Mr. Lincoln, that I do not approve of your flirtations with silly women, just as if you were a beardless boy, fresh from school.”
She had especially hard feelings toward the lovely young star of Washington society, Kate Chase. Tall, buxom yet svelte, with hazel eyes and lush auburn hair, Kate Chase was as sociable as Mrs. Lincoln and was politically involved, too: she was ambitious for her father, Salmon Chase, and she advantageously married the wealthy William Sprague, the governor of Rhode Island. At first she tried to use Mary to gain sway over President Lincoln, but when that failed, she backed off. Mary, for her part, grew suspicious and jealous of her. In the fall of 1863 she refused to attend the wedding of Kate Chase and William Sprague, and Lincoln attended it alone. In January 1864, Mary insisted that neither Kate nor her husband or father should be invited to a dinner for cabinet members. Lincoln erupted in anger. John Nicolay reported, “There soon arose such a rampage as the House hasn’t seen for a year.”30
A more public exhibition of Mary’s possessiveness occurred in March 1865, when the Lincolns were visiting General Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia. One day Lincoln and others went ahead to visit the front. When she later arrived, Adam Badeau, one of Grant’s staff, mentioned in passing that Lincoln had permitted the young wife of one of the generals to remain there, unlike the
0 Comments