Today is the birthday of Mary Todd, born in Lexington, Kentucky (1818). Her father was a lawyer, and her family was well off, but her mother died before Mary was seven years old, and Mary remembered her childhood as desolate, in spite of a having a full social calendar. She was petite, with sparkling blue eyes and reddish brown hair, and her wit could sometimes turn to biting sarcasm. She was highly educated for a woman of her time, and she was keenly interested in politics. Just before she turned 21, she moved from Lexington to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister Elizabeth. It was there that she met a tall, gangly young lawyer by the name of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was - in his words - a poor nobody. They were opposites in nearly everything: appearance, temperament, and background. She was raised in a mansion, and he grew up in a log cabin. She received the finest education, and he was self-taught. She was 52, and he was 64. And he had a serious rival for her affections in New England transplant Stephen Douglas, who would also be his political rival. Douglas was serious enough about Todd to propose to her, but she turned him down, saying, I cant consent to be your wife. I shall become Mrs. President, or I am the victim of false prophets, but it will not be as Mrs. Douglas. As for Todd and Lincoln, they had a stormy, on-again, off-again courtship, breaking up and getting back together, even dating secretly. Three years later, in 1842, they married and moved into a boarding house, where their first child was born. People didnt always take kindly to Mary Todd Lincolns outspoken political commentary and sharp tongue. During Lincolns presidency, she often gave her husband her informed and unvarnished opinion. Regarding Ulysses S. Grant, the First Lady told the President: He is a butcher and is not fit to be at the head of an army. The White House staff took to calling her a hellcat. I seem to be the scapegoat for both North and South, she once told a friend. As a native Southerner, Northerners didnt trust her. And because she was an abolitionist - not to mention married to the president who wanted to emancipate the slaves - she was vilified as a traitor in the South. People said she was too plump and plain, so she dressed in expensive clothes, and then they criticized her for spending too much money. She told her dressmaker and close friend, the freed slave Elizabeth Keckley, I must dress in costly materials. The people scrutinize every article that I wear with critical curiosity. She suffered from depression, anxiety, paranoia, and migraines, and, after the Lincolns son Willie died of typhoid fever, she was crippled by grief. She hired spiritualists and mediums to try to contact her dead son, paying outrageous sums of money and receiving no comfort. After her husband was assassinated in 1865, her health continued to decline, and although she was nearly destitute, she continued to spend money on expensive clothes. The sudden death of her son Tad nearly broke her. In 1875, her son Robert finally had her committed to an insane asylum. She attempted suicide twice, but was released four months later. She spent her last years at her sister Elizabeths home in Springfield, rarely coming out of her room.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:28:09 +0000
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