Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln

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New Lincoln Pennies On the Way

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Bicentennial, Lincoln pennies, Mary Todd Lincoln on February 6, 2009| 4 Comments »

penny-with-lincoln-memorial

In one week, the nation will celebrate the 200th birthday of our most revered president, Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 14, 1865). To commemorate the birthday of our 16th president and the issuing of the first penny a century ago, the U.S. Mint is issuing four new pennies. The “heads” side of the penny bearing Lincoln’s image remains the same while the “tails” side will alternate four new designs which represent the four major aspects of President Lincoln’s life:

Birth and early childhood in Kentucky (1809-1816)
Formative years in Indiana (1816-1830)
Professional Life in Illinois (1830-1861)
Presidency in Washington, DC (1861-1865)

Click here to see the unveiling of the images of the new coins at a ceremony held last September in Washington, D.C.

I hadn’t intended to write about Abe Lincoln today. Rather, for days now, I’ve gorged myself reading about his wife Mary, hoping soon to come to the end of the book and Internet material on her and get down to blogging. Well that is an impossible task. There is no end of Lincolnology. At last count, there were upward of 15,000 books about Abe and Mary, more than about any other person except Jesus.

A visit to the official website of the Lincoln Bicentennial assures me that I can blog all year on the Lincolns and be in step with the rest of the country, as celebrations and exhibits go on for the next eleven months.

While I was googling the image of the Lincoln Memorial which I present here, I got all misty-eyed.

Lincoln statue within the Lincoln Memorial

What a great man Abraham Lincoln was. After reading about his life with Mary, I come away with even more admiration. What a difficult woman Mary was and so selfish, too (see my Feb. 3, 2009 blog below). I’ll give her credit for her abolitionist efforts but what a drag she was on our president during the darkest time of our nation’s history! She was jealous of his time away from her. He was running the country!

When I was in elementary school, February was the month we celebrated two presidents’ birthdays – Lincoln’s on the 12th and Washington’s on the 22nd. This was before there was an official “Presidents’ Day,” a day set aside to celebrate the birth of all presidents and before February became “Black History Month.” My teachers would always have a beautiful bulletin board displayed with a calendar, white doilies with red hearts for Valentine’s Day, and black cardboard cut-outs of Lincoln’s and Washington’s silhouettes. I love February.

I learned that Lincoln was poor and lived in a log cabin, that he was humble, gave speeches outdoors, and chopped firewood. We heard the Mason Weems fable that Washington could not lie to his father about chopping down a cherry tree.

washington_cherry-tree

My birthday comes two days after Washington’s. As a result, I’ve always had cherry pie instead of cake for my special dessert, because of George chopping down that cherry tree. On one birthday, my grandmother Mimi made cherry tarts for my guests and me and we went to the movies to see Lucille Ball and Bob Hope in the comedy, “Fancy Pants.”

Back to the Lincoln penny, isn’t it ironic that a president who grew up “friendless, uneducated, penniless…” should find himself commemorated on a penny? Happy Early Birthday, Abe. You rock.

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The Madness of Mary Todd Lincoln

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Mental Institutions, tagged Abraham Lincoln, biographies of first ladies, biographies of political wives, biographies of women, committed, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, insane asylums, Mary Lincoln, mental illness, Robert Lincoln on February 3, 2009| 12 Comments »

Regarding some of my recent posts on insane asylums (see sidebar, “Categories: The Insane Asylum”), my neighbor and friend, Karen O’Quin, wrote:

I really liked your blog – thanks for sending!! I see a theme there. My experience with Austin State Hospital is that when I first started working at Travis State School in 1967, they only had men there – they called them “boys”. Some had been there for years as they had been admitted to ASH long before because they were a little “weird” and then became too institutionalized to be let out. They did not have IQs consistent with mental retardation. Some were later placed in group homes. I don’t know if you’ve read Mary, Mrs. A Lincoln, but it is her account of being committed to a lunatic asylum by her son, Robert. Someone very recently found letters she had written to her attorneys from the asylum. I think they were going to be a book, too.

Mary Lincoln (1818-1882)

When I was young, I remember my mother talking about Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, and her inappropriate and extravagant spending sprees during the depth of the Civil War. Above all I remember Mom mentioning that Mary had a collection of about 300 pairs of gloves. Thinking about it now, it reminds me of Imelda Marcos, wife of the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and her closet rack of 2700 pairs of shoes.

Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln came together as husband and wife from two very different worlds. Mary was pampered and rich; Abraham was tested and wise. Both were prone to depression but it was Mary, with her fragile mind, perhaps schizophrenic or bipolar, who finally cratered under the constant barrage of grief and loss that became her sad lot in life. Three of her sons died while her husband was president during a bloody and acrimonious civil war. The hate mail sent to her husband was unbelievable. Then her beloved Abraham, her anchor, was assassinated. It was more than Mary could bear. She descended into madness.

She began to wander hotel corridors in her nightgown, was certain someone was trying to poison her, complained that an Indian spirit was removing wires from her eyes, and continued her frantic spending, purchasing yard after yard of elegant drapery when she had no windows in which to hang it. (PBS American Experience: “The Time of the Lincolns”)

The doctors treated her with laudanum which gave her hallucinations, eye spasms, and headaches. She began to behave bizarrely, creating a public scandal. Her only surviving son Robert, a practicing attorney, arranged an insanity trial and had her committed to the asylum Bellevue Place just outside Chicago. Although Mary was only hospitalized for three months, she never forgave Robert for the humiliation and deprivation.

A recently published book, The Madness of Mary Lincoln by Jason Emerson, awarded “Book of the Year” by the Illinois State Historical Society in 2007, examines Mary’s mental illness. The book is based on a rare find – a trunk of letters found in the attic of Robert Lincoln’s lawyer. They contain the lost letters written by Mary during her stay in the asylum. The book sheds light on the ongoing mystery of Mary’s mental illness, its nature, roots, and progression, and suggests that Abraham Lincoln had some understanding of it and provided stability.