First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  Very popular when she left Washington in 1849, Sarah Polk had inspired a national publication, Peterson’s Magazine, to take the unprecedented step of paying tribute to her in a poem that ended: “You are modest, yet all a queen should be.”42 Most magazines up to that time had chosen their heroines from classical examples or from lists of women long dead. The singling out of Sarah Polk for such a gesture indicates that she had attained unusual prominence.

  Her popularity endured long after she left the capital. In 1881, when Congress debated giving a pension to Abraham Lincoln’s widow, one man made his crucial vote dependent on including Sarah Polk.43 On the state level, the Tennessee legislature planned annual pilgrimages to her house, and newspaper reporters continued to seek her opinions on political matters. The Mt. Vernon Banner reported that in her seventy-ninth year, she retained a “complexion as clear, … face as smooth and her eyes as bright as most ladies of 50.”44 In the election of 1884, she made comparisons to the one that had sent her husband to the White House forty years earlier. When she died in August 1891, an article in American Magazine described her mind as “undimmed to the end.”45

  Sarah Polk stands out in a period when most wives of public figures stayed home and out of sight. That she had excellent health, an inquiring and trained mind, a supportive husband and no children all increased her ability to participate in her husband’s career. Reminiscent in many ways of Abigail Adams, Sarah Polk has remained lesser known, perhaps because she lacked some of Abigail’s wit and sophistication. Both women considered themselves full partners in their husbands’ political careers, opinions that their husbands shared. Yet neither woman showed much interest in reforms for women generally. It is interesting to speculate how they, with all opportunities being equal, would have done as presidents. Their interest in politics was genuine; and perhaps that explains, better than anything else, why they distinguished themselves at a time when most presidents’ wives were absent, ill, or inactive during their husbands’ administrations.

  Compared to Sarah Polk, Mary Todd Lincoln’s national prominence is on an entirely different level, more in the infamous category than the famous, more the result of her enemies’ work than her admirers. Mary Lincoln’s life included elements of unusual ambition and great personal tragedy, possibly explaining why she became one of the most written-about women in American history.46 That she provoked unusual antagonisms and raised powerful defenses rendered her story all the more intriguing. It is no wonder that fact and fiction became so intertwined in accounts of her life that it is difficult to separate the two.47 Unfortunately this woman who stubbornly insisted on staying in the limelight, even when criticism mounted, did not always record her motivation. Speculation about that must come from her associates.

  A matronly mother of three by the time her husband became president, Mary Lincoln already had some experience with Washington. She had lived there during the winter of 1847–1848 when her husband served in Congress, but unhappy with the prospect of staying in a boardinghouse with her two young sons, she had returned to Illinois. Those few months had exposed her to the entrenched Washingtonians, but by 1861 she appeared to have forgotten how they operated. When her husband won the presidency, she prepared to return to the capital. Had she known the outcome, she might have reconsidered.

  Even with her professed powers of premonition, she never predicted how miserable she would become in the next twenty years as she witnessed the deaths of her husband and two of her sons, found herself maligned on two continents, and was finally declared legally insane. A woman of many contradictions, Mary Lincoln may have stirred up controversy because of her enigmatic nature. Her husband called her his “child wife”48 and “mother”49—neither term entirely inappropriate. He pampered her as a spoiled youngster, humored her when she veered towards fanaticism yet showed her enormous tenderness and affection. Although she had attended the best schools in Kentucky, indeed in the entire West, she dabbled in spiritualism throughout her life and persisted in believing in her own supernatural powers as well as those of others. Considerably better educated and socially more sophisticated than the man she married, she had become, by the time he was elected president, so unreliable and impetuous that he could not trust her judgment on any significant matter.

  Part of the explanation for her contradictory nature no doubt lies in the particular circumstances of her childhood, which combined material comforts with considerable insecurity. When she was almost seven, Mary’s mother died in giving birth to a seventh child, and a little more than a year later, Mary’s father remarried. The new wife, Betsy Humphreys, came from a social stratum above that of the Todds and she did not hesitate to point that out. One of her favorite maxims had it that it took seven generations to make a lady and she indicated by her tone that in her family the requisite time had elapsed.50 Betsy Humphreys Todd gave birth to eight children of her own, who added to her stepchildren made a brood of fifteen, too many for any one of them to claim much individual attention.

  To distinguish herself from the rest, Mary competed in every possible way, becoming an ingenious prankster, an excellent student, a superb horsewoman, and a respectable seamstress.51 Her good looks came naturally.52 But behind the beauty and ingenuity, her contemporaries observed a very moody young lady, “much like an April day, sunning all over with laughter one moment, the next crying as though her heart would break.”53 She was frequently compared to her mercurial father, Robert Todd, much given to buying expensive clothes one day, then regretting his extravagance the next.54

  But Todd, a leading businessman in Lexington, provided for every need of his large family and sent all his children, including the girls, to the best schools in the area. When she was eight, Mary entered the local academy, and at fourteen she enrolled in a boarding school outside Lexington. Taught French and social skills by a Paris-born couple,55 Mary got tested when she went home for the weekends. Her step-grandmother Humphreys, one of Kentucky’s grande dames, read French philosophers in the original and tutored the young women of her family in the social graces. To round out her very full education, Mary had the conversation of her father’s friends, including the already famous Henry Clay. Young Mary Todd described herself as being much taken with the famous congressman and a “dedicated Whig.”

  That early interest in politics may help explain why Mary moved to Springfield, Illinois, when she was twenty-one to live with her sister. The older Todd daughter had married the son of the former territorial governor, and she counted many politicians among her friends and acquaintances. Mary’s quick wit and beauty attracted several of Springfield’s eligible young men, and according to two of her biographers, she was courted by two men who would run against each other in the 1860 presidential election.56

  If that is true—and there is considerable doubt that it is because Mary’s politics would hardly have put her in both their circles—then the short Stephen Douglas might have proven a more suitable match for her than the lanky Abraham Lincoln. Mary’s brother-in-law had described Abraham as too “rough,” and Mary sometimes joked about his lack of social graces. One story, perhaps as apocryphal as so many of the Lincoln stories were, had it that he had introduced himself to Mary by saying he wanted to dance with her “in the worst way” and then, she said, he did, “in the very worst.”57

  Whatever their reasons, Abraham and Mary were married in 1842, and their early years together were unremarkable. He built both an Illinois law practice and a national reputation, and she gave birth to four sons, including one who died at age four. The Lincolns prospered in the 1850s, partly due to Mary’s small inheritances from her father and grandfather and to her reasonable management of the household. She often recalled these as the best times of her life, although people who knew her differed in evaluating her behavior. Some said that she kept up with what was happening in the country, frequently sharing her ideas with her husband; but others, less charitable towards her, saw her even then as a jealous, manipulative woman with few intellectual
interests.58

  Everyone agreed that she never lost her ambition to live in the White House—a prospect that increased in possibility when the Republicans, at their second convention in 1860, selected Illinois’ favorite son as their candidate. The northern and southern states had by then become so divided over the issue of slavery and its extension into new areas that the Democratic convention could not agree on one candidate, with the result that the northern branch chose Stephen Douglas while the southerners went with John Breckinridge. To complicate matters, a fourth group, under the Constitutional Union banner, named John Bell, a Tennesseean who won not only his own state but also neighboring Kentucky and Virginia. When the results were in, Abraham Lincoln claimed victory, but with only 40 percent of the popular vote cast, his was a dubious victory. Uncertainty increased when it became apparent that the southerners’ pique was not temporary. They refused to accept the results of the election, and additional states seceded from the Union. The capital grew somber as the indications of civil war multiplied.

  Mary Lincoln stood squarely in the middle of the storm. Although she professed complete loyalty to the Union cause, several of her relatives enlisted on the side of the “rebels,” as Mary and most northerners referred to those who favored formation of the Confederacy.59 She presented an easy target for people who questioned how a woman could be dedicated to winning a war when her brothers were fighting for the enemy. As stories proliferated about spies in high places, the president’s wife was named, sometimes by people whose statements could not be dismissed lightly. Thurlow Weed, a prominent New York supporter of Abraham Lincoln, reportedly announced that Mary had been banished from Washington because she was a “traitor.”60 That was, of course, untrue, but it indicates the kind of rumors that circulated.

  Nor were the stories of Mary Lincoln’s treachery confined to her lifetime. One poignant account of her husband’s defense of her was originally printed in a Washington newspaper in 1905, then repeated many times even after it had been demonstrated to be untrue. It made its most recent appearance in a 1981 best-seller. According to the original source, an unnamed senator had recalled how President Lincoln had taken the unprecedented action of going before a Senate committee to defend Mary. Without mentioning her by name, the president had sworn that no “member of my family holds treasonable communication with the enemy.” According to the senator’s apocryphal account, the committee was so moved that it immediately and without discussion “dropped all considerations of the rumors that the wife of the President was betraying the Union.”61

  Even without a civil war, Mary’s personal insecurities would have made her stay in Washington difficult. She understood that her education and social skill stood her well in the West where she had acquired them but might not satisfy the “cave dwellers.” “The very fact of having grown up in the West subjects me to more searching observation,” she explained to her seamstress, as though trying to justify why she spent so much money and effort on clothes.62 Mary had stopped in New York on her way to Washington to purchase yardage for sixteen outfits, and she never let the seamstress catch up before placing more orders.63

  In the early months of the Lincoln presidency, when the full horror of what would follow had not become clear, some national magazines described the Lincoln White House as though the war was confined to some distant country. Leslie’s Magazine applauded Mary Lincoln’s “exquisite taste” in redecorating the mansion, in entertaining, and in choosing her clothes.64 “No European court or capital can compare with the President’s circle and the society of Washington this winter in the freshness and beauty of its women,” Leslie’s Magazine reported, “and the dingy, sprawling city on the Potomac is bright with the blue of Northern eyes and the fresh rosy glow of Northern complexions.” The First Lady was described as “second in no respect … displaying the exquisitely moulded shoulders and arms of our fair ‘Republican Queen.’ … absolutely dazzling.”65

  But very quickly the reports changed. Hundreds of thousands of men took up arms for either the blue or the gray. Battlefield casualties climbed, and Mary Lincoln had her own personal grief in addition to concern for her relatives who were fighting for the “rebels.” In February 1862, her eleven-year-old son, Will, died at the White House. Mary purchased costly mourning clothes and special mourning jewelry. Families who had lost sons and husbands in the war were dismayed by her extravagance, and they began to raise questions about the sincerity of her grief. How could she mourn her son and yet direct so much attention to spending money? But she had shown signs before of spending money as though that could help her forget her problems.

  Stories began to spread that Mary threw tantrums to get her way, and because several of the accounts originated with her best friends, they could hardly be discounted. Julia Taft, a teenager who spent a great deal of time at the White House because her two younger brothers shared a tutor with the Lincoln boys, told how the First Lady had appropriated a part of another woman’s hat for herself. At a concert one evening, Mary Lincoln had eyed the bonnet of Julia’s mother and then asked for the ribbons from it. Mary explained that the fashionable French milliner whom both women patronized had been unable to find more of the black and white satin ribbon he had used on Mrs. Taft’s hat and Mary wanted that ribbon for herself. In the end Mary got the ribbon, the milliner replaced Mrs. Taft’s ties with some of a different color, and Julia concluded that “Mrs. Lincoln wanted what she wanted when she wanted it and no substitute! And as far as we know she always had it, including a President of the United States.”66

  Other stories had the First Lady threatening merchants who refused to humor her and deliver some item she demanded although it had already been bought by somebody else.67 Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker, who was devoted to her employer, described how the president’s wife would kick and scream, sometimes lying on the floor, when costumes were not delivered on time or in quite the condition that she expected.68 Julia Grant, wife of the general who commanded the Union troops after 1863, related other examples of Mary’s irrational behavior. On one occasion Julia calmed Mary who insisted that another officer’s wife was maneuvering to catch Abraham’s interest. Mary became “annoyed” and could not “control her wrath,” Julia reported, although there were no grounds for jealousy.69

  These stories, added to those about her spending and the rumors of her southern loyalties, reached a peak during the reelection campaign in 1864, causing Mary considerable worry. She had neglected to share the extent of her extravagance with her husband and now she desperately needed him to win so she would not have to pay up. Merchants had extended credit, sometimes requesting her intercession with the president in return, and Mary had no illusions about how quickly her credit would be cut off if her husband lost the election. Reassured by the victory of November 1864, she quickly resumed her buying spree and spent in the first three months of 1865 several thousand dollars on non-essentials such as jewelry and silverware. She admitted to a friend that her unpaid clothing bills amounted at that time to $27,00070—more than her husband earned in a year—but she actually owed much more.71

  Mary might have deflected some of the criticism by retreating to her room upstairs, as so many of her predecessors had done, but she refused all offers to substitute for her as hostess. Kate Chase, daughter of the secretary of the Treasury, coveted the White House for her father and would have relished a social leadership role for herself in the Lincoln administration. Other members of the cabinet volunteered to help, too, and when Prince Napoleon came for a visit, Secretary of State Seward offered to host a major event. But Mary Lincoln, proud of the French she had learned in Kentucky, insisted she could handle the arrangements herself; and at the end of the evening when “mostly French was spoken,” she reported with some pride that the prince had turned to her and remarked with some surprise: “Paris is not all the world.”72

  If Mary Lincoln had diverted her attention from parties and clothes (subjects that appeared frivolous to many war-sufferers) and concentrate
d on appearing supportive and protective of her husband, she might have disarmed her critics. Instead, she badgered him more than she helped. According to one White House employee, she interrupted the president’s work at the slightest whim,73 and invited favor-seekers to meals without the president’s knowledge. Then, when he appeared “sad and harrassed,” she lobbied openly for whatever the guest had come to ask.74 According to one of Mary’s relatives, who had accompanied her to Washington, Mary was constantly being flattered by people who wanted to gain access to the president, and Abe’s announcement that “women have no influence in this administration” did little to stop them.75 With so many rumors of power on the distaff side of the White House, it is not surprising that Mary received an unusual gift from an anonymous donor. It made its point more clearly than any words could—it was a bonnet with the president’s photograph attached to each of the strings.76

  Charges that a First Lady influenced her husband were nothing novel—they went all the way back to the first Adams administration. But Mary Lincoln’s brand of self-centered manipulation appealed to no one. People who championed strong women and respected their opinions had found heroines in the partisan Abigail Adams and the astute Sarah Polk, but Mary Lincoln’s influence was negative—petty, unpredictable, and self-serving.