Lincoln, Mary Todd

(b. December 13, 1818; d. July 16, 1882) Responsible for major renovations of the White House as First Lady during the Civil War, 1861–1865.

Mary Todd was a proud member of a wealthy Kentucky family whose members on both her paternal and maternal sides had fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Intelligent and charming, though quick-tempered, she attended school for twelve years in Lexington before moving to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her married sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards in 1837. There she met Abraham Lincoln, who was at the time an aspiring Whig politician and ambitious lawyer.

In November 1842 Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln married, and by 1853 they were the parents of four sons, three of whom would predecease their mother. During her years as a married woman and mother in Springfield, Mary Lincoln enthusiastically supported her husband's political career, especially in the 1850s, when Lincoln lost two elections to the United States Senate.

Unlike many women of her generation, she studied politics and served as her husband's counselor and occasional clerk. For example, in 1850 she spent a good part of her summer writing patronage letters for Lincoln, who wanted to be appointed Commissioner of Land. Mary Lincoln also assisted her husband by graciously entertaining prominent Illinois politicians, and she was especially well known for her strawberry parties, to which she invited the elite of Springfield. She made sure that the enlarged Lincoln home was a suitable expression of Lincoln's growing importance. By 1860, when Lincoln heard in the Springfield telegraph office that he had been elected president, he hurried home to tell his wife and principal supporter that "we" are elected.

In the White House, the energetic Mary Lincoln began another campaign. She was convinced that the President's Mansion was not just a place where the Lincoln family, consisting of Robert (a Harvard student during most of the war), Willie, and Tad, lived with their parents. Rather, during the devastating war that began six weeks after the Lincolns moved in, she felt the White House must display the power and authority of the government. Accordingly, Mary Lincoln began her renovations of what had been a shabby interior, filled with broken furniture and soiled upholstery. With the good taste that marked her style in clothes, she purchased wallpaper in Paris, rugs in Philadelphia, crystal, and a new set of state china in New York. But she overspent the allotted budget and thus embarrassed her husband and his Republican administration.

As had been the case in Springfield, Mary Lincoln used her entertainments (the receptions, dinners, and evening parties) as important events where politicians and diplomats could exchange important wartime information unofficially. Mary Lincoln also participated in the traditional obligations of Union women who served as nurses for the wounded. Her visits to hospitals in Washington included spending time with soldiers, writing their letters home to their mothers, and carrying food and flowers to cheer them. Sometimes the president went with her; sometimes she and the boys went alone. Mary Lincoln was also one of the few women in Washington to raise money for the so-called "contraband," or former Virginia slaves, who concentrated in the Capitol as the Army of the Potomac moved into northern Virginia.

This First Lady's experience was intimately involved with the Civil War, as she and her husband followed the four-year pendulum of Union victories and defeats. The death of Mary Lincoln's son Willie in the White House in 1862 from typhoid fever, followed by her husband's assassination in April 1865 (as the Civil War was ending) made Mary a part of the tragedies that other Americans experienced.

After her husband's assassination and after finding it financially impossible to keep a house in Chicago, Mary Lincoln had no permanent residence. She and Thomas (Tad), the youngest of the four Lincoln sons, traveled to Europe, returning in 1871. That same year Tad died, and Mary Lincoln was bereft. Her aberrant behavior (she had become a spiritualist, and shopped far too often) led her son Robert to place her in an insane asylum. But she was not insane, and after incarceration for three months, she was released. Worried that her son would continue to threaten her freedom, she moved to Pau, France. There she lived independently until health problems made it impossible to live alone. She died in 1882 in her sister's home in Springfield.

Lincoln, Abraham.

Baker, Jean H. Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1987.

Turner, Justin, and Turner, Linda Levitt. Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters. New York: Knopf, 1972.

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