First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  Some of Mary’s critics blamed her selfishness for exposing the president to danger, including that at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. The president had been aware of the possibility of personal harm during his entire first term, and special guards had been assigned to protect him. Mary insisted, however, that her husband needed relaxation, too, and she sometimes arranged for him to ride around the capital with her. On the last day of his life, they had gone out driving and she later said that she had rarely witnessed her husband so content as on that afternoon. General Lee had just surrendered the armies and ended the long war. Taking this move as initiating a new, more tranquil period for themselves personally, the Lincolns resolved to put behind them their grief over their son Will’s death and move on to better times.

  That evening Abraham accompanied his wife to the theater and she was seated beside him when the assassin struck. Mary, who never attended funerals of any member of her family, did not go to this one and delegated all the arrangements to her son Robert. Five weeks later, she rallied enough to pack and leave the White House, thus beginning a long, tortured pilgrimage to find a place to spend the rest of her life. She was forty-seven years old.

  Of the two sons still living (of the four she had borne), Mary felt closer to Tad, the youngest, than to Robert, then at Harvard Law School. Tad required special attention because of learning problems and a speech impediment that made him difficult to understand.77 Although generally cheerful, he could sometimes be hard to manage, throwing tantrums until his mother had to have him removed from the room. She had been indulgent with him, indeed with all the boys, taking as her motto “Let the children have fun,”78 but now she determined to substitute strictness and to enroll Tad in a school in Germany. Her motive held more than a little self-interest—she had never traveled in Europe and believed she could live there more economically than in the United States.

  Money so occupied Mary Lincoln’s thoughts after 1865 that it may well have been the most important consideration in her move to Europe. Although her husband’s estate left about $35,000 to her and to each of her sons, she thought the amount inadequate. Congress had traditionally paid a year’s salary to the widow of any president who died in office, but Abraham Lincoln had been the first to be assassinated and Mary thought the wife of a martyr deserved more. Others agreed that the different circumstances somehow required a larger compensation for the family.

  In a controversy that lasted until her death and beyond, Congress divided over the country’s obligation to presidents’ widows. As long as she lived, Mary Lincoln stayed at the center of the discussion, fueling it with exaggerations of her poverty. She arranged to auction her old clothes and jewelry in a New York hotel, and although she acted under an assumed name, word leaked out, increasing the suspicion that she was either poorer than anyone realized or slightly crazy.

  The final blow in the long string of misfortunes that hammered away at Mary’s natural instability came from her husband’s old law partner, William Herndon. While the men worked together in the 1850s, Mary and Herndon made no secret of their dislike for each other. He had compared her dancing to that of a serpent, but her disapproval of him went beyond such tasteless but harmless comments. Herndon lacked the polish that Mary Lincoln required in her husband’s associates, and she excluded him from her dinner parties. He retaliated by attributing Abraham’s moodiness to pressures caused by Mary’s unreasonableness.

  After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, Herndon began a biography and requested interviews with anyone who had known the president. In the process of taking down notes, he gave currency to many stories that were patently false or enormously exaggerated. Although he did not publish his book until much later, his speeches on the subject received newspaper coverage, and his claims gained publicity in the works of other authors.

  By far the most sensational of the Herndon material argued that Abraham Lincoln had never loved anyone but Ann Rutledge, a young woman who died before he met Mary. This was the first time that Mary Lincoln had heard the story, and although she had plenty of reason to doubt its truth, she was unprepared emotionally to deal with its implications. As headlines carried the news across the country, she became more and more distraught.

  Herndon’s evidence was shaky at best. Abraham knew Ann Rutledge but only as the young daughter of the boardinghouse keeper where he stayed. At the time the future president met her, Ann was already engaged to be married and gave no indication of breaking off the agreement when Abraham appeared on the scene. But evidence that the martyred president had never loved Mary appealed to people who wanted to believe the worst, and the Rutledge connection gained currency.

  By going to Europe, Mary hoped to get away from the stories. She enrolled Tad in a Frankfurt school and went to take the waters at fashionable spas, never neglecting to follow news accounts of what was happening in the United States, particularly attempts in Congress to get her more money. Two other presidents’ widows figured in the picture but each from a slightly different angle. Julia Tyler negotiated from a disadvantaged position since her husband had sided with the South in the Civil War; and Sarah Polk, who lived quietly in apparent comfort in Nashville, seemed in no great need.

  After learning that Congress had granted her a pension of $3,000, Mary returned in the spring of 1871 to Illinois.79 She thought it a niggardly sum but had decided to try living in her own country again. A few months later all her resolution fell away when Tad, her youngest son, died at eighteen. Of all her sorrows, she later said, this cut the deepest.

  On all sides, Mary felt besieged. She continued to worry about money, although what she had was ample for her needs, and she was humiliated by the stories about her husband and Ann Rutledge. She felt estranged from her one remaining son, the rather cold and distant Robert, who had a promising government career. His marriage to the daughter of a prominent judge had not pleased Mary and the fact that the young couple named their daughter for her hardly evened things out.

  By early 1875, Robert asked for a court decision on his mother’s sanity. He knew she carried her life savings sewed into her clothes, and when suspicious-looking characters began calling on her, he feared she would lose everything. In May 1875, Mary Todd Lincoln sat quietly in an Illinois court and heard her son and old friends describe her erratic behavior.80 Some talked of her heavy spending and others of her dabblings in spiritualism, a popular pastime involving supposed communication with dead relatives. The judge listened and then committed her to the care of Robert who promptly arranged for her to enter Bellevue. A private mental institution near Chicago, Bellevue catered to “a select class of lady patients of quiet and unexceptionable habits.”81 Mary, one of twenty patients, had freedom to wander about the grounds. Doctors prescribed very little medication, and she had a private room and her own attendant.

  But confinement under the best of circumstances did not appeal to Mary Lincoln, and she became less cooperative as time passed. Hospital records show that she would order one dish for breakfast, then change her mind and refuse to eat it; she requested a carriage and then would not get in it. Such “lying and deceit should be put down to insanity,” a hospital attendant reported with considerable overstatement.82

  Evidence pieced together later shows that Mary spent a good deal of her time plotting how to regain her freedom. When Robert came for one of his weekly visits, she discussed her wish to live with her sister, and when he left, she asked to accompany him into town in order to mail a letter. Hospital attendants, who agreed to the trip, later learned that she mailed several letters, including one to a former congressman and another to an attorney, asking for their assistance in securing her release. Both the congressman and the attorney came for visits. The latter, Myra Bradwell, the first woman to be admitted to the bar in Illinois, pronounced Mary Lincoln “no more insane than I am.”83

  Mary’s older sister, with whom she had lived when she first arrived in Springfield as a young woman, was becoming less convinced that Mary belon
ged in an institution. The attendant publicity was certainly unpleasant. Joining forces, the sister, lawyer Bradwell, and Mary requested a new hearing. Without alerting hospital attendants, Bradwell arranged for a newspaper reporter to interview Mary, and after a two-hour talk, the reporter concluded that Mary showed “not a sign of weakness … of mind.”84 The efforts of the three women led to Mary’s release in September 1875.

  Still looking for a place to settle, Mary returned to Europe and made her headquarters in Pau, France, until a bad fall partially paralyzed her. Saddened and broken, she returned to America on the same ship that carried the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. In terms as dramatic as the parts she played on stage, Bernhardt later described how she had saved Mary Lincoln from falling down a flight of stairs. The two women introduced themselves, and after they had talked, Bernhardt realized that she had done the one thing for Mary Lincoln that she should not have done—saved her life.85 But not for long. Mary returned to her sister’s house in Springfield, the same house where she had married, and she died there in 1882.

  Except for her good education and remarkable spunk, Mary Todd Lincoln had everything against her. Geography made her suspect, both socially and politically. The competitiveness and insecurity she had shown as a young girl matured into a self-defeating combination. The loss of three sons and the assassination of her husband in front of her eyes broke her.

  It is ironic that Mary Todd Lincoln would become so much discussed, more books and plays being written about her than any other First Lady of the nineteenth century, because in all important ways she was a failure. After the early years of her marriage (when she may have helped Abraham develop socially and may have improved his financial situation by her inheritances), she proved a hindrance to him. Historians have generally dismissed her as unbalanced; and a century after her death, a highly respected scholar, Henry Steele Commager, described her as “a half-crazy woman.”86

  Yet for all her flaws, Mary Lincoln showed considerable determination throughout her life, particularly in her refusal to accept anonymity in Washington and later, in engineering her release from the mental institution. She had a good excuse, especially after the death of her son in 1862, to plead grief as a reason to avoid social life in the capital. Or she could have fallen back on her recurring headaches and refused any public role. Only her stubbornness lifted her out of the obscurity that surrounds most nineteenth-century presidents’ wives. In a time when women had few constructive outlets for their energy and talents, they sometimes selected destructive ones, directing their strong wills to insignificant, even damaging actions. Given other choices, Mary Lincoln might have behaved differently.

  Julia Dent Grant, the third woman to emerge from a long string of unnoticed First Ladies, demonstrates how quickly circumstances change. Wife of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the least prepared presidents in American history (1869–1877), Julia spent a great deal of money but escaped the criticism leveled at Mary Lincoln. Boasting none of Sarah Polk’s political savvy, Julia received equally favorable press notices.

  Perhaps she profited from the optimism that surrounded her husband’s first inauguration in 1869. The Federal City, as people still called the capital, was cold and dark that day; but the rain held off and thousands of people got the chance to see the man they trusted to initiate “a reign of loyalty and truth and patriotism.”87 To signal their determination to put both the Civil War and the bungled Johnson administration that followed it behind them, supporters had traveled many miles and paid high prices for seats to witness the Grant inauguration. About the new president’s wife the crowd knew very little, but in the next eight years they would hear a good deal. Julia Dent Grant had never been one to stay in the background.

  Born in 1826 to relatively wealthy Missouri slaveholders who already had three sons, Julia had enjoyed more than her share of her parents’ attention. Even after the birth of another daughter, Julia Dent remained her father’s favorite. A cheerful, good-natured youngster, she matured into a self-assured young woman who chose to marry against strong parental objection. Ulysses Grant showed little promise of success, and Julia’s father thought she could do better—an opinion that did not change quickly. Ulysses performed well enough in the army as long as he was fighting against Mexico, but later assignments to Panama and then to a lonely outpost at Fort Vancouver, Washington, went less well. Rumor had it that his excessive drinking led to his resignation from the army. He tried selling real estate and farming before going to work in his father’s Illinois harness shop. Although Julia later brushed aside hints that these had been trying times, as she tried to cope with her erratic husband and the four children born to them in twelve years, friends admitted she had been frequently unhappy.

  Had the Civil War not rescued Ulysses from obscurity, he might well have ended up a stooped, soft-spoken, sloppy store clerk, who never excelled in anything. At West Point, he had been a mediocre student—riding was his best subject. But the war brought out new strengths in the middle-aged Ulysses and he managed to get himself appointed head of the twenty-first Illinois Volunteers. Then in one battle after another he showed he could be both ruthless and tenacious. His insistence on the enemy’s “unconditional surrender” earned him the nickname “butcher,” and provided a new explanation for his initials “U.S.” Through all the criticism, President Lincoln defended his victorious general. His determination to fight to the bloody end repelled many people, Abraham Lincoln admitted, but it achieved the desired results.

  By the time Ulysses Grant met Robert E. Lee at war’s end at Appomattox, he had become a national figure and soon there was talk of nominating him for president. He won in the 1868 election, just two months after Mary Lincoln, who had vowed to leave the country if “that butcher” ever became president, had sailed for Europe.

  The Grant family appeared particularly healthy and appealing occupants of the White House after the tragedies associated with the Lincolns and the difficulties encountered by the Andrew Johnsons. The two older sons, Frederick and Ulysses, Jr., spent most of the first years of their father’s tenure away at college, but teenager Nellie and mischievous Jesse, the baby of the family, made up for the absence. Nellie’s participation added a youthful touch to official parties that had tended to become stiff and predictable. Her White House wedding in 1874 became a national celebration.

  Twelve-year-old Jesse Grant, whom his mother described as “never at a loss for an answer,”88 kept several reporters busy with his antics and his gossip about other family members, especially his two grandfathers who often stayed at the White House. Frederick Dent, Julia’s father, and Jesse Grant, Ulysses’s father, did not get along, according to young Jesse, and sometimes they would refuse to communicate with each other except through Julia. In the presence of the elder Grant, Frederick Dent would instruct Julia to “take better care of that old gentleman [Grant]. He is feeble and deaf as a post and yet you permit him to wander all over Washington alone.” Overhearing the remark as he had been meant to do, Grandfather Grant would retort to young Jesse: “Did you hear him? I hope I shall not live to become as old and infirm as your Grandfather Dent.”89

  Accounts of such harmless family squabbles entertained a public that had become accustomed to a more somber White House, and the Grants’ extravagant spending increased their attractiveness. In what came to be called the Gilded Age, large price tags were less objectionable than they had been during the Lincoln war years, and no one seemed to care what Julia bought. No expense appeared in bad taste, no shine too bright. The newly rich vied with each other for the title of bigger spender, with the prize placed squarely on quantity of purchase rather than quality. In such an atmosphere, the White House hostess could hardly overspend, and an approving nation watched as Julia served dinners of twenty-nine courses, accompanied by high-priced French wines.

  On more significant matters, she evidently understood very little. By her own admission, she once came out both for and against a particular piece of legislation. She exp
lained that she had been in New York on a shopping trip when she was approached by both proponents and critics of the bill, wanting her to influence the president in their behalf. Since she knew nothing about the bill at that time, she cheerfully implied agreement with both sides.

  Back in Washington, she confronted Ulysses and asked that he explain the bill and its possible effects. When he had finished, she urged him to veto it. “I always flattered myself,” she wrote, “that I had rendered my husband and the country a very great service in advising the President to veto the all-important Finance Bill that was almost convulsing the country … but I find I had more than one rival in that honor. … To tell the truth, I think the President knew his duty quite well and would have fulfilled his duty in any case.”90

  Ulysses made no secret of the fact that he liked the women around him dependent, and Julia usually humored him by appearing docile and agreeable. She never quite hid, however, a stubborn, willful streak. She once signaled her independence by refusing to sign the necessary papers for the sale of their Washington house. As president-elect, Ulysses had arranged the sale without consulting his wife, and to underscore her objection, she refused to go along. Ulysses was thus forced to back out of the deal with no other explanation than that his wife would not cooperate. The next time he located a prospective buyer, he discussed the offer with Julia, and this time she reported that she cheerfully signed, having made her point.91

  Julia Grant prolonged her tenure in the public eye by accompanying her husband on a trip around the world after his second term ended in 1877. She would have preferred a third term in the White House but Ulysses did not consult her on the matter.92

  In the twenty-eight-month journey, Julia was treated more like a reigning monarch than like the wife of an ex-president, and she thrived on the attention she received. The Grants dined with royalty at Windsor Castle, breakfasted with “London literati,” and drank with English workingmen. After more banquets and honors on the continent, they sailed for the Far East. Governments along the way competed for title of biggest giver, the Japanese distinguishing themselves only slightly more than the others by offering the ex-president the furnishings of an entire room.93