Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Women as well as men found Mary Lincoln bad-tempered and even violent. Her half-sister Emilie said that sometimes she “would get into a temper when things did not go just right.”262 Harriet Hanks noted that she had an “ungovernable temper,” which Mrs. John A. Logan characterized as “really a species of madness.”263 Martinette Hardin and her friends did not much like her cousin Mary Todd because “she had such a bad temper.”264 A woman who interviewed Mary Lincoln’s “personal and intimate friends” said they depicted her as a person “of violent temper, ungovernable and willful beyond all reason and when her will was defied she indulged in a series of outrageous tantrums, which so tormented her patient husband that he was well nigh distracted.”265 Another woman who spoke with Springfield friends of the Lincolns reported that “Mrs. Lincoln was sharp and shrewish with an uncontrolled temper,” and “every one I met could give me some example of it.” One instance concerned a young man who danced with Mary Todd in 1839. When she used a French phrase, he replied: “I don’t understand dog Latin.” She lashed out, saying: “Strange for a puppy not to understand his native language.”266 A woman who lived in Springfield in the 1850s recalled that Mary Lincoln had “attacks of what we called in those days, hysteria.”267 Neither Mrs. James Leaton, wife of Springfield’s Methodist minister, nor Mrs. Noah Matheny “regarded Mrs. Lincoln very highly—that is her temper and disposition generally was not at all commendable.”268

  Mary Lincoln abused her husband physically as well as verbally. When a farmer peddling apples door-to-door approached Lincoln, “Mrs. Lincoln came out and demanded of her husband why he was purchasing apples and set upon him with such violence that he feared Lincoln was in actual physical danger from his wife.”269 Lincoln got a taste of her temper shortly after their wedding. One morning at the Globe Tavern she arrived late for breakfast, as usual, inconveniencing the other guests. Boardinghouse etiquette dictated that in the morning, no one could eat until all guests were seated at the table. Lincoln, evidently irritated and embarrassed, gently chided her as she entered the room. She instantly sprang up, threw a cup of hot coffee at him, and fled in hysterics.270 Lincoln “sat there in humiliation and silence” while Mrs. Jacob Early helped clean him up.271 A similar event took place at dinner one night in December 1860. Thurlow Weed witnessed her outburst when Lincoln “cracked a joke which displeased Mrs. Lincoln because she erroneously imagined it to be at her expense. Quicker than a flash she picked up a cup of hot tea and flung it clear across the table at Mr. Lincoln’s head, then jumped up in great fury and rushed out of the room.”272

  Now and then Mary Lincoln physically injured her husband. One day when Lincoln, absorbed in his newspaper, permitted the fire in the parlor to die down and then ignored several requests to add some fuel, Mary struck him with a piece of firewood, declaring: “I’ll make you hear me this time.” The next day he appeared in court with a bandaged nose.273 On another occasion Jesse K. Dubois accompanied Lincoln to the house on Eighth Street by way of the butcher shop, where Lincoln picked up meat intended for some visitors from Kentucky. When Mary unwrapped the meat, she was so upset at her husband’s choice that she became enraged, “abused L[incoln] outrageously” and hit him in the face. He wiped off the blood and returned to the office with Dubois.274 As the Civil War drew to a close, a White House steward observed Mary Lincoln assault her husband: she allegedly “Struck him hard—damned him—cursed him.”275

  Mary Lincoln also attacked her husband with cleaning implements, cutlery, and vegetables. The daughter of Springfield’s Methodist minister in the late 1850s heard her mother say that the Lincolns “were very unhappy in their domestic life” and that Mary Lincoln “was seen frequently to drive him from the house with a broomstick.”276 One day in the mid-1850s, a knife-wielding Mary Lincoln chased her husband through their yard. When he realized that they were being observed, he suddenly wheeled about, grabbed his wife, and marched her back, saying: “There d—n it, now Stay in the house and don’t disgrace us before the Eyes of the world.”277 One day Lincoln fled the house as his wife vented her anger with “very poorly pitched potatoes.”278 Other neighbors occasionally saw “the front door of the Lincoln home … fly open and papers, books, [and] small articles would literally be hurled out.”279 On another occasion, as Lincoln prepared to depart Springfield for a nearby town, his “wife ran him out [of the house] half dressed” and followed him with [a] broom.” Lincoln told the serving girl “not to get scared” but to bring him some clothing, which he donned and then “went up town through [the] wood house & alley.”280 Thus Turner R. King, a political ally of Lincoln, had good reason to characterize Mary Lincoln as “a hellion—a she devil” who “vexed—& harrowed the soul out of that good man” and “drove him from home &c—often & often.”281 Similarly, in 1862 Herndon was fully justified in exclaiming: “Poor Lincoln! He is domestically a desolate man—has been for years to my own knowledge” because of his marriage to “a very curious—excentric—wicked woman.”282

  The hired help also felt Mary Lincoln’s wrath. She frequently struck servants and had trouble keeping them because of her tyrannical ways. One day when a servant displeased Mrs. Lincoln, she had the girl’s trunk thrown into the middle of the street. Similarly, she ordered a servant boy, Phillip Dinkel, “to get out, and threw his suit case out the window after him.” On another occasion, she hired a servant girl to help the two she already had, then fired all three within a day.283 After being hit by Mary, one servant complained to her uncle, a miller named Jacob Tiger. When Tiger asked Mary Lincoln for an explanation, she struck him with a broom. Tiger then demanded satisfaction of Lincoln, who mournfully replied, “can’t you endure this one wrong done you by a mad woman without much complaint for old friendship’s sake while I have had to bear it without complaint and without a murmur for lo these last fifteen years[?]”284

  Mary behaved similarly toward her sons, though she sometimes repented afterward. Neighbors recalled that she was “turbulent—loud—always yelling at children” and “was prone to excitability and rather impulsive, saying many things that were sharp and caustic, and which she afterward usually regretted.”285 She lashed out corporally as well as verbally. One day she brought home a new clock, which she told her sons not to touch. According to Mrs. Benjamin S. Edwards, a “short time afterward she went into the room and found that two of them had taken the clock to pieces. She whipped them.”286 Describing the conduct of his wayward young son Robert, Lincoln in 1846 told Joshua Speed that “by the time I reached the house, his mother had found him, and had him whip[p]ed.”287 She did not always rely on others to punish the lad; in fact, a servant in the house recalled that Mary Lincoln “would whip Bob a good deal.”288 She once “held a private-strapping party” with her youngest son, Tad, after he had fallen into a mud puddle.289 Elizabeth Edwards said her sister Mary had a “high temper and after her outburst[s] normally was penitent. If she punished [the] children [she] would seek to make amends by presents and affectionate treatment.”290

  Occasionally Lincoln would intervene to protect his children from their mother’s wrath. One summer afternoon she accused a son of stealing 10¢, flew into a rage when he denied it, and beat his legs with a switch. The punishment ceased as Lincoln entered the room, where the boy cringed in fright as his mother stood over him. When Lincoln asked what had happened, she replied incoherently. Lincoln solved the crisis by having the boy empty his pockets, then turned to his wife and said tenderly, “Mary! Mary!”291

  Now and then these roles were reversed: Lincoln would use corporal punishment, and his wife would object. Once he found young Robert and his friends putting on a play with dogs. The boys fastened a rope around one canine’s neck, tossed the rope over a beam, and tugged hard to make the beast rise up. When the animal-loving Lincoln beheld the scene, he grabbed a barrel stave “and immediately began plying it indiscriminately on the persons of such boys as were within reach.” Mary Lincoln reportedly “was very angry, and reproached her husband in language that
was not at all adapted to Sunday School.”292 Harriet Hanks Chapman observed Lincoln as he “undertook to correct his Child” corporally. His wife, “determined that he Should not,” tried to take from him whatever implement he was using to administer discipline, but “in this She failed,” whereupon she “tried tongue lashing but met with the Same fate, for Mr Lincoln corrected his Child as a Father ought to do, in the face of his Wife[’]s anger and that too without even Changing his Countenance, or making enny reply to his wife.”293

  Mary Lincoln continued to practice harsh discipline during her husband’s presidency. One day during the Civil War, Tad mutilated a new pair of copper-toed shoes which he disliked because they reminded him of the so-called Copperheads (Democratic opponents of his father’s administration). According to the White House steward, when Mrs. Lincoln “was about to whip him, he rushed to his father’s office and complained that, because it was against his principles to patronize ‘the copperheads,’ even with his toes, he was about to suffer. The President caught him in his arms and said, ‘I guess I must exercise my Executive clemency a little, and pardon you, my patriotic boy; you shall not be whipped for this offence. Go and explain your case to your mother as it now stands.’ ”294 Mary Pinkerton, who as a young girl frequently visited the White House to play with the Lincoln children, recalled how Tad would sometimes tease her and pull her hair. When she complained to the president, he “would dry my tears and tell Tad he should be ashamed for teasing such a little girl—and then maybe for a whole hour Tad and I would be good friends again.” But, she noted, things were “different when Mrs. Lincoln was the judge. She had a terrible temper—and when I would go to her with my stories about Tad, she would punish him severely.” Although the president “was always so kind and gentle,” his wife “was often short-tempered and bitter-tongued.”295

  Throughout his marriage Lincoln would flee the house in search of peace and quiet. Herndon recalled that Lincoln, after marital squabbles, often came to their office early, accompanied by his young son Robert. There Lincoln, “full of sadness,” would sit quietly. Realizing that he “was driven from home, by a club—knife or tongue,” Herndon discreetly left so that his melancholy partner could regain his composure.296 One morning, after Lincoln and Robert finished breakfast at a restaurant, the father remarked: “Well, Robby, this ain’t so very bad after all, is it? If ma don’t conclude to let us come back we will board here all summer.”297 (Turner R. King alleged that sometimes Mary Lincoln refused to cook for her husband.) Herndon said that Lincoln once lived in the office “for three days at a time on cracker[s] & cheese.”298 To enable him to sleep over at the office “on nights of domestic discord,” Lincoln purchased a couch 6 and ½ feet long.299

  At times Lincoln sought refuge with a fellow lawyer. A visitor to a Springfield attorney one morning observed a tall gentleman silently enter the office and proceed to the back room. After lunch, the lawyer said, “Why, Mr. Lincoln, I had forgotten your coming in here. I did n’t remember that you were in the back room, or I would have asked you to go home to dinner with me. Folks away?” Lincoln “looked very serious. ‘No, folks are not away, I’m away.’ ” The attorney later explained to a friend that “this has happened before. Sometimes Mr. Lincoln’s home is not very agreeable, though he has never been known to speak of it, but I know that he takes it very much to heart and that it breaks him up when anything occurs. He has his own office near here with a partner and clerks, but he has come in to find a quiet place. I supposed when he went in that he had come to consult some law book that I had in the other room, but he has probably sat silently there all this time.”300

  According to Josiah P. Kent, a neighbor of the Lincolns, it “was never difficult to locate” Mary Todd Lincoln. “It mattered not who was present when she fell into a rage, for nothing would restrain her.… Her voice was shrill and at times so penetrating, especially when summoning the children or railing at some one whose actions had awakened her temper, she could easily be heard over the neighborhood.” Whenever she exploded, Kent thought it was “little wonder that Mr. Lincoln would suddenly think of an engagement he had downtown, grasp his hat, and start for his office.”

  Mrs. Lincoln alienated tradesmen as well as her husband and their neighbors. When she accused the iceman of “swindling her in weight,” that gentleman “got mad—cursed—and vowed she should never get ice again.” After he “refused to come in her part of town,” Mary Lincoln offered Kent 25¢ if it would induce him to sell her ice once again. On another occasion, she offered Kent a quarter to drive her in the family carriage while Lincoln was away. She evidently gave the money to her son Bob to pay Kent, who alleged that he had not received any cash from the boy. She then “became angry and shouted ‘Don[’]t you tell me Bob didn’t pay you.’ ”301

  Dinner parties at the Lincoln home frequently ended with Mary berating her husband. Herndon, who thought the “suppers were very fine indeed,” reported that she would invite members of the Springfield elite, while Lincoln would “choose a few of his boon companions to make things lively” and swap stories with them. After the guests had departed, the hostess “would be as mad as a disturbed hornet” and “lecture L[incoln] all night, till he got up out of bed in despair and went whistling through the streets & alleys till day &c. &c. It would take a ream of paper to write it all out just as it did often happen.”302 Mary Lincoln’s nephew, Albert S. Edwards, confirmed part of Herndon’s story when he told a journalist: “I can remember that when I was a boy the trouble Mr. Lincoln used to cause at social gatherings. He would get a crowd around him in the gentlemen’s room and start a conversation, with the result that the ladies would be left alone downstairs, and would have to send some one to break up Mr. Lincoln’s party, in order to get the gentlemen downstairs.”303

  Sometimes to avoid his wife Lincoln would depart Springfield altogether. According to Anna Eastman Johnson, a neighbor during the 1850s, one evening Lincoln, carrying “a prodigious carpet-bag,” appealed to her father: “Mary is having one of her spells, and I think I had better leave her for a few days. I didn’t want to bother her, and I thought as you and I are about the same size, you might be kind enough to let me take one of your clean shirts! I have found that when Mrs. Lincoln gets one of these nervous spells, it is better for me to go away for a day or two.”304 A couple in a nearby house recalled “that they always knew when Mrs. Lincoln was having a tantrum, for Mr. Lincoln would appear at their home with a small desk and say, ‘May I leave these papers with you? Mrs. Lincoln is not well today.’ ”305 Lincoln’s stepnephew John J. Hall alleged that during the summer of 1846 or 1847 his uncle Abraham visited Coles County evidently to escape his wife.306 One evening Abner Y. Ellis, postmaster of Springfield, swapped stories with Lincoln at the post office until nearly midnight. Finally, Lincoln sighed, “Well I hate to go home.” When Ellis invited him to stay at his house, he accepted.307

  Even church did not soften Mary’s temper. According to Herndon, while she attended worship services, Lincoln would watch after their children. Once, upon emerging from church, she observed Lincoln conversing with a friend; indignantly she screamed at him and chased him home. On another occasion, she yelled at him on the street when he failed to notice that one of their boys had fallen from the wagon he had absentmindedly been pulling.

  Such episodes took place both indoors and out of doors. One day while Mary Lincoln was running errands, her husband stayed home to supervise a carpenter. When that craftsman summoned Lincoln to ask for advice, Mary returned home to discover her youngest son howling. The carpenter reported that she “had rather a hasty temper and at once she sought her husband and berated him soundly for letting the child sit on the floor and cry.” Lincoln replied, “Why, Mary, he’s just been there a minute,” and picked up the lad and cuddled him.308 It is little wonder that some observers likened the Lincolns’ marriage to that of Socrates and Xanthippe.309

  When in widowhood Mary Lincoln applied for a pension, many witnesses testified befo
re a congressional committee that she “had been a curse to her husband.”310 Sarah Corneau, a neighbor of the Lincolns, said that her family and others living near the house at Eighth and Jackson Streets thought “the most wonderful thing” about the tall lawyer “was the patience and forbearance which Lincoln seemed to have with his wife, who … had locally established the name of being almost a shrew.”311 Mrs. Charlotte Rodrigues DeSouza, who made dresses for Mary Lincoln, described her as a nervous, highly strung woman who sometimes tried the unusually mild and gentle temperament of her husband.312 Jane King, a playmate of Tad Lincoln, felt “actual hatred” for Mary Lincoln, whom she considered a “horrid woman.”313 A journalist stationed in Springfield in 1860 later wrote that the “curse of Lincoln’s life” was his “unhappy mad wife.”314

  In Springfield, men like William Herndon and Milton Hay understandably called Lincoln “woman whipt,” “woman cowed,” and “hen pecked.”315 Ordinarily Lincoln submitted to spousal tirades quietly, believing that “it is better at times to let a woman have her way.”316 Mary Lincoln regularly shouted at her husband when she needed firewood. According to a historian of Springfield, from “the kitchen door would issue the loud exclamation of ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ The neighborhood understood that there was need for wood in the kitchen and his [Lincoln’s] acknowledgment was contained in the simple, mild reply, ‘Yes Mary, yes Mary.’ ”317 On a train trip, Mary Lincoln was, according to a fellow passenger, “almost hysterical about the baggage and fairly forced Mr. Lincoln to walk back three-quarters of a mile … to see that it was safe—which he did uncomplainingly.”318