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Book Shows 2 Sides Of Mary Todd Lincoln

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By CARL HARTMAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2009

"Mrs. Lincoln: A Life," by Catherine Clinton (Harper, $27)

Mary Anne Todd was a petite version of the Southern belle: 5 feet tall, lively, well-educated, daughter of a prosperous slave-holding Kentucky family; perhaps a bit overripe for marriage at almost 24.

Most of the Todd family fought for, or sympathized with, the slave states in the Civil War two decades later. Mary became a passionate abolitionist. Abraham Lincoln, a practical politician, approached slavery more cautiously.

Mary and the future president had a rocky courtship. The engagement was broken off, then revived. She must have seen something in the ugly, lanky 6-foot-4 member of the Illinois Legislature, who had an irregular income as a lawyer. At 33, he had spent less than a year in school, but intense reading and his own observation had given him a hatred of slavery and - like his bride-to-be - a love of poetry.

Until his election as president in 1860, they lived in a modest Springfield house for nearly 18 years, with one hired servant.

"The female head of household had a full plate of daily and weekly domestic duties from baking bread to churning butter," writes biographer Catherine Clinton, who teaches U.S. history at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. "Mary Lincoln did not have to make her own soap and candles like her foremothers, but was still likely to beat her own carpets, air her own linens, and restuff her own pillows for freshness."

The book concludes with an assessment more sympathetic than that of many Lincoln scholars, but still critical: "Her unconditional love sustained Lincoln's growth to greatness. She was a woman of intense intellect and passion who stepped outside the boundaries her time prescribed and suffered for it."

The words "Love is eternal" were etched on her wedding ring, and Lincoln got to Tiffany's before the inauguration to buy her a seed-pearl necklace, earrings, bracelets and brooch for $530 (almost $13,000 in today's money).

She had her triumphs. Her biographer describes her as gliding into an inaugural ball - attendance 5,000 - "wearing blue silk, bedecked with pearls, gold and diamonds. When Lincoln left at midnight, his wife stayed on - dancing into the night."

Much of her suffering was a result of her fondness for luxury and lack of inhibition in maintaining an income to sustain it. At one point, her debts for clothes and jewelry reached $25,000, the amount of the president's annual salary.

She was the first president's wife to be called "first lady." Grief over the murder of her husband pervaded the rest of her life, along with the deaths from disease of three sons. She died in 1882 at age 63.

Carl Hartman writes for The Associated Press.

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