The Life and Legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln E-Book

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: First Ladies
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 86

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

American presidents have shaped the course of global affairs for generations, but as the saying goes, behind every great man there’s a great woman. While the First Ladies often remain overshadowed by their husbands, some have carved unique niches in their time and left their own lasting legacy. Dolley Madison helped establish the role of the First Lady in the early 1800s, Eleanor Roosevelt gave voice to policy issues in a way that made her a forerunner of First Ladies like Hillary Clinton, and Jackie Kennedy created glamorous trends that made her more popular than her husband. In Charles River Editors’ First Ladies series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives and legacies of America’s most famous First Ladies in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

It’s possible that the world would have remembered Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) if only because she was the wife of one of America’s greatest presidents and present for his shocking assassination, but Mary was one of the most unique women to ever be First Lady, and she was in the White House during the country’s most trying time. But history hasn’t exactly been kind.

Mary was dealt a tough hand that might have made it impossible for her to ever be popular. The Civil War erupted a month after President Lincoln took office, and Mary was a native Southerner who had relatives fighting for the Confederacy. Making matters worse, Mary seemed out of touch with the times, organizing lavish balls at a time when the country was literally coming apart at the seams. As if the external pressure wasn’t trying enough, young Willie Lincoln died in the White House in 1862, sending Mary into such fits of grief that she might have never fully recovered from even before her husband’s assassination and the death of Tad in 1881.

Unfortunately, one of the things most associated with Mary is insanity. Having dealt with so much death, and already a superstitious woman to begin with, Mary was eventually institutionalized by her eldest son Robert, the only Lincoln child to reach adulthood. With her death in 1882, the perception of her as a generally out of touch, troubled woman was set.

First Ladies: The Life and Legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln looks at Mary’s turbulent life and the tragedies she was forced to endure, but it also humanizes her in an attempt to portray a more objective and comprehensive picture. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Mary Todd Lincoln like you never have before, in no time at all.

Leseprobe

First Ladies: The Life and Legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln

By Charles River Editors

About Charles River Editors

Charles River Editors was founded by Harvard and MIT alumni to provide superior editing and original writing services, with the expertise to create digital content for publishers across a vast range of subject matter. In addition to providing original digital content for third party publishers, Charles River Editors republishes civilization’s greatest literary works, bringing them to a new generation via ebooks.

Introduction

Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882)

American presidents have shaped the course of global affairs for generations, but as the saying goes, behind every great man there’s a great woman. While the First Ladies often remain overshadowed by their husbands, some have carved unique niches in their time and left their own lasting legacy. Dolley Madison helped establish the role of the First Lady in the early 1800s, Eleanor Roosevelt gave voice to policy issues in a way that made her a forerunner of First Ladies like Hillary Clinton, and Jackie Kennedy created glamorous trends that made her more popular than her husband. In Charles River Editors’ First Ladies series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives and legacies of America’s most famous First Ladies in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

It’s possible that the world would have remembered Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) if only because she was the wife of one of America’s greatest presidents and present for his shocking assassination, but Mary was one of the most unique women to ever be First Lady, and she was in the White House during the country’s most trying time. But history hasn’t exactly been kind.

Mary was dealt a tough hand that might have made it impossible for her to ever be popular. The Civil War erupted a month after President Lincoln took office, and Mary was a native Southerner who had relatives fighting for the Confederacy. Making matters worse, Mary seemed out of touch with the times, organizing lavish balls at a time when the country was literally coming apart at the seams. As if the external pressure wasn’t trying enough, young Willie Lincoln died in the White House in 1862, sending Mary into such fits of grief that she might have never fully recovered from even before her husband’s assassination and the death of Tad in 1881.

Unfortunately, one of the things most associated with Mary is insanity. Having dealt with so much death, and already a superstitious woman to begin with, Mary was eventually institutionalized by her eldest son Robert, the only Lincoln child to reach adulthood. With her death in 1882, the perception of her as a generally out of touch, troubled woman was set.

First Ladies: The Life and Legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln looks at Mary’s turbulent life and the tragedies she was forced to endure, but it also humanizes her in an attempt to portray a more objective and comprehensive picture. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Mary Todd Lincoln like you never have before, in no time at all.

First Ladies: The Life and Legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln

About Charles River Editors

Introduction

Chapter 1: Early Years

Chapter 2: Becoming Mary Todd Lincoln

Having Children

Chapter 3: Congressman Lincoln

Chapter 4: The First Tragedies

Chapter 5: Lincoln the Republican

A New Party

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Chapter 6: The Election of 1860

Secession

Chapter 7: In the White House

Spending

Entertaining

Coping with Tragedies

Chapter 8: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Chapter 9: Life after the White House

Traveling

Final Years

Bibliography

Chapter 1: Early Years

Mary Todd Lincoln’s Childhood Home. Photo by Russell and Sydney Poore

Mary Todd was born on December 13, 1818 in Lexington, Kentucky, the fourth child of parents Robert Smith and Elizabeth Parker Todd, a wealthy and well respected couple in the community. Her paternal great-grandfather had come to Kentucky from Pennsylvania more than a century before, managing to work hard enough to build a comfortable home for his family. By the time Mary was born, her father had established a successful career as a banker and was well on his way to a term in the state senate. Though healthy at the time of Mary’s birth, Elizabeth would lose her life to a bacterial infection following the birth of her seventh child, when Mary was only six.

Not surprisingly, Robert Todd soon set about to find a new mother for his house full of children. The following year he married another Elizabeth (Betsy) Humphreys. While Betsy eventually came to bear eight children herself, she was not particularly fond of her step-children, so 8 year old Mary and her older siblings were sent away to boarding school shortly after the wedding.

Mary spent her first five years of school in John Ward’s Shelby Female Academy. There she studied and mastered English grammar, geography and basic arithmetic, as well as poetry and literature, at which she excelled. Normally, graduating from such a school at 13 would have marked the end of a southern girl’s education, but perhaps because she was so bright, or maybe because his wife didn’t want her to come home, Robert sent Mary on to Madame Mentelle’s, a popular boarding school founded and run by Augustas Waldemare and Charlotte Victorie Leclerc Mentelle. Born in Paris, the Mentelles had left their native land decades earlier at the height of the French Revolution. By the time 14 year old Mary Todd became their student in 1832, they had run their school successfully since 1805

Though the school was well known for being very French and very exclusive, there was never any doubt that Mary would be accepted. After all, her great-aunt Mary Todd, for whom she was named, had given the land on which the school sat to the nearly destitute French aristocrats more than a decade before. The fact that the property adjoined the famous Henry Clay estate of Ashland made it even more valuable.

Mary’s years at Madame Mentelle proved to be the most formative of her life. Not only did she learn singing, dancing and how to speak and write fluent French, but Madame Mentelle herself became Mary’s standard of the perfect, well-rounded woman. She played the violin beautifully, told exciting stories and spent hours a day reading, writing and walking, all the while talking to herself or anyone who would listen. Most people who knew her found her odd, but Mary found her delightful, and she encouraged Mary to expand her interest beyond just the social graces and read the works of Victor Hugo and Shakespeare, as well as study astronomy.

When Mary returned home for holidays from Madame Mentelle’s, she stayed in the large, fourteen room late Georgian style brick mansion her father had purchased. Located on the fashionable Main Street in Lexington, it was originally built as an inn by William Palmateer in 1806 and was the perfect house for a man with 16 children. It also provided ample room for entertaining the important guests he encountered as a member of the Lexington social elite, the most important of which was usually Kentucky Senator and three-time presidential candidate Henry Clay. Like her father, Clay was a southerner and a Whig. He would spend the rest of his political career trying to stave off the coming war that would so alter the life of both the country and Mary herself.

Henry Clay

Though the house was large enough for all his children, several of them never lived there. By the time Mary entered Madame Mentelle’s, her older brother had moved out entirely and was making his own way in the world. Her oldest sister, Elizabeth, was a new bride with a home of her own, having married Ninian Edwards the previous year. The son of the future governor of Illinois, Edwards had come to Lexington to study at Transylvania University. When he graduated, he took Elizabeth back to Springfield, where he planned to follow his father’s footsteps into politics.

Back at home for her first summer vacation, Mary found herself not fitting in well with the rest of the household. Her younger siblings and half-siblings remembered no other mother than Betsy, who had raised them and cared for them from their earliest years. However, Mary had spent her formative years in boarding school far from any mother’s care, much less Betsy’s. Betsy and Robert had their hands full with the other children, so they had little time to help her find her place back in young society. As a result, Mary spent the next three summers with older sister Frances, who had marred a prominent doctor she had met while visiting Elizabeth and was now also living in Springfield.

Chapter 2: Becoming Mary Todd Lincoln

When Mary graduated from Madame Mentelle’s in 1837, she still didn’t want to live at home. So, rather than move in permanently with either Elizabeth or Frances, she took a job as a junior teacher at her own alma mater, Shelby Female Academy. However, by the time she had been there two years the family was becoming increasingly concerned that she might remain a spinster, since the work of a junior teacher at an all-girl’s school did not provide many opportunities to meet eligible young men. Thus, they insisted that she move to Springfield and live with Elizabeth.

For Mary, living in Springfield was like being let out of a cage. Ninian and Elizabeth entertained frequently and, because of his father’s position in government, hosted some of the most notable members of the Springfield elite. As the new girl in town, Mary was the belle of every ball and soon a popular member of the Coterie, a group of young adults who were devoted to politics and the arts. However, since most of them were unmarried, they were also pretty devoted to interacting with each other at parties, sleigh rides, and picnics, too.

Mary had no shortage of potential suitors, one of which included Stephen A. Douglas, who would later become the “Little Giant” and the Senator from Illinois who famously debated Mary’s future husband in the country’s most famous debates.

Douglas

One of the men who met her during this time later described Mary as follows: