Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Psychiatric problems ran throughout Mary’s family. Dr. George R. C. Todd, youngest of her biological siblings, was especially troubled.82 A fellow physician in South Carolina who knew him well said that Dr. Todd referred to himself as the “black sheep” of the family, that he did “not get along with people,” and that he was “very egotistical, and extremely jealous of his professional reputation. Very peculiar and eccentric. Drank whiskey to excess.” Dr. Todd’s lawyer recalled that he was “inclined to be abrupt almost to brusqueness in his manner to those whom he did not like.” He “took no pains to conceal his dislike for those who had incurred his displeasure,” and he “refused to consort with his own contemporaries to any great extent.” He was “given to moods of deep melancholy.”83 Like his sister Mary, he had an explosive temper that bordered on madness. He was described by a Union prisoner-of-war as “the most vicious wretch I ever knew” because he cruelly mistreated enemy patients. During the Civil War, he would, in “raving fits of madness,” assault sick and wounded Yankees under his care. When a young Union lieutenant from Kentucky irritated him, Dr. Todd “pulled him off the bunk to the floor and kicked him in the most brutal manner.” Upon the death of the prisoner the next day, Dr. Todd declared: “I am G-d d–d glad of it. I meant to kill the son of a b-h before he left here.”84 During the Gettysburg campaign, he infuriated Northerners by looting private homes. He told dubious tales about his role in divvying up the last of the Confederate treasury in 1865, and he also claimed, most improbably, that he had visited the White House early in the war and aroused the president’s suspicions about his loyalty. When ordered arrested, he said, he outwitted his pursuers and escaped.

  Other siblings betrayed signs of mental instability. Mary’s eccentric, heavily tattooed half-brother David, who ran away from home at the age of 14, also mistreated Union prisoners.85 Stationed briefly at Libby Prison in Richmond as a captain in the Confederate army, David Todd was known as one of the most brutal officers in that grim facility. He slashed a POW with his saber and kicked the corpses of the Union dead, calling them damned abolitionists. In 1871, David died, supposedly of wounds sustained at Vicksburg, but some friends maintained that “he had been shot in a whore house brawl before he went to War—… and that this old wound had more to do with his early demise than the Yankee Minie [bullet].”86 Mary’s brother Levi, two years her senior, was described by his wife as an improvident drunkard with a “Cruel and inhuman manner.” He alienated family and acquaintances and died friendless in 1865.87 Mary’s “pugnacious, loud voiced” sister Ann, if not actually unbalanced, was “the most quick tempered and vituperative” of Robert Todd’s daughters. She was “usually in a temper.”88 Mary called Ann a woman who “possesses such a miserable disposition & so false a tongue” that “no one respects” her. Ann’s “tongue for so many years, has been considered ‘no slander’—and as a child & young girl, [she] could not be outdone in falsehood.… I grieve for those, who have to come in contact with her malice, yet even that, is so well understood, [that] the object of her wrath, generally rises, with good people, in proportion to her vindictiveness.”89 (When shown this assessment of her character, Ann replied with some justice: “Mary was writing about herself.”)90

  Mary’s niece Julia, daughter of Elizabeth Edwards, was mentally unstable. “Insanity,” Elizabeth said in 1875, “appeared … in the case of my own daughter, at the early age of thirteen,—for six months, she was so decidedly flighty, as to be closely guarded.” At “no time has she ever been natural in her demeanor. God pity those who are the victims—and who are the anxious sufferers in such terrible afflictions!”91 Born in 1837, the beautiful Julia at the age of 18 wed Edward Lewis Baker, co-owner of the Springfield Illinois State Journal. A good friend of Julia’s, Ada Bailhache, wife of Edward Baker’s business partner, recalled that “Mrs Baker was a wayward girl and very attractive woman to the great sorrow of her family and friends. There was a scandal connected with her about 1872, and Mr Baker was sent as Consul to the Argentine Republic where they remained until Mr Baker’s death [in 1897].… He was probably not molested in courtesy to [the] memory of Lincoln, as it was better for them not to return.” The “blow to her mother and father, was one they never recovered from.”92 Because Julia was unable to manage her own affairs, a court in the 1870s appointed a trustee for her.93 Mary Lincoln referred to her niece as a “poor, silly” creature and expressed sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards: “How unfortunate a Mother, must consider herself, to so rear, a child—Naturally weak.”94 When she visited Washington in 1864, Julia Baker scandalized polite society with her bizarre, risqué behavior.

  Another niece of Mary Todd, Elizabeth Edwards Clover (Julia Baker’s sister), inherited much of her famous aunt’s wardrobe, which she regularly wore, even though the large silk skirts, lace shawls, and tiny carriage parasols had long since passed out of style. As a Springfield matron recalled, no one “thought anything of it” because “the Todds had always been eccentric.”95 Mary’s sister Elodie told her fiancé, “I am a Todd, and some of these days you may be unfortunate enough to find out what they are.” She confessed to him that “I cannot govern my temper or tongue” and that “I am one of the most unforgiving creatures you ever knew.”96 The daughter of Mary Todd Lincoln’s nephew, Albert S. Edwards (Julia Baker’s brother), died in the Norbury Sanitarium, a “Private Residential Home for the Treatment of Nervous and Mental Disorders.”97 In 1906, Mary Lincoln’s son Robert wrote from Georgia that “I have been down here for nearly two months trying to recover from a nervous breakdown.”98

  In late 1840, Lincoln broke his engagement to Mary Todd. According to a friend, he had concluded that they “were not congenial, and were incompatible” and “ought not to marry.”99 He may well have doubted his ability to satisfy her intense emotional neediness. After his death, she stated that, despite his “deep feeling” and his “amiable nature,” Lincoln was “not, a demonstrative Man, when he felt most deeply, he expressed, the least.”100 Elizabeth Edwards called Lincoln “a cold man” with “no affection,”101 and her husband concurred, saying: “Lincoln was not a warm hearted man.”102 Herndon declared that Lincoln “ought never to have married,” for he “had no quality for a husband. He was abstracted, cool, never loved, and could not from his very nature.”103 Henry C. Whitney agreed, stating that “so great & peculiar a man as Lincoln could not make any woman happy,” for “he was too much allied to his intellect to get down to the plane of the domestic relations.”104

  Another powerful consideration gave Lincoln pause as he contemplated marrying Mary Todd: in the autumn of 1840 he fell in love with Matilda Edwards, a beautiful 18-year-old cousin of Ninian Edwards who had come to Springfield from Alton and stayed with Mary Todd at the Edwards home.105 Like many other young women, she visited the capital during legislative sessions to attend the numerous parties given then. A “legislative winter was as eagerly looked forward to by the ladies of the State as the politicians because it promised a season of constant gaiety and entertainment. An invitation to spend such a time in Springfield was a coveted honor. The pretty girls from all over the State flocked [t]here under the care of fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, any relation, however remote who could be induced to bring them.”106

  The “very bright” Matilda Edwards was “something of a coquette” and “a most fascinating and handsome girl, tall, graceful, and rather reserved,” who “moved at ease among the social and refined classes at Alton.”107 Her “gentle temper, her conciliatory manners, and the sweetness of her heart made her dear to all who knew her.”108 Lincoln was among the many young men who held her dear. In the winter of 1840–1841, she and Mary Todd “seemed to form the grand centre of attraction. Swarms of strangers who had little else to engage their attention hovered around them, to catch a passing smile.”109 (She received twenty-two offers of marriage before wedding Newton D. Strong in 1843.) In January 1841, Jane D. Bell reported that Lincoln had declared “if he had it in his power he would not have one feature
in her face altered, he thinks she is so perfect.” Mrs. Bell added that Lincoln and Joshua Speed “spent the most of their time at [the] Edwards [home] this winter” and that “Lincoln could never bear to leave Miss Edwards’s side in company” because “he fell desperately in love with her.”110 Yet he was too shy to approach the young beauty, who informed Elizabeth Edwards that Lincoln “never mentioned Such a Subject to me: he never even Stooped to pay me a Compliment.”111 After becoming enamored of Matilda Edwards, Lincoln confided to John J. Hardin “that he thought he did not love” Mary Todd “as he should and that he would do her a great wrong if he married her.”112 To Mrs. William Butler, Lincoln declared, “it would just kill me to marry Mary Todd.”113

  And so Lincoln felt compelled to break his engagement, but just how he did so is unclear. Alluding to Matilda Edwards, Joshua Speed recalled that “Lincoln—seeing another girl—& finding he did not love [the woman who eventually became] his wife wrote a letter saying he did not love her.” When Speed was shown that document, he “tried to persuade Lincoln to burn it up,” whereupon Lincoln said: “Speed I always Knew you were an obstinate man. If you won’t deliver it I will get Some one to do it.” Speed replied: “I Shall not deliver it nor give it to you to be delivered: Words are forgotten—Misunderstood—passed by—not noticed in a private Conversation—but once put your words in writing and they Stand as a living & eternal Monument against you. If you think you have will & Manhood Enough to go and see her and Speak to her what you say in that letter, you may do that.” Acting on Speed’s advice, Lincoln visited Mary Todd and, again according to Speed, “told her that he did not love her—She rose—and Said ‘The deciever shall be decieved wo is me.’; alluding to a young man She fooled.” Speed reported that “Lincoln drew her down on his Knee—Kissed her—& parted—He going one way & She another—Lincoln did Love Miss [Matilda] Edwards—‘Mary’ Saw it—told Lincoln the reason of his Change of mind—heart & soul—released him.”114

  It is not known what Mary Todd said to Lincoln when he asked to be released. She admitted after his death that, during their courtship, “I doubtless trespassed, many times & oft, upon his great tenderness & amiability of character.”115 Perhaps she deliberately manipulated his conscience to win him back. Her sister Elizabeth recalled that the “world had it that Mr L backed out, and this placed Mary in a peculiar Situation & to set herself right and to free Mr Lincoln’s mind She wrote a letter to Mr L Stating that She would release him from his Engagements,” with the understanding “that She would hold the question an open one—that is that She had not Changed her mind, but felt as always.”116 She thus left him the option of renewing the engagement if he so desired. She clearly hoped he would do so.

  Under these circumstances, it is little wonder that, as Ninian Edwards put it, Lincoln “in his Conflicts of duty—honor & his love went as Crazy as a Loon.”117 On January 21, 1841, Martinette Hardin McKee told her brother: “We have been very much distressed, on Mr Lincoln’s account; hearing that he had two Cat fits and a Duck fit.”118 A week later, Jane D. Bell reported that Lincoln “is in rather a bad way.… The doctors say he came within an inch of being a perfect lunatic for life. He was perfectly crazy for some time, not able to attend to his business at all. They say he does not look like the same person.”119

  In fact, Lincoln went “crazy for a week or so” and was nursed back to health at the Butlers’ home, where his friend Orville H. Browning was staying. Browning said his friend “was so much affected as to talk incoherently, and to be delirious to the extent of not knowing what he was doing.” This “aberration of mind resulted entirely from the situation he … got himself into—he was engaged to Miss Todd, and in love with Miss Edwards, and his conscience troubled him dreadfully for the supposed injustice he had done, and the supposed violation of his word which he had committed.”120 Many friends, including James H. Matheny, feared that Lincoln might kill himself.121 According to Speed, they “had to remove razors from his room—take away all Knives and other such dangerous things—&c—it was terrible.”122 Lincoln declared that he “would be more than willing” to die, but, he said, “I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.”123

  Before those friends were able to confiscate potentially lethal objects, a fellow legislator, Hiram W. Thornton, recalled encountering Lincoln “sitting on a box behind a woodshed. One leg was resting upon the other in a flexed position and he was whetting a knife on the bootleg.” When Thornton asked what he was doing, Lincoln replied: “I am just getting this knife sharp enough to do what I want to do with it.” Thornton then took the knife and spoke with his colleague, who “emphasized that he was no good and he had better be out of the world than in it.”124

  In despair, Lincoln turned to his physician-friend, Anson G. Henry, who may have helped persuade Mary Todd to release him from the engagement. From January 13 to 18 Lincoln spent several hours each day with Henry. It is not known what Dr. Henry prescribed as a treatment, but if he followed the customary procedures of that time he would have subjected Lincoln to a painful regimen of bleeding, leeching, the application of heated cups to the temples, mustard rubs, foul-tasting medicines, and cold-water baths.

  On January 20, Lincoln confessed to John T. Stuart: “I have, within the last few days, been making a most discreditable exhibition of myself in the way of hypochondriaism [i.e., depression] and thereby got an impression that Dr. Henry is necessary to my existence.” Three days later he elaborated: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”125 He also wrote to Dr. Daniel Drake of Cincinnati describing his symptoms and asking advice. That well-known physician replied that he could make no recommendation without a personal interview.

  In the General Assembly that January, Lincoln behaved oddly. With unwonted testiness, he lashed out at a fellow legislator who had chided him about his “jump” from the church window the previous month. Lincoln “said that as to jumping, he should jump when he pleased and no one should hinder him.”126 Soon thereafter on the floor of the House of Representatives, he alluded to his lack of appeal to the opposite sex: “if any woman, old or young, ever thought there was any peculiar charm in this distinguished specimen … I have, as yet, been so unfortunate as not to have discovered it.”127 Shortly after making these remarks, he stopped attending sessions of the General Assembly, just when his leadership was needed to combat the Democrats’ court-packing scheme, which barely passed the House. He answered no roll calls on January 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, or 20. On January 19, he voted on one roll call but missed the other five. On January 21, he resumed casting votes regularly. Such absenteeism was unusual for Lincoln, who in four legislative terms missed only 180 of 1,334 roll calls; over half of those absences occurred during this session.

  On January 24, Lincoln appeared to James C. Conkling to be “reduced and emaciated,” with barely enough strength “to speak above a whisper.” Conkling sympathized with him: “Poor L! How are the mighty fallen! … His case at present is truly deplorable but what prospect there may be for ultimate relief I cannot pretend to say. I doubt not but he can declare ‘That loving is a painful thrill, And not to love more painful still’ but would not like to intimate that he has experienced ‘That surely ’tis the worst of pain To love and not be loved again.’ ”128 In the midst of this period of depression, John Todd Stuart’s wife observed Lincoln at the capitol “with his feet braced against one of the pillars. His face looked like Bunyan’s figure, ‘Giant Despair.’ ”129

  By late January, Lincoln seemed to have recovered. On January 26, Mrs. John J. Hardin told her husband: “I am glad to hear Lincoln has got over his cat fits[.] [W]e have concluded it was a very unsatisfactory way of terminating his romance[.] [H]e
ought to have died or gone crazy[.] [W]e are very much disappointed indeed.”130

  In March, after the legislature had adjourned, Turner R. King saw Lincoln in Springfield “hanging about—moody—silent.” King believed that the “question in his mind was ‘Have I incurred any obligation to marry that woman.’ ”131 Although he had broken the engagement, Lincoln was still tormented by the thought that he really should have wed Mary Todd, not because he loved her, but because his tyrannical conscience nagged him unmercifully. James C. Conkling reported that Lincoln, the “poor hapless simple swain who loved most true but was not loved again,” would probably “now endeavor to drown his cares among the intricacies and perplexities of the law.”132

  New Law Partner

  Conkling was right. The following month, Lincoln amicably ended his partnership with John Todd Stuart and joined forces with Stephen T. Logan, a better lawyer and worse politician than Stuart. Logan, displeased with the ethical obtuseness of his partner, Edward D. Baker, sought to replace him. He had observed young Lincoln in three cases where they opposed each other; Lincoln won all three. At that same time Lincoln may have felt the need for more rigorous legal training than could be provided by Stuart, who, as a congressman, perforce spent much time in Washington. If so, Lincoln could hardly have picked a better mentor than Logan, a Kentuckian nine years his senior. Stuart, who regarded Logan as the ablest attorney in Sangamon County, said that the “rapidity of his intellectual perceptions were like flashes of lightning.”133 In 1843, the Sangamo Journal declared that Logan “is regarded as perhaps the best lawyer in the State, and has undoubtedly a fine logical mind. His voice is not pleasant, but he has a most happy faculty of elucidating, and simplifying the most obstinate questions.”134 John Hay thought him “one of the finest examples of the purely legal mind that the West has ever produced.”135 Supreme Court justices John McLean and David Davis, as well as leading attorneys such as Gustave Koerner, Usher F. Linder, Elihu B. Washburne, Isaac N. Arnold, and Benjamin S. Edwards all concurred.