While President Abraham Lincoln’s legacy looms large, his wife remains a maligned, one-dimensional figure and has been considered “one of the most detested public women in American history,” according to biographer Jean H. Baker. I recently became fascinated by Mary Todd Lincoln quite by accident, when a friend gave me a book about her. And now Mary appears in a minimal supporting role in Stephen Spielberg’s new film Lincoln–although in real life, Mary and Abe were partners in every sense of the word. As much as Sally Field’s portrayal attempted to humanize her, Mary’s lesser angels are all too obvious on screen as seen through that director’s lens.
Many of us know that the former First Lady was convicted of lunacy, instigated by her eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln. She spent almost four months in an insane asylum until she was able to enlist support for a retrial, at which she was declared sane once more.
What we don’t know much about is what led to the behavior that was considered lunacy in the court of public opinion and a court of law. After extensive reading and my own writing about grief, my assessment is that Mary Todd Lincoln suffered innumerable losses in her life and had few socially acceptable means of expressing her sorrow. Such bottled-up sadness resulted in acting out behavior that was interpreted as insanity.
Mary lost her mother when she was only six. She desperately tried to please her stepmother but was rejected soundly and sent to boarding school. Upon marrying a poor country lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, she gave birth to Robert Todd, who was a cold, judgmental and unaffectionate son.
She birthed three more sons over the years, two of whom died prior to her husband’s assassination. Several of her relatives were killed fighting for the Confederacy, and her Southern family disowned her. Both sides accused her of being a traitor, leaving her with few confidantes. And she was holding her husband’s hand in Ford’s Theater when John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of the head, exploding his brains all over her dress.
There was no provision for a pension for presidential widows, and she was soon evicted from the White House with no money and nowhere to go. She moved to a boarding house and was never again able to live with her two surviving children under one roof. Her son Tad became her constant companion until he, too, died a few years later at the age of 18. And a woman she considered her closest confidante betrayed her by writing a public expose.
Not only was there little time to grieve between incidents and duties, but women of Mary Todd Lincoln’s time were afforded little opportunity to do so. She was often shooed away from her children’s sick beds by the male doctors because she was too emotional. She was discouraged from attending the funerals, as it was considered unseemly for women to be seen grieving openly in public. (Women were expected to be the ones to give consolation, not to need consolation.) She desperately tried to stay with her dying husband, but her wailing and pleading with him not to die were unnerving to the attendants, so she was removed from the room, unable to say goodbye to the man she deeply loved.
That seems more than enough to make anyone go crazy! And while it is generally agreed that Mary was eccentric, neurotic and narcissistic, she tried to manage her grief just like so many of us. She shopped excessively, finding comfort in possessions while going deeply into debt. She sought mediums to help her communicate with those who had passed. (President Lincoln participated as well when their first son died, and Abe himself was subject to prolonged dark moods.)
She indulged in self pity and anger, enlisting anyone to listen to her tale of woe. She wore black from the time of her husband’s death until her own. She vacillated between wanting to be alone and wanting to be with friends. She couldn’t sleep and was sometimes delirious as a result. She had panic attacks and took drugs for anxiety. She became greatly despondent on the anniversaries of her loved ones’ deaths. She couldn’t face returning to Washington, D.C., where her husband had been murdered and was fearful that harm would come to her and her surviving children so she chose to live overseas for several years. And when it took too long to settle the estate, she took action unbecoming a woman by making a public case out it. She also actively and successfully campaigned for a presidential widow’s pension, again stretching the boundaries of acceptable female behavior.
As my own book illustrates, there are physical manifestations of sadness and grief as well. A study conducted at Johns Hopkins has proven that a broken heart can kill you, a condition known as stress cardiomyopathy. Neuroscience has demonstrated the neurological changes that can take place during prolonged grieving and how our emotions influence our brain function. Mary suffered migraines, backaches and a neurological condition. She sought alternative medical treatments, like spas, tonics and mineral waters.
These are very common behaviors for someone trying to bear up under sorrow. Robert claimed he sought asylum for his mother to save her any further public embarrassment, to get her out of the limelight as the crazy widow of Abraham Lincoln. Others think he was financially motivated or trying to preserve his own social standing. Whatever his motivation, it is possible that had Mary been given permission to openly grieve, a willing ear and physical comfort, the Lincoln family, and the nation as a whole, could have been spared much embarrassment.
From my work with bereavement groups, I would further clarify that prolonged sorrow does not typically cause insanity but rather can present as insanity. How many of us have forgotten to take a turn on a well-known route when preoccupied with our own emotional upheaval? How many of us might have been “put away” if we demonstrated the same supposedly irrational behaviors as Mary–such as compulsive shopping or sleeplessness or repetition of our traumatic stories? That’s why it’s so important to grieve our losses in healthy ways and not bury the sorrow deep within ourselves. And to help others do the same.
I recently gave a keynote address on grief and loss in Lexington, Ky., and so I visited Mary’s childhood home there. I sent healing energy to her, as crazy as that may sound to some.
Photo of Mary Todd Lincoln by Matthew Brady from Wikimedia Commons.
Yes, sending healing energy to Mary Todd Lincoln does sound a bit strange, but I’m sure if you sent it, it was well received. I’ve been to Lexington many times, but missed MTL’s childhood home somehow. Must have been distracted by the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and art festivals in Berea.
Aside from not liking the article’s title (I don’t really like the term ‘lunatic’), I liked that it raised the issue of bottled up grief and its consequences. Even today it’s not really acceptable to openly grieve in public. Most people would just stare at someone sobbing or breaking down. The grieving person might not be institutionalized but could be ostracized. It’s also quite difficult to find a compassionate therapist.
After being a caregiver, then losing my spouse, I know grief can swallow you whole.Even with a loving & supportive family, you still have to go to work each day and present yourself as recovered-that has not changed in our society and then you get to go home to an empty house. To do all this in the public eye is unimaginable to me.MTL had a keen mind & could discuss any of the pressing issues of her day. She was a feminist long before anyone could identify it. After her heartbreaking losses, Mary needs more sympathy than criticism. The life of Robert Lincoln may need to be re-examined-he needed his mother out of the way, her public behavior could have been damaging to his relentless climb up the social, business & political ladders of his time. How will time & society change the way each of us is remembered when we are at our worst?
If Mary Todd Lincoln was a feminist before anyone could identify it, do you know if she supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s work?
The world’s first women’s rights conference happened in Seneca Falls NY in 1848. If Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t aware of it and didn’t support it, I wouldn’t quite say that she was a feminist ahead of her time.
Mary Todd Lincoln may have been more outspoken than a lot of women and I’m glad she campaigned for a widow’s pension, but before we say she was ahead of her time, we need to consider the REALLY groundbreaking example of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Susan Anthony and other activists.
How about what appeared to be migraines as represented in the movie Lincoln. That can certainly make one behave strangely. I know this from experience.
A lady far ahead of her time. I believe jealousy by those around MTL greatly added to the dislike and much gossip surrounding. When a woman speaks her mind, has the ear of a powerful husband, the envious will tear tear her apart behind her back. The sins of those around MTL unfortunately never caught up with them, then again the majority would have been shown for the apathetic, uncaring gossip lovers they were.
It is a very sad life this woman lived and you’ve got to wonder how she would have been treated had she lived in our time. Life is not fair or just and never will be.
Personally, I think if she had been tall, thin and “beautiful” she would be getting far better PR. Look at what people are always focusing on about Queen Victoria, that dumpy little monarch from across the pond. Face it, to look good is to “be good” unless there are serious examples to the contrary, and sometimes even then. What are modern “social magazines and blogs” concerned with almost to the exclusion of all else? Yes Jessica, stay pregnant, it is the only way they won’t criticize you for your body’s appearance. You can be pretty and stupid but intelligent and opinionated and not a babe? They’ll kill you just by looking at you.
Thank you for this insightful look at MTL. Finally some real facts to bring a reality based perspective on her as a person. She journeyed though life with some incredibly heavy burdens and not much of a warm and accepting (to say nothing of loving) community to support her. All of us require this to remain physically and psychologically healthy. All things considering, she did remarkably well advocating for herself under the most difficult of situations and historical times. We all should do so well.
Thank you for this insightful take on MTL, one of the most doggedly misunderstood women in a whole universe of historically misunderstood, maligned, betrayed, and mistranslated women. Just one point of difference I’d like to raise: I do not think the Spielberg film reduces MTL as you suggest. In fact, I was pleased by how seriously it took her, how clearly it seemed to ground her powerful emotions in powerful experience, how her opinions and perspectives were legitimized. I supposed this is a matter of individual response, but I’m grateful to Sally Field, and to Spielberg, for giving us a very rich, complex Mary Todd Lincoln.
I believe Mary also had a severe head injury when her carriage tipped over during an earlier assassination attempt. Brain injury can often result in an inability to control emotions, erratic behaviors or any number of other things that could have been called “crazy”.
Indeed, Sally Field rocked as the First Lady. She did not just have arguments with Abe but participated in some of the political machinations that helped get the 13th Amendment passed.
Yes, Sally, we like you. We really, really like you!
Thank you for posting this… If you read about her life, I don’t know how anyone can classify her as “crazy” when she endured as much trauma as she did. She really had an abnormal amount of pain and loss in her life, even for those times. She likely had been living her entire life with untreated, undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder….that continued to wallop her with every nasty blow that hit her throughout most of her life. The events didn’t seem to end. She had no treatment, little support…and thus, no healing or relief. Therefore of course her behavior was erratic at times. I don’t know that I agree that some historians allege she may have been bipolar. I think she was just a quirky lady that had severe untreated generalized anxiety and depression (and PTSD) caused by actual events.
We should all thank our lucky stars that we live in modern times with modern medicine, equal rights and civilized treatment. So many people back in those days were treated like they were crazy when they weren’t and those asylums often treated people like animals! What a terrible sentence for those with mental suffering.
I too am sending MTL peace and well wishes tonight. I truly hope heaven is real and all of life’s trials and tribulations are separated from us at passing. My mother was also heavily traumatized by life events, misdiagnosis, and a traumatic death. I would give anything to know she is at peace and has no memory/energy of the sadness she endured here…
Well, me too, as somebody else here, was a bit resentful of the title of the blog post. In fact if it was me writing this I would have changed it after a while, because writing what you wrote – like sending a healing energy to her – should mean that you have a greater understanding of what emotions mean and could come to a change of opinion upon finishing this post and then reflecting on it. There are many doctors and scientists who say that mental health illnesses are all not what we and the psychiatric profession think of them. They are not really some sort of disease that makes people ‘not normal’. A lot of them are caused by poor diets and inability to handle one’s own emotions, emotional situations, and emotions of other people. Yes, of other people: when a perfectly ‘traditional’ biologist talks about our mind extending beyond our bodies then one cannot ignore what contemporary spirituality (which is largely a synthesis of the best in philosophy, religion, and science that the humankind has produced to date) tells us about emotions being not just an empty air but a type of energy, that we all are capable of exchanging. Women have always been slaves up to the XX century, and male bullying – even if it was done without too much thinking a lot of the time, – is what caused women’s mental health issues. We are all born to be free and born to fulfill ourselves. Imagine Mary Lincoln, an educated woman, to be unable to fulfill herself as Hilary Clinton is able to. I used to have migraines – they are all but gone now and if one appears I am fully aware of what causes one, I go and meditate – it all evaporates almost instantly, but I am happy to live in the age when I can learn how to do it easily by just googling. It’s such complicated combination of things that made people, especially women, behave and feel the way they did (and still do). We are all privileged to live in a time when there is so much knowledge of how to understand oneself and so much freedom to make our lives fulfilling and happy, that not only we must reconcile with our past when so many people were deemed mad for just being different, but we also must make sure that mental health is not something that makes one ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’. It is not surprising to me that Mary Lincoln could not forgive her son – she knew perfectly well whether she was mad or not, she was well aware what she was doing despite it being eccentric or a desperate cry for help – it definitely was not about her being insane.
I just read a post by Jams above and couldn’t stop myself to write again. I agree with everything wholeheartedly, but my comment above, whilst acknowledging how happy we are to live in this day and age, actually does call not to rest on our achievements. I have recently had a discussion with a lady who is about 40 years old and who was made to believe she suffered from a mental health illness during her late teenage years by her family (just because her parent had long-term depressions and could not see things straight). Believing this must be true she voluntarily went into an institution, where she had some most horrible experiences of her life and was almost actually made ill and insane. She eventually got out of there only because she met a friend who was able to help her and convince there was nothing wrong with her. Of course, she was still receiving various support and had to go back to her psychiatrist from time to time. This person, I would even go as far as to say this educated criminal, told her persistently that she would never be able to be in a relationship or have children because of her ‘illness’. Not only I was shocked to hear the beginning of the story, not only I was shocked to find out anybody could find that anything was wrong with her – she is so intelligent and one only can see that she is a bit blocked rather than there is anything strange, stupid, or even merely eccentric about her, but I also was simply floored by my emotions upon hearing that a qualified psychiatrist that is meant to make somebody feel better about themselves, because the main reasons of our ‘failures’ in life are usually related to low self-esteem and self-worth, was again and again telling a patient that they had nothing to hope for and to live for in this life. And this is our modern ‘traditional’ or orthodox psychology and psychiatry. Devoid of love. So, yes we are lucky, but goodness the world is far from perfect, there are so many atrocities committed in the name of one’s ego that nobody should rest in peace until we make this a better world to live in.
Crazy, insane, lunatic, mad excentric. We, as a society, are communicating in terms of the dark ages to this day! Mental health issues are as vast and complex as the remedies and the people we seek to heal us. C’mon women, stop using these terms and we just might stop the incessent sterotyping of mental health, thus progressing to the most significant understanding of Humanism in this. Do you really think many men would do this? Have we not always led by example!
I was so severely abused as a child that I have subsequent PTSD, Anxiety Disorder, Agoraphobia, and the likes of insomnia, migraines and today, my hair hurts. So what!
My Husband was murdered, my ‘siblings’ abandoned me because of the Agoraphobia ect.. Carly’s crazy. Their term and not mine! Life is sometimes very, very hard and unfair but you go on! You also prove the finger pointers wrong.
Mary Todd Lincoln was not any of the things mentioned. She was a victim of her time and the old boys network. She had moxy when moxy in a woman meant “uh oh, better find a way to shut her up.” I see and have seen for years now that this still exists!
The more we lable the less we accomplish.
Say NO to all derogatory tems for all issues!
Advocate for those who suffer this and the next
time someone lables you or a person dealing with
their mental health issues in a derogtory way, just
say ” I can sue you for defamation of character,
slander, harassment, Do you really want to mess with
me? My attorney would like the money. Ps. it does not
matter if you have an attorney or not. Bluff the schumks.
They scare easy!
Ms. Nugent: Another issue that you may already have examined is the lack of treatment for migraine headaches which were triggered then as they are now during times of duress, stress, or unpredictable schedules. Imagine being First Lady during a Civil War, there were more triggers for headaches than can be assessed. The physical and emotional stresses and her own health were also huge contributions to the perceived “lunacy” that Mary bore as well as she could. If I had to watch two small sons and one large husband die, I imagine I might have fallen apart. Thank you for bringing in the grief issues regarding Mary’s fragile state of mind. Lin