Mary Todd Lincoln Unmasked

Mary Todd Lincoln gets talked about like a stereotype: the spender, the problem, the punchline. That story falls apart the moment you place her where she actually lived, in a White House worn down by constant crowds and a nation tearing itself apart in the Civil War. We sit down with Vicky Middleswarth, Education Coordinator at the Mary Todd Lincoln House, to look at what Mary did, why she did it, and why so many people were determined to read her choices as personal failures instead of the messy reality of being First Lady during America’s greatest crisis.

We dig into the controversies that followed her from the start: the White House renovation that ran over budget, the new wallpaper, carpets, and china, and the fierce backlash to entertaining while soldiers were fighting and dying. You’ll hear how hosting was not “extra” in the 1860s, but part of the job, and how Mary’s efforts to project dignity and sophistication became a political liability. The episode also explores her civic participation and political involvement before women’s suffrage, from advising and letter writing to fundraising at sanitary fairs and quietly visiting Union Army hospitals with fruit, flowers, and conversation.

Then we zoom out and ask a harder question: how did Americans learn to “know” Mary Todd Lincoln in the first place? We unpack how diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews, many written by men with their own agendas, shaped a lasting public image, and why modern historians keep revisiting her story. Finally, we talk about what visitors experience at the Mary Todd Lincoln House, including a mourning bonnet that captures her resilience and an interactive unit that examines the infamous 1875 insanity trial from multiple perspectives.

If you care about women’s history, Civil War history, the First Lady role, or how bias gets baked into the historical record, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves American history, and leave a review with your take: what’s the fairest way to judge Mary Todd Lincoln?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome back to Civic Senior. I am really excited today to talk about somebody I find incredibly fascinating. And I'm excited because we get to talk about her with Vicky Middlesworth, who is education coordinator at the Mary Todd Lincoln House. Vicki, thank you so much for being on. I love museums, I love place-based learning. I'm just so I'm so thrilled to have this conversation because we talked a lot about Abraham Lincoln, but now we get to talk about Mrs. Lincoln.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yeah, we're excited that you asked us. Thank you. We love to talk about Mary.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So the first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, was praised

Meet Mary Todd Lincoln

SPEAKER_01 0:48

and was criticized for some of her actions, even when they kind of fell within the expectations for elite women in the mid-19th century. Can you tell us about some of those controversies that surrounded her?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Sure. When Mary Lincoln became the first lady, there were very clear expectations for women of her station, which would be middle and upper class white women. The first and foremost was marriage and a family. And Mary was very proud to be Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. She did everything she could to support her husband and she adored her children. So that was certainly a role that she took on with happiness. One of the first duties of a good wife and mother was to create a comfortable home for their husbands and children. This would be a place where

White House Spending And Social Backlash

SPEAKER_00 1:51

the breadwinner, the husband, could escape from the outside world and children could grow up in a healthy place. And Mary worked hard to achieve that in the Lincoln's home in Springfield, Illinois. Journalists who came to visit their home during the presidential election commented on her good taste in terms of decorating. Decorating the White House was not so easy. And that's one of the places where she got into a little bit of trouble. When the Lincolns got to the White House in March of 1861, they found it to be in disrepair. This was often the case because thousands of people trooped through the White House, and Congress was even in the habit of appropriating funds when a new president began. So the Lincolns were given $20,000. This was a fairly typical amount. And Mary took on the project, which included repairs but also included some decorating, something that would have been within the purview of a woman of her station. In addition to having the outside of the White House painted, she worked on the public rooms of the interior, and she spent a lot of money buying wallpaper and carpets and a big set of china for the state dining room. And she went over budget, probably by about $6,000. She had some government employees that were supposed to be helping her. So it's not clear exactly why it happened, but uh we do know she was trying to impress people in Washington with her sophistication. She might have thought that merchants who were giving her goods that these were actually gifts. And in fact, there were bills coming later. And she might have just lost sight of the total. So although there were plenty of people who admired the updated White House, there were also insiders in the administration who gossiped about the overage. And even Abraham Lincoln was upset when some of those bills came in because, of course, the Civil War was going on by then. Another area where Mary got into some trouble was entertaining. And women of her station were expected to know how to receive guests and how to plan a dinner party. And she did this well in Springfield. She wrote in her letters about hosting big receptions for adults and even having a birthday party for one of her sons and 50 of his friends. But of course, it was harder in the White House. The president was expected to entertain for the public and for private events, even during wartime. There were regular public receptions where hundreds of people lined up outside of the White House to go through and shake hands with the president. And Mary was usually right there in the receiving line with him. She really liked people and she wasn't afraid of these kinds of events. But some of the things she planned got her into some trouble. In a few instances, it was because she stepped on the toes of people, men, who thought that they were supposed to be planning those events, such as the Secretary of State uh planning an event for a visiting foreign dignity, and she insisted on doing it instead. She also got in trouble on at least one occasion for the appearance of spending a lot of money during the Civil War. Her biggest party was one that she planned in February of 1862. 500 invitations were issued. One of Abraham Lincoln's secretaries said, half of Washington is thrilled to be on the guest list, and the other half is furious because they weren't invited. The event started at 9 o'clock at night. There was conversation and music, and then there was a sumptuous catered uh supper at midnight. Certainly, people who attended the event were impressed. One newspaper called it superb. But there were people who didn't even come because they were kind of boycotting it because the war was on, and they thought this was an ostentatious show of spending at a time when soldiers needed money. There was even a poem which appeared in a few newspapers called The Lady President's Ball. And in it, a Union soldier hears all the festivities off in the distance while he's dying in a Union Army hospital. So these kinds of things, Mary, I'm sure, read. And although she continued to entertain in during the rest of the years they were in the White House, it was on a smaller scale.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

It's so interesting to think about that because a lot of the things you're talking about, I'm thinking about first ladies, you know, in the 20th century. Like that was a very normal thing to host. And when you talked about like buying China, like I I can vividly see the pieces, you know, the play settings of different first ladies. And I just I it almost sounds like poor Mrs. Lincoln could not win with anything that she did.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, she she got a lot of public attention, and there were certainly lots of opinions out there, and she just happened to be the first lady at a difficult time.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

So Mary Todd Lincoln held pretty strong political opinions, even though at this time women could not vote. And she also actively volunteered during the Civil War. What does her life reveal about women's political involvement and civic participation before suffrage?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Well, although Mary did step outside sometimes of the expectations for women, she was never a suffragist. She did write in a letter to one of her half-sisters, a presidential can candidate who she supported, but she didn't argue that she should be allowed to vote for him. She accepted her status. And if she did talk about it, it was not in any

Women’s Politics Before Suffrage

SPEAKER_00 8:14

kind of public situation. But she did love politics, even as a child, according to her family members. She liked to sit in on her father's political discussions with his friends. And one of uh her family members referred to her as quote-unquote a violent little Whig. And this is Whig W-H-I-G, the Whig Party, of which her father and Abraham Lincoln were members. The Whig Party was actually somewhat interested in women participating in politics, albeit in a marginal way. So they recommended that women could attend parades or rallies or write letters or poems to support candidates or to sew banners. And Mary did read some Whig literature, so it's possible that she was aware of the party's push for women to be involved on the sidelines. She did a number of things, for the most part, on the sidelines to support Abraham Lincoln's political rise. She wrote letters for him and signed his name to them when he supported a candidate. According to one of her sisters, she listened to his speeches, some of them before he gave them, and she provided some input. When he was elected to the House of Representatives for his one and only term in Washington, she went with him and their two very young sons at the time. They stayed in a boarding house with other Whig politicians. And it is thought that she probably went to the Capitol to watch him give speeches from the gallery in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, she didn't get to attend most of his debates with Stephen Douglas, but she and her oldest son Robert did make it to the last one. She also opened up her house to all kinds of visitors, and some of them in large groups, during the months leading up to and following the presidential election. And one historian suggests that uh she might have been one of the most accomplished political hostesses in Springfield, Illinois. She also gave Abraham Lincoln lots of advice, and there's evidence that they that they discussed things at their home in Springfield. But again, things were a little different in the White House. When they get to the White House, in addition to working really long hours, Abraham Lincoln is surrounded by male advisors. He has a cabinet, he has Congress, and there are other people coming, men, and chatting with him about things. So although she continued to have opinions, she didn't have as much access to him as she might have. She did, however, participate in a lot of public events that could be considered civic engagement. The president was invited to make appearances at all kinds of events, and she went along. She was a people person, she liked that kind of thing. So she went to military demonstrations with him, even some encampments. She attended sanitary fair fundraisers. The Sanitary Commission was raising money to support the Army. And she did volunteer in Union Army hospitals, not as a nurse, but as a kindly visitor who uh brought fruit and flowers and sat beside the soldiers' beds and chatted with them. On one occasion, she wrote a letter for a soldier to his mother, and he did not find out until later that she was the first lady because his mother said the letter is signed, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. So she was very modest about this volunteer work. She also donated food to the hospitals, particularly at holidays. And she and Abraham Lincoln attended a Christmas dinner at an Army hospital in 1862 and also one at a contraband camp. Contraband was a term used to describe formerly enslaved people who had made their way to Washington, sometimes with no more than the clothing they were wearing. And Mary's dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, was a founding member of an organization that raised money to help these people. And Elizabeth wrote in her memoir that Mrs. Lincoln was a frequent contributor to the Contraband Relief Association. So Mary found ways to be involved, even if it wasn't direct political participation.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

And I love the way that you speak about her because you know, in our like pre-conversation, we talked about how a lot of what has been written about Mary Todd Lincoln has been written by men. How do you think that has shaped the way Americans remember and interpret her today?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Well, it's very true that most of the first-person accounts that were written by people who knew her during during her lifetime were written by men. There are there are exceptions, but the the majority are by men. And their perceptions, I think, of what women should be probably affected what they

How Men’s Accounts Shaped Her Image

SPEAKER_00 14:04

wrote. One of the biggest uh collections of those is by uh William Herndon. He was one of Abraham Lincoln's law partners, and after the assassination, he decided to collect as many stories as he could, predominantly about the years leading up to the presidency. And William Herndon found hundreds of people to interview and to correspond with, and of course, most of them were men. He and Mary Lincoln were not on friendly terms. The word animosity has been used to describe their relationship, although historians disagree about when that animosity began, possibly after Abraham Lincoln's death. But some historians have suggested that he sought out informants who he knew would say bad things about her because that was the view of her that he wanted to portray. Now, other historians disagree and say that his methods were the best that he could do, considering the lack of technology at the time, but his accounts are some of the only ones that survive about the Springfield years. So they are widely used and often in cases where somebody is trying to show what a nasty wife Abraham Abraham Lincoln had. Two other men who were uh quoted often are Abraham Lincoln's personal secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay. John Hay kept a diary, and John Nicolay wrote letters, and in those they referred to Mary Lincoln as the Hellcat and her satanic majesty.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

You know, and these were private documents. They may have felt this way about her because they felt that she was getting in their way, you know, she was interfering in duties that they thought were theirs. But it's also possible that they witnessed some things behind the scenes because they stayed in the family quarters of the White House with the Lincolns. And their uh work has been published and is accessible, and biographers love to mention the Hellcat when they're talking about Mary. It's important to mention that there were men who wrote sympathetically about Mary, and there were also women who wrote not so sympathetically, so it isn't completely gendered. I think probably one of the most remembered of the women is Elizabeth Cackley, Mary's dressmaker. She was born into slavery the same year that Mary was born into this affluent family in Lexington. And Elizabeth purchased her freedom uh through money she made dressmaking, and she became one of Mary's dressmakers and developed a real interesting relationship with Mary that has been described as a friendship. She helped Mary to get dressed, she spent a lot of time with her in the White House, and she also supported her after the death of Willie, one of Mary's sons, and after Abraham Lincoln's death. And in 1868, Elizabeth Keckley published an autobiography called Behind the Scenes. And about half of it was about her years in the White House, and it included positive portrayals of Mrs. Lincoln, but it also some included some details that Mary would have preferred not be included. And in Elizabeth Keckley's defense, she later said in her older years that she had never really given the publisher permission to go forward with it. And the publisher did anyway, knowing that it would be a big hit. But of course, by the time Elizabeth Keckley said that, the damage was done. And a lot of quotes in biographies of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Lincoln come from that book. So, you know, one of the I guess the results today about all of this is that it's there are still gendered views of Mary, and that most of the negative views of Mary in current and present-day books are written by men and often by men who are writing about Abraham Lincoln, and she's just a secondary character. Most of her biographers, most of whom, but not all, are women, tend to take a little bit more nuanced view of her. And this is not to say they're trying to make her out to be an angel, because that's not possible. But they, I think, try to show both sides of more issues, and they also look for motivations for her behavior instead of just reporting it.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

So different interpretations, like you said, of Mary Todd Lincoln's life make her a really fascinating example of how history can involve multiple perspectives. Why do you think she continues to be so debated?

SPEAKER_00 19:37

I guess because there are so many perspectives on her, and this started when she was still alive. This is this is not a more recent thing, although it continues. I think there are probably a few reasons for it. She was a really public person. Some of her first lady predecessors chose to remain in the family quarters of the White House most of the time, but Mary was out there and she liked to be with people and go to events and do things, even though it sometimes meant

Why Mary Still Sparks Debate

SPEAKER_00 20:07

she got publicity for it, good and bad. She was Abraham Lincoln's wife. And when we think of him as one of the greatest presidents, but during his presidency, he had plenty of enemies in the north as well as in the south. And some of those people tried to get to him by attacking her. He is also one of the most written about presidents in history. And diaries and letters that might never have been published if they had been about a less famous president got published, and of course, now are online, as well as tons of memoirs written by people who interacted with him. And many of those diaries and letters and memoirs include accounts about Mary, good and bad. Finally, uh, she was not a perfect person. She had lots of admirable qualities, she also had flaws, she had successes, she had failures, and because of all these other things that we've just talked about, all of those things were recorded and in in positive and negative terms. So what that means today is that if somebody wants to write about Mary or produce a play about Mary, or or even write a fiction book about Mary, they can adopt a stance on her and find evidence to support it, whatever it is, because there is good, bad, and ugly out there.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Well, and I think there's good, bad, and ugly about everyone. And I love that I love that there are these. Multiple perspectives. And, you know, I want to point out in our conversation, I have purposely stayed away from, you know, the allegations that she was, you know, insane because I wanted to look back beyond that, right? To who Mrs. Lincoln was and really give listeners this kind of like historical look at a woman who was first lady during the biggest crisis in American history. And I think that that's so important. So you work at the Mary Todd Lincoln House. And I cannot wait. That is on my list. So for visitors coming to the Mary Todd Lincoln House, what stories, artifacts, or experiences do you hope leave the biggest impression about who Mary Todd Lincoln really was?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Well, after all, we've just been talking about it's hard to say who she really was. But I will tell you about an artifact and an experience that people can have at the house that I think kind of get at it. The artifact is a bonnet. It's a little black bonnet that could have sat on the back of her head or the front of her head. She owned it. It is black wool crepe, it has silk ribbons

The Bonnet And The “Insanity” Trial

SPEAKER_00 23:20

and a little bit of pleated trim on it. Mary chose to wear black for the remainder of her life after Abraham Lincoln's death, but she did remain interested in fashion. And this was, by some accounts, a fashionable bonnet. It dates to 1870 to 1875. And I like that little five-year period because a lot of things happened for Mary during those years as a widow. In 1870, I think she was having one of the happiest times she had as a widow, which was traveling in Europe with her son Tad. In 1871, she was plunged into mourning because Tad died at age 18 of a lung condition. And in 1875, she was confined in an insane asylum by her only remaining son, Robert. So she could have worn this bonnet at any of those times. I was talking to one of our tour guides who said she saw that bonnet as a symbol of Mary's ability to survive all kinds of uh incidents and situations and conditions. And I thought that was a really good observation. When Abraham Lincoln died, Mary thought she wouldn't be able to go on, but she did. You know, she paid off her debts, she traveled in Europe, she petitioned Congress for a widow's pension, and she endured that insanity episode. So being a survivor was definitely part of who she really was. The experience I want to tell you about is actually about the insanity episode. Was she crazy? Is probably one of the most asked questions at the house. So we decided to create an interactive unit that looked at all the perspectives on why people think that she was insane. For anyone who isn't familiar with that episode, her son Robert secretly planned a trial when they were living in Chicago to determine whether or not she was insane because he was concerned about her behavior and he thought that she would benefit from spending time in an asylum and that she might recover. But he couldn't put her in an asylum without a trial unless she consented to it, and he knew she would not consent. So he secretly set up this trial, which she did not know about until someone came to take her to the courthouse. He lined up both lawyers, his and hers, and all the witnesses. So it's no surprise that the jury ruled that she was insane. And she spent about three months in an asylum and then was uh released into the custody of her sister, Elizabeth, in Springfield, where she remained for the rest of the year. And then in a second court appearance, a different jury ruled that she was, in their words, restored to reason. So this is really one of the biggest controversies of her life and one that has lived on to the present. So in our interactive unit, we have uh hinged flip labels that visitors can lift to learn a little bit about some of the reasons that historians and writers believed that she was behaving the way she was. Was it PTSD? Was it bipolar disease? And then also some of the reasons that the trial transpired the way it did. You know, was it rigged? Was her son out to get her? Was it because it was all men? So we encourage visitors to look at all these perspectives and interpretations and then kind of come up with their own solution, and they can tell us what that is on a post-it note if they like. So I really like that unit because it's popular with visitors and it answers or addresses a popular question, but also because it shows all those multiple perspectives that we think are so important about Mary. She actually told William Herndon in her one interview with him that she liked to read newspapers because she thought you learned best from reading both sides. So that's the advice we want our uh visitors to heed from Mary Todd Lincoln herself.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Thank you so much. And again, I I love these podcasts because I get to learn about these figures who, you know, I knew who Mary Todd Lincoln was. Like you said, I've heard of the play, Oh Mary. There's definitely been some, you know, interpretations of her, but I think like most historical figures, understanding that there are multiple perspectives, there is good, there is bad. And you know, people are so much more than just the stories that we tell. And one of the reasons I love museums, I love place-based learning is because, like you said, you get to go see this bonnet, you get to interact with things that make them more of a human being. So, Vicki, thank

Museums And Multiple Perspectives

SPEAKER_01 29:00

you so much for your time and your expertise on Mary Todd Lincoln.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Thanks again for inviting me.