Mary smiled wanly and acknowledged that Frances made a fair point.
In the country beyond Springfield, the response of the press to Abe’s election was swift and unambiguous, whether for good or ill. One Kansas paper referred to the news of his victory as “glorious tidings,” while the Richmond Dispatch gloomily intoned, “The event is the most deplorable one that has happened in the history of the country.” The Courier of New Orleans agreed, warning that the election had “awakened throughout the South a spirit of stubborn resistance which it will be found is impossible to quell.” The New York Enquirer paid homage to the spirit of democracy and took a conciliatory approach, proclaiming, “Stretching out our hands to the South over this victory, we have no word of taunt to utter for the threats of disunion which were raised for our defeat. Let those threats be buried in oblivion.” The editor of the Semi-Weekly Mississippian would have none of that, and beneath a headline declaring, “The Deed’s Done—Disunion the Remedy,” he called Abe and the vice president–elect, Hannibal Hamlin, “both bigoted, unscrupulous and cold-blooded enemies of the peace and equality of the slaveholding states, and one of the pair strongly marked with the blood of his negro ancestry.” More upsetting was the editor’s conclusion that since the election proved the intention of the Northern states “to wield the vast machinery of the federal Government to destroy the liberties of the slaveholding states, it becomes their duty to dissolve their connection and establish a separate and independent government of their own.”
Frances knew that the South had been threatening to secede for decades, and that a certain amount of heightened agitation and a frenzied clamor for secession could be expected in the aftermath of such a hard-fought election. She wanted to dismiss these fiery diatribes as more empty threats—and yet they seemed to represent a new mood in the nation, a strange distemper that threatened an untenable peace.
In late November, Frances was at Mary’s home helping her send out invitations for a dinner party when a parcel arrived. “Another unexpected gift,” Mary said, pleased, as they carried the flat, rectangular parcel into the sitting room, where Mary took scissors from her sewing basket and began to cut the twine and brown paper wrappings. “This one is from South Carolina, of all places. Since the election, gifts have been arriving from all across the country—”
Her voice choked off as the paper fell away to reveal a painting on canvas—a crude likeness of Abe, tarred and feathered, a rope around his neck and chains binding his feet.
Frances gasped. Blanching, Mary dropped the painting and drew back in horror, a hand pressed to her heart. “Who would paint such a monstrous thing?” she exclaimed, voice shaking, tears in her eyes. “Who would send it here—here, where his wife and children—”
“Don’t look at it,” Frances said, snatching up the horrid painting and carrying it from the room. “Never think of it again.”
But she knew the dreadful image would be forever seared into her sister’s memory, as would the malevolent threat it implied.
15
November–December 1875
Ann
Throughout November, letters and telegrams flew between Springfield and Chicago, between three concerned sisters and their increasingly exasperated nephew. Whether his mother was mad or sane was an open question, and also beside the point. Robert did not trust Mary’s judgment in financial matters, not because of a doctor’s diagnosis but because of her impulsive behavior. As the conservator of her estate, as well as her son and the head of the family, he was responsible for her conduct, her physical safety, and her financial security. “There is no person upon whom lies the responsibility and duty of protecting her when she needs it, except myself,” Robert wrote to Ann in the middle of the month, and also to Frances, as they discovered when they compared letters afterward. “I want to do everything in my power for her happiness, and I have no wish to interfere with her expenditures other than to ensure that she will have enough money to last the rest of her life.”
Frances agreed that in her fragile mental state, Mary could unwittingly impoverish herself. Ann thought that it was far more likely that she would deliberately go bankrupt in order to humiliate her son, for the public would surely blame him if his unwell, widowed mother was allowed to squander her fortune.
Ann sympathized with Robert, who carried several major responsibilities: for his resentful, possibly mad mother; for his law practice; and for his family, which included a newborn son, his third child. He did not need the additional distraction of a prolonged battle with his mother over her assets. Nor was he certain whether he was legally permitted to turn over the bonds and other accounts to his mother, as she demanded, since the entire point of a conservatorship was to protect such assets from a person declared legally insane.
A week after his son was born, Robert wrote to his Springfield aunts to say that he would make no decisions without consulting his most trusted advisers. These included David Davis, a close friend of Abe’s since his circuit court days and the man most responsible for Abe’s nomination in 1860. In 1862, Abe had appointed him to the Supreme Court, and three years later he became the executor of Abe’s estate. In late November, Robert wrote to inform the Springfield family of Justice Davis’s recommendations, sending one letter to Elizabeth, which he asked her to share with the others. Justice Davis believed that Mary should have remained at Bellevue until she had recovered completely, and that the Bradwells’ meddling would prove disastrous to her. However, since the deed was done, he recommended that Robert remove all restrictions on his mother’s travel and residence and return her belongings, but rather than turn over her bonds, he should pay her a monthly income, which she would be free to spend as she wished. “This advice I intend to follow,” Robert wrote.
Soon thereafter, boxes and trunks full of his mother’s possessions arrived at the Edwards residence, including a jewelry box and eleven trunks of clothing. When Ann stopped by to help Mary, Elizabeth, and the housekeeper and maid find places to store everything, Elizabeth, much perturbed by the enormity of the task, wearily concluded that most of the clothes and trinkets would have to remain in the trunks, for there was not enough wardrobe and bureau space in the house to allow them to unpack everything.
At first Mary seemed delighted to have her belongings back, but as the afternoon wore on and she completed a cursory examination of the trunks, her face clouded over with suspicion and disappointment. “This is not everything,” she fretted. “He kept back some of my most precious items, my most sentimental favorites.”
“Isn’t this enough for the present?” asked Ann, gesturing around the once-tidy guest room, now crowded with cartons and trunks. “You have more dresses here than you can possibly wear in a year, and you keep buying new ones. You’re going to squeeze Elizabeth’s family out of their own home.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Mary retorted. “None of this would matter if Robert would simply yield up my bonds.”
This, Ann and her other sisters knew, Robert had no intention of doing. “Mary has become very much embittered against Robert over the past fortnight,” Elizabeth confided to Ann in a murmur later that day as she was seeing her to the door. “The more he yields, the more she demands.”
“Then let’s hope our nephew will stand firm this time,” said Ann, “or soon you won’t be able to walk around your house without tripping over a trunk.”
Elizabeth’s forlorn look suggested that she had considered this possibility but did not see how to forestall it.
When Ann next called on her eldest sister at the end of the month, Elizabeth confessed that matters had only worsened. Mary continued to demand that Robert increase her monthly stipend and send her the rest of her trunks, even though Elizabeth protested that they did not have enough room to store them and that Mary did not truly need them. “More troubling yet,” said Elizabeth, pursing her lips and glancing over her shoulder to make sure Mary was out of earshot, “she has been giving away an astonishing number of her posse
ssions and money to old friends and acquaintances.”
“The money is a concern,” mused Ann, “but isn’t it good that she’s getting rid of things she no longer wants or needs? If she gives away enough, eventually you may have your house back.”
“It isn’t good at all,” Elizabeth protested. “Many of the items she’s given away actually belonged to Robert. I know for a fact that she gifted them to him and his wife years ago. As for the rest, those things ought to be considered part of his eventual inheritance. Ninian and I are shocked that Mary would rob her son of his future.”
“Robert has never counted on a future inheritance to provide for himself and his family,” Ann said. “His career is flourishing, for which he deserves all the credit, and he’s built up his own wealth.”
“That doesn’t make Mary’s actions any less wrong.” Elizabeth held up her hands and shook her head. “I’m not talking about a gown she will never wear again, or a shawl ten years out of style. She should be free to dispense with such things as she wishes. My concern is about precious family mementos, artifacts of Robert’s late father. Don’t you agree those ought to go to Robert and his children?”
Ann hesitated, her uneasiness rising. For the past ten years, Mary had occasionally gifted a dear friend or a loyal colleague of Abe’s with one of his possessions—a walking stick, for example, or a top hat or book. But to give away trunks full of belongings out of spite was quite another matter. Even if Mary had the legal right to dispense with the items as she wished, Robert deserved to be informed.
“I have no interest in an inheritance,” Robert responded to Ann’s urgent note. “Indeed, I had assumed that my mother had already cut me out of her will. When it comes to the ultimate disposition of her property, I do not want my best interest or that of my children to be a factor in the decision. The only objective I wish attained by any plan that may be devised is her own protection.”
Ann considered this very generous of her nephew, far more generous than his spiteful mother deserved. Her indignation rose in December when Mary, increasingly incensed by Robert’s refusal to return her bonds, threatened to hire an attorney to overturn his conservatorship. Mary warned her son that the legal process would oblige her to divulge the truth about the past ten years of their relationship, details that, if made public, would embarrass him more than herself, both personally and professionally.
Elizabeth told Ann that she and Ninian had talked themselves hoarse trying to dissuade her. Patiently and clearly, Ninian had repeatedly explained the rules of conservatorship to his sister-in-law, but she simply refused to believe that Robert had no legal discretion to restore her control over her assets as long as the judicial system still considered her legally insane.
“She’s going to tear this family apart,” Ann lamented to Clark one evening as they prepared for bed, shivering from upset nerves as much as from the cold. “Has she not dragged our reputation through the mud enough for one lifetime? What could she possibly gain by revealing private conversations with her son—highly fictionalized conversations, I’m quite sure—to shame him before the public? The people respect him and dislike her. She will never win them over, and she will convince absolutely no one that she should be in charge of her fortune. She will only prove that she ought never to have left Bellevue.”
“She must think it won’t come to that,” said Clark as he turned down the lamp. “She must assume that Robert would rather give in to her demands than have her make a public spectacle of them both.”
“But he cannot legally give her what she wants.”
Clark sighed and climbed into bed beside her, drawing the quilts over them. “Someone needs to convince her of that, before this goes too far.”
The room fell dark and silent, but her brooding kept Ann awake for a while. When she woke the next morning, she decided that since no one else seemed likely to convince Mary to relent, she might as well try. It was unlikely she could make matters worse.
A few snowflakes drifted past the windowpane as Ann put on a warm wool dress and went down to breakfast, nodding along to the children’s chatter as she mentally rehearsed what she ought to tell her sister. It was late morning before she had the opportunity to put on her boots and wraps and venture out to the Edwards residence.
When she arrived, the housekeeper informed her that her mistress was resting and Mrs. Lincoln had gone out for a walk with her grandnephew Lewis. Invited to wait in the parlor, Ann decided to meet her sister and grandnephew along the way, the better to let Elizabeth sleep undisturbed.
Breathing deeply of the crisp air, which carried a faint hint of snows to come, Ann set out in the direction the housekeeper had indicated. She had gone only two blocks when she spotted Mary’s familiar figure, cloaked and hooded, coming up the sidewalk toward her, alone. Lewis was nowhere to be seen.
Immediately suspicious, Ann lifted her skirts and hurried toward her sister. She reached Mary before she could duck away, not that Ann couldn’t easily overtake her in a footrace. “Where is Lewis?” Ann asked, trying to sound merely curious.
Mary drew herself up imperiously. “I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.”
“I was told he went out walking with you.”
“He had business of his own to complete, so we parted company.”
Ann could only imagine how Mary had managed to elude her grandnephew, and how embarrassed the young man would feel later when he discovered that he had been duped. “I see you had errands too,” Ann said, eyeing the thick envelope her sister clutched under her arm. Quickly she stepped forward, and although Mary turned to block her view, she was not fast enough to hide the name of the sender.
“Judge Bradwell?” Ann exclaimed. “You have been communicating with the Bradwells?”
“What if I have?”
“You know very well that cutting off all contact with those two was a condition of your release!”
“Ceasing contact was a condition of my visit,” Mary retorted, her voice steely. “Once I was permanently discharged, such conditions no longer applied.”
“I doubt Dr. Patterson or Elizabeth or Robert would agree.” Glimpsing a cagy look in her sister’s eye, Ann added, “If you didn’t think it was wrong, you wouldn’t be keeping it secret, or lying about your errand and abandoning Lewis along the way.”
“Judge Bradwell is my legal adviser. If you must know, I asked him to send me my will so that I may amend it.”
To cut Robert out, Ann had no doubt. “Is this the only contact you’ve had with Bradwell or his wife?” she queried. “If obtaining your will is all that has passed between you, and you have no intention of writing to either of them again, then I will not feel obliged to tell Elizabeth and Robert what I know.”
“Nonsense,” said Mary, brushing past her as she continued on her way back to the Edwards residence. “You’ll tell them whatever you please, embellished beyond recognition.”
Greatly vexed, Ann turned and followed her sister home, reluctant to leave her alone but unwilling to walk beside her. Mary immediately went upstairs to her bedchamber, while Ann went to Elizabeth’s room, relieved to find her awake. Elizabeth was so astonished and troubled by the news of Mary’s subterfuge that she sent word to Ninian to come home from work immediately. Conferring in his study with the door closed, Ann, Elizabeth, and Ninian quickly deduced that Mary’s anger at Robert had begun to surge right around the time she had resumed her correspondence with the Bradwells. They also agreed—grudgingly, on Ann’s part—that clandestinely resuming contact with the meddling pair was not grounds for returning Mary to Bellevue. Even so, Elizabeth considered it a personal betrayal. Severing contact with the Bradwells was a condition not only for Mary’s release but also for her acceptance into the Edwards household. That the short-term visit had turned into an indefinite stay mattered not at all. By going behind Elizabeth’s back, Mary had betrayed her sister’s trust.
Of course Robert had to be informed, though doing so incensed Mary all the more.
&n
bsp; In late December, over her sisters’ pleas and protests, Mary hired an attorney, former Illinois governor John M. Palmer, to appeal Robert’s conservatorship. Mary became increasingly excitable and contentious during the few days the governor investigated the legal statutes, and she eagerly awaited the day when the facts of the case would be presented to her. As her guardians, Elizabeth and Ninian were obliged to attend the meeting, which convened in Ninian’s study one frosty afternoon. At Elizabeth’s request, Ann and Frances came too, ready to help however might be necessary, depending upon the governor’s findings and Mary’s reaction.
Mary’s expression was bright with anticipation that slowly faded as Governor Palmer informed her that Robert’s understanding of the law was sound. The conservatorship could not be dissolved until she was no longer considered legally insane, and that appeal could not be heard until a year after her insanity trial.
At first Mary did not understand him, but sat wringing her hands, only asking when her bonds would be restored to her. Ninian took Governor Palmer aside and asked him to explain the principle of conservatorship to her, showing her references from law books if necessary, for she would be more likely to accept the unhappy truth from her own lawyer than from her son, her sisters, and her brothers-in-law.
Eventually Mary inhaled deeply, fixed a steady gaze on her lawyer, and said, “One year from the date of that abhorrent trial?”
“Yes, Mrs. Lincoln,” her attorney replied. “One year.”
She rose stiffly, sweeping her skirts behind her. “I shall note the date and the hour.” Shoulders squared and head erect, she left the room without a glance at her sisters, at Ninian, or at anyone else.
Upon receiving a report of the meeting, Robert wrote to Governor Palmer offering to resign as his mother’s conservator if the governor was willing to take his place. Governor Palmer declined.
Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters Page 18
