{"id":153,"date":"2026-06-05T09:09:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=153"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:09:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:09:37","slug":"mary-todd-lincoln-reconsidered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=153","title":{"rendered":"Mary Todd Lincoln Reconsidered"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In May 1875, almost precisely 10 years after an assassin\u2019s bullet felled the 16th president, his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, learned she was to stand trial just an hour before the proceedings began. Clad in full mourning dress with her face veiled, Mary faced a jury assembled to determine whether she was insane.<\/p>\n

Read more Does MAGA Actually Believe Their Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories?<\/a><\/p>\n

It was an unimaginable betrayal. Mary\u2019s sole surviving child, Robert, ashamed by her increasingly erratic behavior, which threatened his burgeoning political career and his marriage, had initiated the process to commit his mother to an asylum.<\/p>\n

The trial marked the culmination of a decade-long nightmare for the former first lady. Traumatized by her husband\u2019s violent death, which she witnessed firsthand, Mary had refused to leave the White House for six weeks. She did not take part in any of the two-week-long funeral ceremonies in Washington, D.C., or accompany the slain president\u2019s casket on the train to Illinois for burial. Mary later described the weeks after the assassination as \u201ca bed of illness & many days & nights of almost positive derangement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Mary had endured the unimaginable loss of three of her four sons in the years before, during, and after the presidency. Both three-year-old Eddie and her \u201cidolized child of the household,\u201d 11-year-old Willie, had succumbed to tuberculosis. Eighteen-year-old Tad, his widowed mother\u2019s closest companion, died of pleurisy and congestive heart failure six years after Lincoln\u2019s assassination, leaving Mary bereft and alone.<\/p>\n

Mary\u2019s profound grief was exacerbated by financial strain. While Lincoln had left a considerable estate, the former attorney inexplicably died without a will. An executor took over two years to settle his affairs\u2014leaving Mary and Tad virtually homeless, shuffling between middling hotels and cheap boardinghouses. To make matters worse, she had racked up a massive debt from years of shopping sprees. There was no precedent for the nation to provide financial support for a president\u2019s widow, and Congress rejected Mary\u2019s pleas for succor. Even after the estate was resolved, Mary careened from extreme thrift to wild spending, all the while humiliated by her diminished circumstances.<\/p>\n

In the Chicago courtroom, a parade of seventeen witnesses\u2014including doctors who had never examined Mary and merchants who had eagerly sold her luxury goods\u2014testified to her mental instability. Robert might have insisted on a closed hearing, but instead permitted the public and the Chicago press corps to attend, ensuring his mother\u2019s humiliation.<\/p>\n

The jury deliberated for just 10 minutes before declaring Mary Lincoln insane. Increasingly paranoid about financial security, Mary had begun carrying the modern equivalent of $30,000 in cash and $1,000,000 in securities pinned to her undergarments. Robert instructed his lawyer to remove the bonds hidden in her petticoats. \u201cYou are not satisfied with locking me up in an insane asylum,\u201d Mary cried. \u201cBut now you are going to rob me of all I have on earth; my husband is dead, and my children are dead, and these bonds I have saved for my necessities in my old age; now you are going to rob me of them.\u201d It was an astonishing denouement for a former first lady, once accustomed to a life of luxury and influence.<\/p>\n

In An Inconvenient Widow<\/em>, Lois Romano, a former writer and editor at The Washington Post<\/em> and Politico<\/em>, seeks to correct the \u201cunsettled legacy\u201d of \u201cthe most misunderstood and tragic first lady in American history,\u201d offering a sympathetic and nuanced portrait of a complex, resilient woman scorned during her lifetime and maligned by historians since. With a journalist\u2019s instinct, Romano scrutinizes primary sources that shaped scholarly portrayals of Mary as difficult or crazy, casting a skeptical eye toward those she deems unreliable, tainted by grudges, or lacking in personal knowledge of the Lincolns.<\/p>\n

Chief among these is Lincoln\u2019s former junior law partner, William Herndon. Many historians today now view Herndon as an unreliable source who exaggerated his relationship with the president and loathed the first lady. Remarkably, a year after the assassination, Herndon delivered a bizarre public lecture on the Lincolns\u2019 love life, depicting the late president as trapped in a miserable marriage, pining for a lost flame of his youth. Romano asserts that this claim lacked any basis in fact. Over the decades that followed, Herndon\u2019s damning portrayal of the first lady hardened. He variously described Mary as \u201c\u2018cold as a chunk of ice,\u2019 avaricious, stingy, insolent, insulting, a tigress and a she-wolf.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the early 20th century, Herndon\u2019s skewed portrayal had taken root, and given rise to a notion of Mary as the president\u2019s cross to bear. \u201cThe more Lincoln\u2019s legend soared, the more Mary\u2019s reputation declined,\u201d Romano writes. As evidence, she cites a 1932 Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> article, which opened, \u201cThe great tragedy of Lincoln\u2019s life was not his assassination but his marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while Herndon\u2019s commentary on the Lincolns\u2019 marriage may have had little factual basis, his vituperative attacks on Mary\u2019s character echoed those of others who knew her well. Mary\u2019s list of detractors included cabinet secretaries, a Supreme Court justice, and White House staff. Lincoln\u2019s personal secretary, John Hay, dubbed her \u201cthe hellcat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romano neither dismisses nor minimizes Mary\u2019s character flaws and troubling behavior. \u201cMary did herself no favors,\u201d she acknowledges. \u201cShe was a larger-than-life, provocative character who spent too freely, grieved too publicly and for too long, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. When she felt threatened or attacked, she could be catty, vengeful, and imperious.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Of her various foibles, Mary\u2019s proclivity toward fine goods and her unbridled spending\u2014expensive clothing for herself and decor for the White House\u2014drew the greatest public scrutiny. Despite her considerable political acumen, she could be remarkably tone deaf. For instance, in the spring of 1861, as young men were pressed to join the army and Congress struggled to pay for the war, Mary purchased a grand piano, draperies, a 190-piece set of fine china, and Parisian wallpaper during a lavish shopping spree in Philadelphia and New York. Romano depicts Mary as a compulsive shopper who once purchased 1,000 pairs of white gloves for herself. White House staff recalled stacks upon stacks of unopened boxes, filled with Mary\u2019s expensive, unworn clothing and jewels.<\/p>\n

Mary\u2019s insanity trial serves as the book\u2019s climactic scene, but it was hardly the first time Mary had faced scandal and mockery. \u201cThe ridicule she faced as a former first lady is unfathomable by today\u2019s standards,\u201d Romano writes. Even\u2014and perhaps especially\u2014in widowhood, her critics had no mercy. Sadly, Mary supplied them with ammunition. In 1867, she attempted to blackmail Republican Party luminaries into buying her cast-off wardrobe, threatening to publicly shame them for refusing her a widow\u2019s pension. The plan backfired spectacularly: Several politicians leaked the story, and over 2,000 newspapers ran it, with one characterizing Mary\u2019s actions as \u201cvulgar, mortifying, disgusting, deranged, and revolting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romano balances Mary\u2019s less desirable traits with her more admirable qualities, refuting specific attacks. Among the most pernicious was the accusation that Mary\u2014born into a wealthy Kentucky slaveholding family\u2014was a Confederate sympathizer. On the contrary, Romano offers substantial evidence that Mary was deeply supportive of the Union, joining her husband on trips to the front line and regularly visiting injured soldiers in military hospitals.<\/p>\n

Indeed, thanks to Romano\u2019s multidimensional biography, one can imagine a modern-day PR professional spinning an entirely different story for the challenging first lady. To wit: growing up in the relatively cosmopolitan Lexington, Kentucky, Mary Todd lived in proximity to power and wealth, and was influenced by family friend Henry Clay, whom Lincoln called his \u201cbeau ideal\u201d as a statesman and politician, who notably opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. Mary read widely, received an unusually robust education for an early 19th<\/sup>-century woman, and spoke fluent French.<\/p>\n

As a young woman, she was surrounded by suitors, including her husband\u2019s future political rival, Stephen A. Douglas, who would defeat Lincoln in 1858 to become U.S. Senator from Illinois and was his Democratic opponent in the 1860 presidential race. Much to her family\u2019s chagrin, Mary selected instead the promising but uncouth Lincoln. Politically astute, Mary saw the presidency as Lincoln\u2019s destiny, despite his slim national experience as a one-term congressman more than a decade earlier. When party leaders suggested he might have a shot at the vice presidency, Mary urged him to hold out for the top of the ticket.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in an era when political wives\u2014even first ladies\u2014performed few public functions, Mary envisioned a visible role for herself. When Lincoln entered Congress in 1847, 28-year-old Mary took the unusual step of accompanying him to the nation\u2019s capital. As future Supreme Court Justice David Davis, Lincoln\u2019s friend and future executor, presciently noted: \u201cShe wishes to loom largely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romano leans heavily on psychological explanations for Mary\u2019s erratic behavior, relying on recent scholarship positing that the first lady\u2019s conduct bore hallmarks of bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a genetic predisposition toward acute anxiety and emotional instability\u2014exacerbated by the deaths of her sons and husband. \u201cOne by one, I have consigned to their resting place my idolized ones,\u201d Mary wrote, \u201cand now, in this world, there is nothing left for me but the deepest anguish and desolation.\u201d\u00a0\u201cFew among us,\u201d Romano muses, \u201ccould survive such profound losses without the help of psychiatric professionals or contemporary anxiety and mood medication. Mary had neither.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romano devotes the most interesting portion of the biography to Mary\u2019s 17-year widowhood, a deeply painful period characterized by grief, financial strain, illness, and despair. Much of Mary\u2019s misery was internal, as Romano\u2019s ruminations on her mental health elucidate, but perhaps the nation bore responsibility for her suffering as well. <\/p>\n

Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated, and there was no precedent for bestowing public honor\u2014financial or otherwise\u2014befitting a former first lady. Mary saw herself as an extension of the martyred president and believed the nation, and particularly the Republican party leaders who had benefited from Lincoln\u2019s patronage, owed her. She was baffled that, in a country that routinely raised funds for orphans and widows, no wealthy benefactors stepped forward to assist her, and especially galled by the generosity bestowed on General Ulysses S. Grant\u2014who was gifted three \u201cmagnificent\u201d mansions stocked with linens, silver, and food. \u201cLife is certainly coleur de rose to him\u2014if it is all darkness & gloom to the unhappy family of the fallen chief,\u201d Mary wrote bitterly. After five years of Congressional debate, Mary was finally awarded a paltry $3,000 annual pension. \u201cIt mortifies me,\u201d she wrote, \u201cin this land, for which my precious husband\u2019s life was sacrificed, I am unable \u2026 to shelter myself under my own roof.\u201d <\/p>\n

Throughout, the book seems to be asking Mary\u2019s central question: What does a nation owe to those who sacrifice everything? Romano gives no answer, but by chronicling Mary\u2019s grief with the urgency of a talented journalist, she gives her the best gift she can: a refurbished legacy.<\/p>\n

Read more Real Men Teach\u2014But We Need More of Them<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln\u2019s widow, has been lampooned as a narcissistic nut job, but her life of pain and loss was far more nuanced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,8,18,2],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-foreign-policy","category-higher-education","category-law-and-justice","category-politics","tag-tagged-abraham-lincoln-first-lady-lincoln-douglas-debates-mary-todd-lincoln-political-assassination-republican-party-stephen-a-douglas-the-civil-war-u"],"yoast_head":"\nMary Todd Lincoln Reconsidered - USA Business Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=153\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mary Todd Lincoln Reconsidered - USA Business Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln\u2019s widow, has been lampooned as a narcissistic nut job, but her life of pain and loss was far more nuanced.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=153\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"USA Business Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-05T09:09:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/usabusinesschronicle.com\\\/?p=153#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/usabusinesschronicle.com\\\/?p=153\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/usabusinesschronicle.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/b63e0267c8881fa22972f2a01b50d366\"},\"headline\":\"Mary Todd Lincoln Reconsidered\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-05T09:09:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/usabusinesschronicle.com\\\/?p=153\"},\"wordCount\":1880,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/usabusinesschronicle.com\\\/?p=153#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/usabusinesschronicle.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/0484d2885a42fb83cac700d8a8714527.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Tagged: Abraham Lincoln,\u00a0first lady,\u00a0Lincoln-Douglas Debates,\u00a0Mary Todd Lincoln,\u00a0political assassination,\u00a0Republican Party,\u00a0Stephen A. 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