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Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case
A Documentary History
By JASON EMERSON
University of Illinois Press
Copyright © 2012 Jason Emerson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-03707-8
Chapter One
April 1865–May 1875
The specific time and cause of the onset of Mary Lincoln's mental troubles is debated and debatable, but, until the late twentieth century, the general consensus by citizens, journalists, family and friends, and even Robert Lincoln, was that President Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865, was the catalyst that drove Mary Lincoln insane.
The first three selections, written within a month after the shooting, were penned by two Lincoln family friends (Anson Henry and Horatio Taft) and by the commissioner of public buildings (Benjamin French); the latter encountered Mary Lincoln on a nearly daily basis.
DR. ANSON G. HENRY TO HIS WIFE Washington, D.C., April 19, 1865
My Dear Wife,
Today has been the saddest day of my life, if indeed one can be sadder than another of the sad days that has shrouded the nation in gloom....
I was in Richmond on the night of the assassination. The next day in the afternoon I went down to City Point and met the sad news. I was so stunned by the blow that I could not realize that he was dead until I saw him lying in the [White House] Guest's chamber cold and still in the embrace of Death. Then the terrible truth flashed upon me and the fountain of tears was broken up and I wept like a child refusing to be comforted....
After recovering my composure I sought the presence of poor broken hearted Mrs. Lincoln. I found her in bed more composed than I had anticipated, but the moment I came within her reach she threw her arms around my neck and wept most hysterically for several minutes, and this completely unmanned me again, but my sympathy was to her most consoling, and for half an hour she talked very composedly about what had transpired between her and her husband the day and evening of his death, which I will tell you when we meet. She says he was more cheerful and joyous that day and evening than he had been for years. When at dinner he complained of being worn out with the incessant toils of the day, and proposed to go to the Theater and have a laugh over the Country Cousin. She says she discouraged going, on account of a bad headache, but he insisted that he must go, for if he stayed home he would have no rest for he would be obliged to see company all evening as usual.
Finding that he decided to go, she could not think of having him go without her, never having felt so unwilling to be away from him. She sat close to him and was leaning in his lap looking up in his face when the fatal shot was fired, his last words being in answer to her question "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on you so"—"She won't think anything about it"—and said accompanied with one of his kind and affectionate smiles. Yes, that look and expression is stamped upon her soul so indelibly to ever be effaced by time, and its recollection will never fail to soothe and comfort her in her hours of darkest affliction.
Lincoln Miscellaneous manuscripts, University of Chicago library
HORATIO NELSON TAFT Diary entry, April 30, 1865
The President of the United States has been assassinated. Abraham Lincoln, the good and kind hearted, was shot while sitting in his box at Ford's Theatre on the night of the 14th inst., at about half past ten o'clock....
When the shot was fired Mrs. Lincoln was sitting near her husband with her hand on his knee. She says she saw the flash and heard the report of the pistol, thinking it was in some way connected with the play. She leaned forward to see what it was, and then looked to Mr. Lincoln to see where he was looking. He was sitting with his head drooped down and eyes shut. She was not alarmed at this, he sometimes held his head in that way when in deep thought, but she put her hand on his forehead and he not stirring she put it on the back of his head and feeling it wet she immediately withdrew it covered with blood. She then screamed and that is the last she remembered that took place in the Theatre. She says, as she put her hand on his head she recollects that something suddenly brushed past her and rubbing off her shawl. It was Booth as he jumped from the box. The president made no noise, nor attempted to speak, nor stirred a limb after he was shot, nor was he conscious for one moment from that time until he died. When his skin was touched or his hand was taken, there was a slight quiver or tremor of the muscles, but that was all....
[Lincoln was taken across the street to the Petersen house.] The room [he was placed in] is at the end of the entrance hall about 9 feet by 15, with two windows and three doors, one door entering from the hall, one at the left as you enter, opening to an open porch or piazza, and the other at the farther end of the room, opening into another small room from which stairs descended to the basement. Some few individuals came in to the room through that door clandestinely. Mrs. Lincoln occupied a room near by with some of her friends who were there. She went in frequently to see the president with Doct. Gurley (The family pastor) who had been sent for about 3 o'clock. She was not in the room when he died. Robert Lincoln was there and Dr. Gurley, the two private secretaries of the president Nicolay and Hay. Upon one occasion when Mrs. L went in and saw her husband she fainted and was carried out insensible. It was thought best for her not to be there when he died. Dr. Gurley prayed by the bedside of the president when he first arrived (at 3 o'clock). Then went into the room where Mrs. Lincoln was and prayed with her, and remained with her most of the time, accompanying her and supporting her into the room of the dying president when she visited it....
After the president died Dr. Gurley went to Mrs. L and told her "the president is dead." O—why did you not let me know? Why did you not tell me? "Your friends thought it was not best. You must be resigned to the will of God. You must be calm and trust in God and in your friends." She soon after left, with Dr. G. for her home.
Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft
BENJAMIN FRENCH TO PAMELA FRENCH Washington, D.C., May 21, 1865
I think I sent you a printed account of the week's events [after the assassination of President Lincoln], which I wrote for the Republican, so I need not write it here. ... Mrs. Lincoln expects to start for Chicago tomorrow. I think the tragical death of her husband has made her crazyer than she used to be—but the most unaccountable thing she ever did was to purchase about a thousand dollars worth of mourning goods the month before Mr. Lincoln died. What do you suppose possessed her to do it! Please keep that fact in your own house. I will sometime tell you what I have gone through since Mr. L's death. I cannot write it.
Benjamin Brown French Family Papers
After the assassination, Mary and her sons Robert and Tad moved to Chicago to begin a new life. Robert began studying law with the firm of Scammon, McCagg, and Fuller; and Tad, for the first time in his life, began attending school. Mary, during these first years of her widowhood, was consumed not only with grief but also with her finances. She left the White House carrying a debt of tens of thousands of dollars. The income from her husband's estate was modest, so Mary lobbied Congress for her husband's full four years of presidential salary—although she received recompense for only one year—and also requested she be paid a pension as a widow whose husband died in the performance of official duty.
By 1867, having received no pension, Mary believed herself to be on the brink of poverty. Using a pseudonym, she tried to raise money with a sale of her old White House gowns and jewelry in New York City. Her true identity quickly was uncovered and her entire effort was derided and ridiculed in the national press as an embarrassment to the memory of the Great Emancipator. Some commentators found her actions more than just humiliating and indelicate; they declared them unbalanced.
"MRS. LINCOLN [FINANCIAL CONDITIONS]" Illinois State Journal, Oct. 10, 1867
A special dispatch from Chicago to the St. Louis Democrat in referring to Mrs. Lincoln's recent mortifying statements in regard to her financial condition, says:
"Her conduct has greatly distressed her intimate friends and relatives in this city, and the most charitable construction that they can put upon her strange course is that she is insane, which I fear is the case."
The same explanation of her conduct, we understand, has been suggested by those who are acquainted with her in this place. Indeed an impression generally pervades our community that she has not been entirely in her right mind for several years. In this view, she deserves pity and commiseration instead of harsh and uncharitable judgment for her singular behavior.
Illinois State Journal, October 10, 1867, 1
Family friend and Lincoln estate executor David Davis called Mary's attempted clothing sale "an act of insanity" and when he confronted her about it he found that "she really had the insane delusion that poverty stared her in the face." 1 Mary's oldest son, Robert, agreed, as can be seen in a letter he wrote to his fiancée at the time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case by JASON EMERSON Copyright © 2012 by Jason Emerson. Excerpted by permission of University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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