Justice for Mary

This year, Lilith wrote her first report, and after a lot of deliberation, she chose to write about Mary Todd Lincoln. She was fascinated by the séances that Mrs. Lincoln held in the White House, and she was horrified by how Mary Todd has been remembered by historians and wanted to learn more about her. I didn’t know much about Mary Todd Lincoln myself, so it was educational for me, too, and I was blown away by the conclusions Lilith drew. I’ll let Lil speak for herself –

Who was Mary Todd Lincoln? People said that Mary Todd Lincoln was an unpopular First Lady but I think she should be remembered better than that. She had a hard and sad life and a lot of what happened to her was because of patriarchy, which is when society is run by men and men make all the rules, and misogyny, which is prejudice against women. She had so many people die in her life too. People said she was “crazy” and “uncivilized” and “insane” and one White House staffer even called her a “hellcat.” I don’t think she was insane but she was misunderstood.

Mary remembered her childhood as “desolate.” She was born in 1818 on December 13 in Kentucky. Mary was the daughter of an important banker. She was a privileged well-educated child of a wealthy slave holding family. However, Mary did not like slavery and grew up to be an Abolitionist. Her mom died in childbirth when Mary was six. Her dad remarried two years later and Mary did not like her stepmother. They did not get along. Mary was an Abolitionist but most of her half-brothers were Confederate soldiers that died in the Civil War, which was sad.

Mary met Abraham at a party in Springfield Illinois. They broke up and got back together. Then they got married on November 4, 1842. On Mary’s wedding ring Lincoln engraved “love is eternal.”

When Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States Mary became First Lady. When she first became First Lady people did not like her right away. Mary was from the South and Abraham was a poor man from Illinois. They judged her and were snobby to her. They said she was “uncouth” and uncivilized and unproper. That she had bad manners and bad fashion. A lot of people in Washington gossiped about her and said mean things and I bet that hurt her feelings a lot. She started to throw really fancy parties and spend a lot of money on clothes and to decorate the White House to try to fit in and make people like her. It didn’t work and people just started saying she spent too much money. She got stressed and that’s why she was spending so much money but it actually made people like her even less. She wasn’t good at talking to people and she was easy to influence and manipulate with stuff like gossip, probably because she didn’t have a lot of friends or people she could trust.

Mary had a lot of tragedy in her life and her sadness made her act in ways that people thought was strange. She had four sons: Robert (1848-1926), Edward (1846-1850), William (1850-1862), and Thomas “Tad” (1853-1871). His dad gave him the nickname “Tad” because he had a big head like a tadpole. Only one of Mary’s sons lived to become an adult and all of them died really young. After William “Willie” died from typhoid Mary started going to seances and hosting seances so she could contact his spirit. Seances are where you are bringing back the ghosts of the dead to come talk to you. When Willie died, Mary was all alone. President Lincoln was in the middle of fighting in the Civil War and couldn’t be there for her. Mary started talking to mediums who are the people who spirits talk through and who lead seances. She would have mediums come to do “calls to the dead” in the White House Red Room.

She also had a rough life because her half-brothers were all killed in the Civil War. Her husband was then assassinated in the theater when she was sitting right next to him holding his hand. That’s really sad.

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated Mary became a widow. She had a lot of debt because of all the money she spent – or other people would say “wasted” – and she had to go begging to the government for money which was probably really embarrassing and hard. She moved a lot and eventually her son Robert asked the court to declare her a lunatic. He had people spy on her, he paid doctors to say she was insane, he paid store clerks and shopkeepers and hotel employees to testify that she was insane. He tricked her and she had no time to prepare her defense. He had people say that she spent too much money, would hurt herself, hold seances, could not take care of herself. The jury only took a few minutes to convict her and she had to spend months in an institution!

Back then, men could use laws to put women in asylums and hospitals if they were troublesome. In Illinois in 1875, there was a law that said that “married women may be detained in hospitals at the request of the husband without evidence of insanity.” Women had almost no rights back then. If men wanted to they could have their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and other women in their lives locked up for being annoying, rude, improper, disobedient, strange, or weird. Almost any reason they could come up with. They could probably even do “cuz I feel like it.” Mary was probably a victim of this. She was not mentally unstable and was not in danger of harming herself or anyone else. Her son just thought she was annoying and hard to deal with.

She wasn’t crazy. She was just stressed and sad and worried. When she was younger, people said that she was witty and charming and smart, but also that she had a bad temper and was sarcastic and moody. She was more interested in politics than most women of her time. She didn’t fit in.

In the end, Mary went to live with her sister. She died from a stroke exactly eleven years after her son Tad died.

#justiceformary

A forgotten lemon verbena sachet and a splash of rose water, neroli, and orange blossom.