Then, in May of 1881, after months of gentle but persistent cajoling on Elizabeth’s part, she agreed to meet with Robert.
Eleven-year-old Mamie had been begging to see her grandmother ever since Mary returned from abroad, eager to thank her in person for the lovely gifts she had sent from France and Italy, to read poetry together, to listen, enchanted, as her grandmother regaled her with stories of her travels. Elizabeth invited Robert to bring Mamie for a visit, and then, instead of leaving his daughter at the front door and going off to spend time with his aunts, Robert accompanied Mamie inside and joined her and his mother as they sat in the parlor and took tea in the garden. It was a strained détente, but it was a beginning, and as the weeks passed it took a firmer hold. By winter, Mary and Robert were exchanging cordial letters, and although Mary remained estranged from Robert’s wife, the arrangement between mother and son suited them both.
How fortunate it was indeed, Elizabeth thought as she left the telegraph office, that Mary and Robert had reconciled before it was too late. She could not bear to imagine how Robert might have suffered in the years to come if he and his mother had not made peace, if their last parting, now swiftly approaching, had been made from a cold distance rather than in amity and love.
Robert arrived in Springfield early the next morning. Tears in his eyes, he quickly greeted Elizabeth with a kiss on the cheek, then hastened to his mother’s bedchamber. Fighting back her own tears, she joined him and her sisters in the vigil that would surely reach its inevitable conclusion before the day’s end.
Soon Mary’s suffering would be over, Elizabeth told herself. That was how she must think of her sister’s passing. At last Mary would find the peace and solace that had eluded her in life.
Would peace come to the sisters she left behind?
When Elizabeth’s own last day came, she hoped she would be able to look back on her life and know that she had done right by her sisters. As the eldest, she had always wished to do her duty, relying upon the wisdom of others for guidance. If she had been too indulgent, her consolation would be that she had erred on the side of humanity.
All her life, through the ebb and flow of the years, through estrangement and friendship, through times of bright hope and times of bleakest despair, Elizabeth had loved Mary, always, and had needed her. Who but a sister could a woman count on to truly understand her, even when they did not understand each other at all?
Though passions had strained, they had never broken their bonds of sisterly love. The war with all its divisiveness and rancor had not done that, nor would even death.
For whatever the world took away from them, even taking them from one another, love would abide.
Author’s Note
Mary Todd Lincoln died in Springfield, Illinois, on July 16, 1882, at the age of sixty-three, on the thirty-third anniversary of her beloved father’s death and one day after the eleventh anniversary of her son Tad’s death. Modern physicians and historians theorize that she died of a stroke, possibly caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain, and that complications of untreated diabetes contributed to her final illness and death.
On July 19, Mary’s body lay in repose in the parlor of the Edwards residence, the same room in which she had married her beloved Abraham almost forty years before. Lying in a casket draped in black velvet and surrounded by fragrant flowers, she was attired in a beautiful white silk dress, a posthumous gift from her sister Elizabeth. On her finger she wore her wedding band, engraved with the phrase Love Is Eternal—a tenet that had sustained her throughout her long, lonely years of widowhood.
So many mourners attended Mary’s funeral—including family, friends, dignitaries she had known as first lady, and countless sympathetic strangers—that the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield could not accommodate them all. After the opening hymns from the choir, a scriptural reading, and prayer, Reverend James A. Reed offered a biographical sermon. “In introducing his subject,” the Chicago Tribune reported, “Mr. Reed drew a comparison in which the life and career of Abraham Lincoln and his now deceased spouse were contrasted with the growth and decay of two pines which he had observed standing side by side on a rocky ledge in the Allegheny Mountains”:
The trees which he recalled to mind grew from the same rocky crevice, their roots intertwining and gaining subsistence from the same source, and the trunks almost joined at the base, so as to appear as two branches springing from one trunk. Near the ground one of these trees had been blasted, and, as if in sympathy, the companion had wasted slowly away, until in a few years it too had died. It seemed to have been killed when the fatal blow fell on its mate, and its after subsistence was merely a living death. Similar was the course of life with the illustrious Lincoln and his mate as pictured by the speaker. Mrs. Lincoln, he thought, might be said to have been killed by the fatal bullet which ended the life of her husband.
Hymns and prayers followed the sermon, and then a long, solemn procession conveyed Mary’s remains to the monument on the lovely wooded knoll at Oak Ridge Cemetery, where she was interred with her beloved husband and sons Eddie, Willie, and Tad.
In death, Mary Lincoln at last received a measure of the sympathy and kindness often denied her in life. “By the death of Mary Todd Lincoln . . . there is removed from the stage of life a figure always invested with a certain historic and tragic interest,” the New York Times observed. “It would be well for those who have been disposed to judge harshly of some of the personal characteristics of Mrs. Lincoln to remember that few women have ever been more devoted to their husbands, and that few have ever suffered so awful a shock as she when he was killed by her side.”
Elizabeth’s death six years later at the age of seventy-four was as sudden as Mary’s had been prolonged. One morning a week after she and Ninian celebrated their fifty-sixth wedding anniversary, Elizabeth welcomed two friends for a brief visit and invited them to join her for lunch later that afternoon. After her callers departed, Elizabeth set out on an errand, but fainted and collapsed in the yard. “She returned to the house unassisted,” the Chicago Tribune reported, “and was helped to the sofa where she expired within five minutes. Her husband, who is in feeble health, was at her side. He is greatly prostrated, and some anxiety is felt about him.” Those fears proved prescient: Ninian died eighteen months later, at age eighty, at the home of his son Albert Stephenson Edwards. He was buried beside his beloved wife in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.
In March 1891, Ann Maria Todd Smith died at the age of sixty-seven in San Francisco, where she was visiting her sons Edgar T. and Allen H. Smith. Her remains were returned to Springfield, where she was interred beside her husband, Clark, who had died in 1885.
Frances Todd Wallace passed away at her home on Second Street in Springfield in August 1899 at the age of eighty-two. “She was essentially self-reliant and strong, but kindness and love ruled her life,” an obituary lovingly eulogized her. “She was never so happy as when doing some good for others. The precept that it is more blessed to give than to receive was exemplified in her daily life. Her quiet home was a central place for the entire neighborhood, and young and old alike loved to seek her society. The delight she felt in the companionship of her neighbors was reciprocated to the fullest degree. Her reminiscences of people and events of the old times were of a most interesting character, and her memory to the last was remarkable in their [sic] fidelity to details as well as the force and vividness of the impressions conveyed.”
Less than a year later, Frances’s younger brother, George Rogers Clark Todd, died in South Carolina at the age of seventy-four, estranged from his siblings to the last. Four years later, in March 1904, Margaret Todd Kellogg died of heart failure in Daytona Beach, Florida. “A Distinguished Lady’s Death,” the headline lamented, noting that Margaret had traveled to Florida for her health two months before, accompanied by her three daughters and a son-in-law, who was also her physician. “Mrs. Kellogg came from one of the most renowned and distinguished families in Americ
an history,” the article noted, with some inaccuracies, “being the sister [sic] of the late lamented and martyred President, Abraham Lincoln, who was cruelly assassinated in April, 1865, at the closing of hostilities in the unhappy but sanguinary conflict between the North and South. She like her noble brother [sic], was loved and adored for her ennobling traits of character and God-loving, Christian devotion.”
Mary and Abraham’s beloved Little Sister, Emilie Todd Helm, survived all of her siblings and half-siblings, passing away in February 1930 at her home, Helm Place, on the Bowman’s Mill Pike in Kentucky at the age of ninety-three. Two days later, the Louisville Courier-Journal warmly eulogized her in a piece titled “Little Sister”:
It was a happy turn of fate that Mrs. Ben Hardin Helm, Mary Todd Lincoln’s half-sister, should have been spared these many years and that she was able, both verbally and by her diary and correspondence, to correct many false impressions of circumstances surrounding the lives of Abraham Lincoln and his wife in a day when public interest in them runs high. Many books have been written about the Lincolns, husband and wife, in these last ten years, and not the least of them was that of Katherine Helm of Lexington, based largely on her mother’s recollections, letters and writings.
Mrs. Helm’s death, at the age of 93, removes a woman who was well beloved by the “boys” in gray, at many of whose reunions she had been an honored guest. She was an impressive figure at that time when, after General Helm was killed at Chickamauga and she was granted a pass through the lines from Atlanta, Union officers at Fortress Monroe sought to force her to take the oath of allegiance. Tearfully, yet firmly, the young widow refused. The authorities communicated with Lincoln, who had granted the pass. “Send her to me,” wired the President, and Mrs. Helm went to the White House, to be reunited with her sister.
“I had just lost my husband,” she wrote in her diary. “Mary had lost her son, Willie, and we both had lost three fine, young brothers in the ranks of the Confederate Army.”
Lincoln was very fond of “Little Sister,” as he had called Emilie Helm ever since that day in 1847 when, returning from Congress, he visited the Todd home at Lexington and gave her that pet name as he caught her up and held her at a terrifying height from the floor. Mary Todd was very fond of this child, and because of her confidences, the younger sister was able in later years to refute the cruel story first told by William Herndon that Lincoln had failed to appear at his own wedding, supposedly planned for January 1, 1841.
It was in April, 1861, that Lincoln offered Ben Hardin Helm, then 30 years old and ten years out of West Point, a paymaster’s commission in the Union Army, with the rank of major. That same day in Washington Ben Helm talked to Robert E. Lee and learned he had resigned his commission. Helm’s father, Gov. John L. Helm, was a slave owner, but a Union man. Mary wanted her beautiful sister to live in the White House with her. The place offered was much coveted and Helm realized his opportunity might readily lead to advancement. He thanked Lincoln and asked for time. Returning to Kentucky he was convinced by Simon Bolivar Buckner that he should cast his lot with the Confederacy, and so he wrote the President, after “a bitter struggle with myself.” Two years later Lincoln broke the sad news of Ben Helm’s death to his wife, then in New York, and Senator David Davis described the President as much moved by the tragedy. “Davis,” he said, “I feel as David of old did when he was told of the death of Absalom.”
“Lincoln’s affection was even deeper for ‘Little Sister,’” the remembrance concluded, “even though while at the White House and until the surrender she remained a ‘loyal little rebel’ to the last.”
Rebels and Unionists though they indeed had been, in the end the Todd sisters proved to be, above all other loyalties, sisters.
Acknowledgments
Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters is a work of fiction inspired by history. Certain events and people that appear in the historical record have been omitted to better serve the story.
I am deeply grateful to Maria Massie, Rachel Kahan, Alivia Lopez, Molly Waxman, Camille Collins, Cynthia Buck, and Jennifer Hart for their contributions to Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters and their ongoing support of my work. Geraldine Neidenbach, Heather Neidenbach, and Marty Chiaverini were my first readers, and their comments and questions about early drafts of this novel proved invaluable. As ever, Nic Neidenbach generously shared his computer expertise to help me in crucial moments.
I am indebted to the Wisconsin Historical Society and their librarians and staff for maintaining the excellent archives on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison that I rely upon for my research. The sources I found most useful for Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters include:
Baker, Jean H. Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1987.
Clinton, Catherine. Mrs. Lincoln: A Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
Emerson, Jason. The Madness of Mary Lincoln. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.
Epstein, Daniel Mark. The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008.
Fleischner, Jennifer. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship between a First Lady and a Former Slave. New York: Broadway Books, 2003.
Furgurson, Ernest B. Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Green, Maureen Helm. “Emilie—Abraham Lincoln’s Sister in Law.” Kentucky Ancestors, vol. 4, no. 1, 2008, pp. 4–16.
Helm, Katherine. The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928.
Hoffmann, John. “The Lincoln Ox Yoke at the University of Illinois.” For the People, vol. 16, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1–7.
Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1868.
Miers, Earl Schenck, ed. Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology. Washington, DC: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960.
Turner, Justin G., and Linda Levitt Turner, eds. Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters. New York: Knopf, 1972.
I consulted several excellent online resources while researching and writing Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters, including the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/); the archives of digitized historic newspapers at Genealogybank.com (www.genealogybank.com) and Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com); and census records, directories, and other historical records at Ancestry (ancestry.com).
As always and most of all, I thank my husband, Marty, and my sons, Nicholas and Michael, for their enduring love, steadfast support, and constant encouragement. You make everything worthwhile, and I could not have written this book without you.
About the Author
JENNIFER CHIAVERINI is the New York Times bestselling author of several acclaimed historical novels, most recently Resistance Women, and the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
mrs. lincoln’s sisters. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Chiaverini. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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