Chapter 2 Summary

During this period in American history, there was a different attitude toward death than there is today. It was stylish and romantic to mourn for loved ones who had died and to make a public display of grief by wearing black clothes and armbands, to avoid festivities for a year after a family member's death, and to visit graves. There was a "culture of death."

Séances, mesmerism, dreams and other forms of spiritualism were very much in style. When Lincoln's wife consulted psychics and participated in séances to contact the souls of her dead children, this was considered normal and fashionable.

Abraham Lincoln himself suffered from what we would call depression, but known in his own times as "the melancholy." In Lincoln's case, he would become so depressed he would withdraw from his normal activities and go off by...