Significant Others - Mary Lincoln

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Mary Lincoln is the First Lady everyone loves to hate. But without her, would Abe Lincoln even have been president in the first place? Theirs is a love story that contains many tragedies—and a key to how America became the country it is today. Starring: Rita Wilson as Mary Lincoln and Timothy Olyphant as Abraham Lincoln. Also featuring Matt Gourley and Mike Sweeney. Source List:Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns GoodwinMiller Center, The University of Virginia, www.millercenter.orgThe Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, by Daniel Mark EpsteinMary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, by Jean H. Baker“Lincoln’s Looks Never Hindered His Approach to Life or Politics,” by Susan Bell, USC News“Mary Todd Lincoln, Patient at Bellevue Place, Batavia.” by Rodney A. Ross., Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society“Acts of Remembrance: Mary Todd Lincoln and Her Husband’s Memory.” by Jennifer L. Bach, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association“New Mary Lincoln Letter Discovered.” by Jason Emerson, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society

Welcome to Significant Others, a podcast that takes a look at the less familiar side of history. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in this episode, we look a little more closely at the first lady everyone loves to hate. She makes it easy, but there's more to her story than mourning clothes and overspending. In fact, it could be argued that without her, America as we know it would not exist. This time on Significant Others, meet Mary Lincoln. It's easy to list the ways in which Mary Lincoln was not an asset to her husband. She flagrantly racked up debt while the country was in the throes of civil war. She engaged in bribery and influence peddling. She once demanded that a friend give her the ribbon off her own hat at a party on the White House lawn,

and she disinvited a relative from her son's birthday party because she said the child was not good-looking enough. She was emotionally needy and unstable, petty and jealous, volatile and violent. But she is a more complex character than a list like this can reveal. Would Abraham Lincoln still have become president if he had married someone other than Mary Todd? Possibly. But could he have done worse? When it comes to his career, yes. Because in the scheme of Lincoln's political life, the only person more ambitious for him than himself was his wife. Mary Todd got the taste for politics, or politicians, at home in Kentucky. Her father was a prominent member of the Whig Party, the short-lived liberal group that sprang up in opposition to Andrew Jackson and the fiscally conservative Democrats, and out of whose ashes the Republican Party would soon rise.

Mary's childhood home was often the site of parties for congressmen, governors, and foreign dignitaries. To Mary, it was all very glamorous and exciting, and she was captivated by the talk around the table. She became, in the words of her sisters, a violent little wig. In addition, she swore she would only marry a man she could fall in love with, and she could only fall in love with a man who would be president.

She turned down multiple suitors on this premise, including Stephen A. Douglas, the future candidate with whom a series of debates would ultimately put Lincoln on the national stage. When Mary Todd met Abraham Lincoln, he was a leader of the Whig Party and her cousin's lanky law partner from humble beginnings. She was the spoiled, smart daughter of a rich Southern man who, at 21, was getting dangerously close to spinster territory, but not for lack of interest from potential mates. She was, by all accounts, a dish, vivacious, attractive, and possessing of the ultimate hallmark of 19th century sex appeal, the shapely shoulder. She referred to herself as a ruddy pine knot, an exuberance of flesh.

It was said she could make a bishop forget his prayers. I mean, who wouldn't be flattered by that description? And she was bright, spunky, and from a family of influence in a city full of politicians. She had plenty of men to choose from. But she was holding out for the one she thought could go all the way. My hand will never be given where my heart is not. In hindsight, it can read like prophecy. And maybe Mary Todd did have some sort of inner divining rod for political genius, like a kind of super polling group of one. The things that appealed to her about Lincoln,

his poetic nature, the deep well of his intellect, his gentleness, his sense of humor, were among the same qualities that would ultimately appeal to the electorate. They met at a cotillion in the winter of 1839, a petite, voluptuous, and extroverted Mary, and the gangly, reserved legislator nearly a decade her senior. She danced and flirted and chatted with everyone. He was reserved. Possibly due to the fact that when Lincoln danced, as biographer Jean H. Baker reported, a friend said he looked like old Father Jupiter bending down from the clouds to see what's going on. It was said that Lincoln wanted to dance with Mary in the worst way. And after they did,

Mary said that he did, in fact, dance in the worst way. Lincoln, who was still recovering from the embarrassment of an engagement gone wrong, had sworn off the idea of marriage. Nevertheless, he began visiting Mary regularly after the dance. They discovered they had common passions, Shakespeare, poetry, and of course, politics. They shared a deep admiration for Henry Clay, spiritual father of the Whig Party, and the prototype upon whom Lincoln would base his own brand of statesmanship. Clay had been Mary Todd's next-door neighbor and one of the more dynamic influences on her budding political interests. According to biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, Mary would

sit as a child on the esteemed Clay's knee and offer to marry him if he became president. Though Abraham and Mary were temperamentally and physically opposite to an almost comic degree, a friend once told her, you'll have to take a ladder to get to his bosom. They spent happy hours together, reciting verse, discussing elections, and making fun of people they knew. Sunday evenings found them giggling together on a sofa in Mary's brother-in-law's house, lampooning whoever happened to be nearby, even each other. Some in Mary's family thought Lincoln was beneath her, having not come from money or a prominent family. This didn't seem to bother her and may even have pushed her closer to him. Within the year, they were engaged. And then very quickly, they were not. He came to her one night and told her

he did not love her. She cried. He kissed her and then broke up with her again. She stomped her foot and told him, go and never, never come back. There seems to be a lot of speculation among scholars about what happened here, and multiple theories have been floated. That Lincoln was too pure in his ideals and thought he did not love Mary well enough to be her husband. That he was hesitant to get married at all, fearing it would interfere with his work. That Mary's brother-in-law, the son of the governor of Illinois, had intimidated Lincoln into backing out. or that Lincoln's head had been turned by a younger, prettier relative and he thought he was in love with that woman instead. Regardless of which of these is the answer, Mary released him from their engagement,

hoping he might recover his senses eventually. But first, he was going to lose his mind. The night Lincoln went to Mary to confess his lack of love for her either spawned or was a symptom of a period of derangement so dark his friends thought he might be suicidal. His best friend, Joshua Speed, shared a room with him at the time. Lincoln went crazy. I had to remove razors from his room, take away all knives and other such dangerous things. It was terrible. Lincoln told Speed that the only thing stopping him from taking his own life was the fact that he had not done anything of consequence with it yet.

He was a mess. AWOL and the legislature gossiped about all over town. He was making a spectacle of himself, going around sleepless, emaciated, and unshaven. As he said himself in a letter, I have, within the past few days, been making a most discreditable exhibition of myself in the way of hypochondriasm.

That was, in fact, his diagnosis. He thought he had caught syphilis four years earlier, as he confessed to a doctor friend, saying he had gone to Beardstown and, as he put it, during a devilish passion had had connection with a girl and caught the disease. It had been treated, and he thought it was gone, but then there were signs it might have come back, and it plunged him into despair. I am now the most miserable man living.

If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. if what I feel were equally distributed to the whole family. There would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me. Most likely, he never had syphilis at all,

but was instead plagued by a fear of syphilis, which was its own disease, and interestingly, was treated with the same mercury pills as the syphilis itself. But no one knew Lincoln was suffering except the doctor who wrote him prescriptions for the little blue pills. All this begs another theory. Did Lincoln break off his engagement to Mary Todd because he thought he was contaminated by venereal disease and doomed to a life of physical degeneration, eventual madness, and early death? Was he sparing her with a selfless lie about his true feelings? If he was, Mary Todd couldn't have known it. No one knew of Lincoln's hypochondriasm except the doctors who treated him, but she somehow sensed they had not come to the end of their story, or she was

simply willing it not to be over yet. For a year and a half, as Lincoln's condition slowly improved, she bided her time, keeping other suitors at arm's length and talking her friend's ears off about her enduring love for him. She remained obsessed with him and claimed that they were destined for one another. Lincoln, on the other hand, that reader and writer of poetry who loved the romantics best, was beginning to think that what he was destined for was disappointment. He wrote to Speed, I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium, far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize. He was coming around to the idea that the Byronic ideal of love

might not be a reasonable roadmap for actual living. He was also, if not equally obsessed by the memory of Mary Todd as she was by him, bothered by how things ended between them. It seems to me I should have been entirely happy, but for the never absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make so, that still kills my soul. I cannot but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise. He worried about his ability to repair the rift or restore his general reputation. I must regain my confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves. In that ability, I once prided myself as the only, or at least the chief, gem of my character.

That gem I lost. When the two finally came together again, midway through 1842, it was in the quiet parlor of the home of a mutual friend. It had been a long time since they had seen each other, but they picked up again easily and then continued to meet in private. Nearly a year after that, in October, Lincoln was reconsidering the question of marriage. He wrote to Speed, You have now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than you were the day you married her, I well know. I have your word for it.

But I want to ask a closer question. Are you now, in feeling as well as judgment, glad you are married as you are? I feel impatient to know. Mary was impatient too, and for good reason. It seems a deadline had been imposed. When Lincoln knocked on the door of the Episcopal minister on the morning of November 4th, he said, I want to get hitched tonight.

As he dressed that afternoon for the wedding that was coming together in record time, a friend's five-year-old son asked where he was going. Lincoln replied, To hell, I suppose. She was either already pregnant or had made him believe that was the case. Or maybe they had just crossed the carnal line and Lincoln was panicking on a moral level. Either way, he reportedly said to the court clerk, Jim, I shall have to marry this girl.

Which doesn't prove anything. Perhaps he meant because he was so besotted with her or that he couldn't bear to break up with her again. But it does sound rather fatalistic. Regardless, he called the wedding night a matter of profound wonder. Their first child was born 38 and a half weeks later. Immediately following the wedding, they moved into the only home they could afford, a single rented room into which the two of them could barely fit. Lincoln toiled away at his law practice to try to stockpile funds and pay down his considerable

debts, but Mary was betting politics would leapfrog them into better circumstances, as she had witnessed growing up with men in her father's circle. It was during this time that Lincoln wrote with a fellow lawyer the campaign circular that was the first public move in his run for Congress. In it, he underscored the importance of unity with this borrowed bit of biblical wisdom, a house divided against itself cannot stand. The domestic flavor of the quote is striking. Still a newlywed, Lincoln would have been in an acutely domestic frame of mind. He had been plagued by doubts even before the marriage, and now was learning exactly how difficult this particular union might be.

Mary's extreme moodiness had been exacerbated by her pregnancy. There is an unconfirmed report that she threw hot coffee in his face one morning when she couldn't get his attention. And even if this didn't happen, the impulse would be echoed later in an even more extreme and well-documented episode, which we'll get to in a bit. Lincoln was clearly learning that the real secret to staying married is simply not to get divorced. Was this fueling his political arguments as well? In the midst of the congressional race, Mary gave birth to their first son. She immediately took to calling her husband father, and he stopped calling her his child bride and instead began calling her mother. But they named

the boy after her actual father. Mary knew her husband was too proud to ask for or even accept handouts, but the fact was they needed money. And her father, Robert Todd, had plenty of it. The two were tight. Robert Todd fathered 17 children. Mary was his favorite. And he adored Lincoln, so he was primed to be generous. But Mary was aiming for more than just a nice shower gift. Sure enough, Robert Todd was so moved by the sight of his namesake, he insisted on underwriting their family life until Lincoln could shoulder the burden properly himself. When their next child was born a few years later, Mary used the same trick to a different end, calling the second son Edward Baker after a politician with whom Lincoln had a

complicated arrangement. The men had made a pact that essentially amounted to a promise to take turns in the house. But Baker was serving first, and there was nothing to keep him from backing out of the agreement. So Mary did what she could to ingratiate Baker and preserve her husband's prospects for holding the office. And once again, it worked. Baker kept his end of the bargain, and the Lincolns transplanted themselves to the Capitol. It was unusual for wives to follow their congressional husbands to Washington, let alone with their young boys in tow. But Mary, in the words of one contemporary, wished to loom largely. She did, but not in a good way. High society had decidedly snubbed her, and her noisy children and contentious personality did not play well in the boarding house where they roomed.

Eventually, she was essentially kicked out. She left town gladly, going home with the boys to her father's house in Kentucky, while her husband stayed behind to finish his term. The couple sent letters back and forth in which they both did their best to be romantic. I'm afraid you will get so well and fat and young as to be wanting to marry again. Tell Louisa I want her to watch you a little for me. Get weighed and write to me how much you weigh. How much I wish instead of writing we were together this evening. I feel very sad for you. I expect Mr. Webb will come. I must go down about that time and carry on. Quite a flirtation.

Lincoln asked Mary to stop writing honorable in front of his name when addressing her envelopes to him, revealing their different levels of comfort with putting on airs. She asked if she could return to Washington, and he sort of stalled, telling her that if she were to return, she must promise to be a good girl. Meaning, no more fighting with fellow lodgers, no more throwing fits, no more running up of debts. Ultimately, she declined to return. After serving in the legislature in 1849, Lincoln returned home to Springfield and set about trying to find some way to get back to Washington. Mary helped him write letters as he lobbied for a

position as commissioner of the general land office. In a surprising and spectacularly disappointing development, he did not win it. Next, he was offered the job of governor of Oregon, but Mary was having none of that. She was loath to leave home for some far-flung territory. And more importantly, she understood it would do her husband no good politically to be sent there. He turned down the offer. It was a bad six months for the family. Mary's father died in July, and then on February 1st, their son Eddie died of consumption.

Both parents were undone by the loss, but Mary became non-functional. Lincoln hovered over her for weeks, begging, Eat, Mary, for we must live. Just a few weeks pregnant at the time of Eddie's death, and still reeling from the loss of her beloved father, Mary had developed a compulsion that caused her to pull the hair out of her head one strand at a time. For a while, there was no talk of politics. And then in December of 1850, another baby, Willie. Lincoln was traveling a lot for work and Mary was left behind, deeply lonely and physically abusive to the young women she hired to help with the housework. When the fourth son, Tad, was born in 1853,

his head was so large it ruptured Mary's birth canal. 1853. His head was so large it ruptured Mary's birth canal. The resulting wound, which would now be treated with surgery, went unattended, as was the medical custom in Mary's time. It's quite possible that doctors told the Lincolns they could never have sex again for the sake of her safety, and that does seem to have been what happened as there were no more pregnancies. The Lincolns were still solidly conjoined by parenting, homemaking, and in their shared ambition for his political success. They continued to adore their children and be far too lenient with them for many people's tastes. Lincoln did work around the house and yard and was not afraid to tie an apron on when

his wife needed help in the kitchen. When he was asked to stump for other candidates, he shared his speeches with Mary as he wrote them. But in 1854, Mary was worried that her husband's ambition had flagged. He agreed himself later that during this time he was too happy at home. But if he ever did lose focus or faith in the endgame, she did not. A newspaper reporter quoted him as saying at the time, Mary insists that I'm going to be senator and president of the United States too. Such a sucker as me, president. False modesty, perhaps. But at the very least, Mary allowed her husband to acknowledge his highest ambition, for which he equated her affectionately with Lady Macbeth. Quoting the

play, he referred to her as his dearest partner of greatness. When Lincoln was put forward again as a candidate for state legislature in Illinois, Mary went to the paper that had printed it and insisted on a retraction. She would not have him taking a position that was lower in the hierarchy than the one he had previously held in Congress. She planned for him to stay available to run for an upcoming Senate seat. But Lincoln let the nomination for state assembly stand. It was a kind of torture for him to go against his wife's wishes. And according to the family doctor, it drove him to the verge of tears.

He walked up and down the floor, almost crying. And to all my persuasions to let his name stand in the papers, he said, Lincoln had reason to fear controverting his wife's plans. Not only were her tantrums unpleasant, but they could turn physical. She reportedly chased her husband out of the house with a broomstick, threw a bucket of water on him from an upstairs window, ran him into the yard with a kitchen knife, and even once drew blood by punching him in the face when she didn't like the cut of meat he had brought home. A maid once saw her pick up a piece of firewood and whack him with

it, possibly breaking his nose. It is impossible to diagnose a person who is no longer living, but much of her behavior aligns with what we might now call bipolar disorder. But at the time, the best anyone could do was take cover and ride out the storm. Contemporaries of the couple, in addition to a number of historians, have agreed that this fueled Lincoln's political career better than any amount of faith in his destiny could ever have done by essentially driving him out of the house. In 1858, Lincoln made a run for the Senate seat

held by Stephen A. Douglas, a former rival for Mary's affection. It was he she was rumored to have declined with the statement, I can't 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. Lincoln and Douglas squared off in a series of debates that are now seen as seminal in Lincoln's career and the course of history. of debates that are now seen as seminal in Lincoln's career and the course of history. He used the house-divided quote from his old campaign circular, and while it didn't win him the debate or the Senate seat, it did launch him into the national consciousness and position him to become the presidential nominee. For Mary, this tournament of two carried an additional charge,

and she thrilled to see the man she chose towering over his opponent not only physically, but intellectually and morally. It's like that scene in Bridget Jones' Diary where Colin Firth and Hugh Grant have a big brawl in a restaurant and break through a plate glass window, only the punches were rhetorical and the issue at hand was nothing less than the fate of the nation itself. Throughout the course of the presidential contest, Mary and her husband would not have continued their long-standing tradition of counting votes and gaming race outcomes as they lay in bed together, having constructed separate bedrooms years earlier.

But their political partnership was as robust as ever. When the final tally was in, Lincoln rushed home to his wife to announce, Mary, Mary, we are elected. Post-election, the trouble for Mary started right away. She was a willing partner and seems to have been at her best as a co-host, but now, suddenly, her mental illness was on the national stage.

She had always had a weakness for shopping, and Lincoln chided her for racking up debt the first time they lived in Washington. Now, obsessed with a sense of sartorial duty to the nation, she felt not only entitled but obligated to buy whatever she wanted. Unlimited credit was casually extended to her in her capacity as future First Lady, and she didn't pause to ask who would ultimately settle the bill. Manically, she shopped for clothing for herself and furnishings for the White House, of which she had not yet even taken stock, and the press was there to cover it all.

In addition, before they had even left Springfield, she became a political loose canon, voicing opinions not in line with or sanctioned by her husband. Like when she referred publicly to William Seward, who would soon become Lincoln's Secretary of State, as that abolitionist sneak. Eyewitnesses at the time said Lincoln brushed her off as if she were a bothersome child. When they finally did leave Springfield, it was on a lengthy train tour with multiple stops meant to introduce the new First Family to their voting public. Mary stayed largely out of the spotlight, but Lincoln was mobbed. Proving Kissinger's famous adage, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, women threw themselves at the president-elect regardless of his unusual appearance. Grotesque was a word commonly used to

describe him. He himself told a joke about meeting a woman in the forest. She said, You are the homeliest man I ever saw. I said it might be true, but what could I do about it? She replied, You might stay at home. But Mary, vainer and less well-defended than her husband, was subjected to an entirely different level of scrutiny.

One paper printed the following report. Mrs. Lincoln has not the features of Juno, the form of Venus or Minerva's wisdom. But neither does she chew tobacco, dress outlandishly, or curse. Nor does she ever, in public or private, kick up shindies. And elsewhere? On the top of her head, the hair does grow, and very luxuriantly, too,

of a dark brown color and elastic fiber. Her head is large and well-developed, presenting the organs of firmness and language in a highly developed and well-matured condition. Her forehead is broad, well-shaped, and capable of great expression, while her chin rounds gracefully. Her form inclines to stoutness, but is well-fashioned and comely, while her hands and feet are really beautiful. Assassination threats started

the instant Lincoln won the election. But now that he was about to set foot in the Capitol, they were getting more serious. Enough so that a plan was devised to protect him for the last leg of the journey by essentially making his wife and children the decoy. They would stay the course as originally planned, while he would break off and slip into Washington early, in secret. When Mary was told this was how things would go down,

she was so upset she almost blew their cover. But her distemper was, for the first time in their marriage, outmatched. When the life of the president-elect was at stake, she was not in a position to dictate terms. The assassins' plan had been to tip Lincoln's train off its tracks and roll it down the hill. That did not end up happening. But the mob of angry Democrats at the station was no joke. They hurled insults and obscenities. People were trampled and crushed against the side of the car. It took the family half an hour to get out. But if Lincoln himself had been there, things might have been far worse.

Once she did finally get a proper view inside the White House, Mary decided that it did in fact need a major update. Congress approved a budget of $20,000 for home improvements, but she blew through that and nearly $7,000 more as the Civil War was raging. Powerless to rein in her addiction, she tried desperately to cover up the mess, attempting to bribe a senator to appoint a bureaucrat who could help her bury the costs, and offering other governmental appointments to her creditors in the hopes that they would forgive her outstanding balances. When her husband finally learned of the cost overrun, he lost it at the intermediary she had sent to ask for an increased budget. It would stink in the land to have it said that an appropriation of $20,000 for furnishing the house had been overrun by the president when the poor freezing soldiers could not have blankets.

Rather than put my name to such a bill, I would pay for it out of my own pocket. As Lincoln's months in office wore on, Mary continued to unravel. As Lincoln's months in office wore on, Mary continued to unravel. The stress of the war and the death of young Willie, of tuberculosis in 1862, did not help. She was the victim of a runaway carriage accident, which was suspected to be another failed assassination attempt, and hit her head badly. The wound exacerbated the headaches that had plagued her her whole life. She had multiple siblings who were fighting for the Confederacy, and while she would rather that they be killed in battle than achieve victory, the optics of her family ties were not good, and seen as a traitor in the South,

and her hometown newspaper claimed that the death of her son had been God's judgment against her. That's a lot for anyone, but for Mary Lincoln, it was truly debilitating. Her moods became more erratic than ever. But she was still devoted to her husband, refusing to evacuate Washington without him when it looked as if the city was in peril, and worrying privately that her shopping addiction might cost him re-election. Mary liked to complain that her husband was too honest, as if he was so good, he couldn't conceive of how bad others could be.

When the war finally came to its end, Washington was delirious with joy. And yet, Mary warned her husband, That city is filled with our enemies. Lincoln, ever the voice of unity, would not see it that way. Enemies? We must never speak of that.

With the fall of the Confederacy, the man so famously grave had become practically buoyant. His wife teased him that his cheerfulness was almost startling. And well, I may feel so, Mary. I consider this day

the war has come to a close. We must both be more cheerful in the future. Between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have both been very miserable. But of course, the misery was far from over. course, the misery was far from over. When Lincoln won re-election in 1864, Mary was seized by a certainty that he would not live through the end of his term. He then fell ill around the time of his inauguration, which frightened her even more. She coped with this terror in her usual way, by shopping. Buying herself a thousand dollars worth of mourning clothes, she was either trying to ward off fate or buttress herself against it. Weeks later, she held her husband's hand in the dark of Ford's theater while they laughed at the comedy on stage.

Suddenly, he was slumped forward as if asleep, and the smell of gunpowder was in the air. gunpowder was in the air. For Mary, who was so ill-equipped to manage any of the challenges she endured in her life, to have her husband shot dead right in front of her was perhaps the cruelest turn that fate could take. It sent her into a kind of mental netherland. She kept rubbing her face and hands compulsively while repeating, Why didn't he shoot me? Why didn't he shoot me? Her distress was so constant and loud throughout the night her husband lay dying. Secretary of War Stanton finally ordered Take that woman out and do not let her in again. The girl who had dreamed of being First Lady,

who had found with her heart the right man for the nation at just the right time in history, was now that woman. No longer the great president's wife, but his problematic widow, she was too distraught to plan or even attend his funeral. She remained in mourning for the rest of her life, wearing only black for 17 years. But even in her sadness, she was characteristically narcissistic. At a time when thousands of her fellow citizens had lost sons, brothers,

husbands, and fathers, she wrote, No family ever felt their bereavement more than we do. My heart is indeed broken, and without my beloved husband, I do not wish to live.

Five years after the assassination, she wrote to a friend, Your life is so filled with love and happiness whilst I, alas, am but a weary exile. Without my beloved husband's presence, the world is filled with gloom and dreariness for me. Most of Mary Lincoln's time after the assassination seems to have been spent mourning her husband, fretting over his legacy, and trying to wring money out of people. She lobbied Congress to pay her the remainder of her husband's salary for the rest of his term. When they offered her the rest of the year's salary instead, she called it

A petty sum. An insufficient return for Congress to make me, an allowance to its meagerness by men who traduced and vilified the loved wife of the great man who made them, and from whom they amassed great fortunes. And yet, all this was permitted by an American people who owed their remaining the nation to my husband. to my husband. She fought with the city planners of Springfield, who had constructed a central monument in which to house Lincoln's grave, and made them stop construction even though it was almost finished by the time she got involved. She couldn't bear to sell their home in Springfield, but couldn't bear to go there either, which didn't help her growing debt problem. She complained generally about the meager boarding house rooms in which Abraham Lincoln's widow was forced to live. She told the Republican Party it was their job to support her. She seemed to expect the entire country to rise up in its gratitude for her husband's service and, as her father had once done, fund her life in the style to which she was accustomed.

which she was accustomed. She tried to pressure and guilt-trip whoever would listen, from friends and politicians to William B. Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt, claiming she would donate half of what she got upon her death to the freedmen. She resorted to selling off clothes to try to raise money. When Congress finally agreed to her demands for a posthumous stipend, she immediately complained it was not enough. Other high-profile widows were actually making a profession out of their status, giving talks and writing books. But Mary's chosen art form seems to have been manipulation, haranguing, and complaints. Whatever amounts she ultimately got were never enough. Ten years after the assassination, Mary's eldest and only surviving son had her committed to a mental hospital.

To a friend, she wrote, I have been a deeply wronged woman by one for whom I would have poured out my life's blood. The night before her son put her on trial for insanity, she drank what she believed was a lethal dose of laudanum. insanity, she drank what she believed was a lethal dose of laudanum. It did not harm her because the pharmacist, having recognized her, omitted the toxin from the prescription. A few months later, she was released and able to prove her soundness of mind. She then moved in with her sister Elizabeth and spent her final years with the same sister in whose parlor she first canoodled on the couch with the man who would be president. In the words of the couple's biographer,

after all, Lincoln's political ascendancy and final elevation to the presidency were due more to the influence of his wife than to any other person or cause. Her ambition for her husband was pure and unlike him, she was never afraid to name it. More than just a cheerleader, she was an operator, quick to pressure friends for support or cut them off if they did not deliver.

Politics was a part of Abraham and Mary's love language from the beginning. He once made a gift to her of election results, which she tied up in pink ribbon. And she may even have influenced what he did when he achieved the goal she had long held for him, underscoring the fact that any institution, whether it's a marriage or a nation, is only as strong as our commitment to be a part of it.

What alternate reality would our country be in now without Abraham Lincoln's presidency? It's impossible to know and frightening to contemplate. And yet, had it not been for Mary Lincoln, we might be living in it now. But she was far from perfect. Mentally ill, traumatized by life, her actions so threatened her husband's work in the White House that she was rumored to be a spy and nearly investigated for treason. And her husband, though he loved her, was forced to discount much of what she said and did as insanity. But he never questioned her belief in him, because she may not always have

been sane, but when it came to having faith in her husband, she was never wrong. Special thanks to Rita Wilson and Timothy Oliphant for bringing The Lincolns to life. Thank you. about the bills when it's my turn to decorate the White House. And speaking of my significant other, starting tomorrow, you can join us both for a follow-up episode in which we talk about Mary Lincoln and her husband and discuss just how much shelf space one person should be allowed to devote to a single president. Significant Others is written and read by me, Liza Powell O'Brien. I'm not a historian, and I'm greatly indebted to the work of those who are. In some cases, I use diaries or newspapers or court records as sources,

but most often I draw from biographies and autobiographies and articles, which represent countless hours of work by people who are far more knowledgeable than I. Sources for each episode are listed in the show notes. If you hear something interesting and you want to know more, please consider ordering these books

from your independent bookseller. And if you are a historian or someone who knows something about the people I'm talking about, and you'd like to take issue with an impression I've made or a conclusion I've drawn, I welcome the dialogue.

Finally, if you have an episode suggestion, let us know at significantpod at gmail.com. History is filled with characters, and we tend to focus only on a few of them. Significant Others is produced by Jen Samples. Our executive producers are Joanna Solitaroff, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Joanna Samuel. Music and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Joanna Samuel.

Music and scoring by Eduardo Perez and Hannes Brown, with additional help from Emily Prill. Special thanks to Lisa Berm and Will Becton. Research and fact-checking by Ella Morton. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.