Mary Todd Lincoln
visits Pierce as part of Sesquicentennial Celebration
By Greg Gerot
The City of
Introduced as “Mary Todd
Lincoln”, Janet Worthington, special speaker for Pierce’s May Sesquicentennial
event, did not leave character for a bit more than an hour. The audience
snuggled into the center’s conference room for the question and answer session
with Mrs. Lincoln.
Dressed in a beautiful pink
gown adorned with yards of ecru lace and with flowers in her hair, Mrs. Lincoln
transported us to the life and times of a Nation wracked by Civil War and were
treated to a wife’s perspective of the Man of that period.
Of course, parallel to
Many assume that Mary Todd
Lincoln was an irrational, over bearing and neurotic wife to the man, however
what the audience of 30 or so was treated to this Mother’s Day weekend was a
heartwarming understanding of a loving wife’s efforts to protect her husband by
keeping him on a regular schedule with his family, meals and outings together.
Her view regarding him was
that, if she did not require him to take dinner with the family or venture out
for a carriage ride daily, he would simply not leave his office but continue to
work. She portrayed how difficult
it was for him to lay aside for even short periods of time the burden of leading
the Nation in the midst of the horrors of the Civil War.
One of the questions asked
during our time with Mary was how she met her husband. Her answer was so
endearing, lovely and complex. She stated that when she first met him “she knew
he was the one immediately.” She
described him as an up and coming politician and that she knew he would be
President of the
They decided to get married
the next day. Her great love and admiration for her famous husband showed
through so clearly that we were touched, even transported to see and feel the
emotional bond the two shared. It
was out of this great love that she explained what the press of the time took as
her irrational behavior in her attempts to protect the great man she was married
to.
We also caught a tender
glimpse into the pain both Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln faced together in the deaths of
three of their four sons, Tad, Edward, and Willie.
Mrs. Lincoln told us how each child’s death had devastated her and that
Willie’s death (a child she said “everyone loved” and who died while they were
in the White House) was such heartache for her that she could not get out of bed
for a month.
Also, as a result, she wore
black for a year. Of course, the press of the time did not treat her kindly as
she worked her way through her deep grief. She was called selfish, a shrew and
controlling, but some things never change and often times, as it is today, the
press is cruel as if it were open season on those who are in the public eye.
Mary also explained another
topic for which she and Mr. Lincoln were often criticized for…the lack of
discipline when it came to their children. She related that the reason for their
lenient attitude toward them was tied to their having lost so many to death.
They just wanted to enjoy them while they had them.
While gazing through the
window of Mary Todd Lincoln’s perspective of her husband, we continually saw a
kind, gentle man with enormous understanding and loving patience for her. We saw
how their deep affection for one another supported him in a time of unbearable
difficulty, burden and grief.
We caught a glimpse of
We also saw the devastating
effect his death had on her. We saw how she had to cope with the immediate loss
of her husband and her place in life. She portrayed to us the difficulty of
facing a future which would no longer be defined by her husband and how alone
and fearful she felt. She explained to us why she did some of the things she did
after her husband’s death as she tried to compensate for all the forces that
were bombarding her.
She related to us her low of
lows…..being committed to an asylum after appearing before a jury….an action
which had been initiated by her only then living son, Robert. What loneliness!
What betrayal! And yet, through a year of letter writing and her own tough
perseverance, she was eventually deemed of sound mind and able to continue with
the pieces of her life. Her
relationship with her son Robert remained strained for the rest of her life.
A heartfelt thank you goes to
the Idaho Humanities Council for sponsoring such a memorable event, and to Janet
Worthington for such an energetic and genuine portrayal of a sadly misunderstood
and complicated lovely first lady! We were refreshed, touched, and delightedly
proud to claim as our own a fresh insight into one of the most famous and
historically significant presidency’s of this our beloved