Mary Lincoln's Fiery Trial
Lois Romano 00:00
There was 1000s of soldiers in makeshift hospitals all over Washington, and she said to the nurse, "Why don't you give that up and come stay with me at the cottage?" And the nurse said, "No, I'm not going to give that up, but why don't you come to the hospitals?"And that's what she did, and and that's what really saved her.
Colleen Shogan 00:16
When Mary Lincoln became first lady in 1861, the nation was at its lowest moment. The American experiment was nearly at an end. To defend slavery, several Southern states had seceded from the Union. Confederate soldiers had fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The Civil War had begun. For Mary Lincoln, the hardship of the war years was matched only by the personal struggles she had already faced and those that would come in its wake. She endured more than most people should ever have to: the deaths of her young sons, the assassination of her husband, and later, the very fight for her own independence, and yet, as today's guest Lois Romano finds, when it mattered most, Mary Lincoln refused to be silent and unseen. So, what might we learn from her resilience in the nation's darkest hour? I'm Colleen Shogan, and this is In Pursuit, a podcast that explores lessons from America's past to rate the history of America's future. Episode 13: Mary Lincoln's Fiery Trial. Lois Romano, welcome to In Pursuit.
Lois Romano 01:36
Well, thank you, and thank you for having me.
Colleen Shogan 01:38
Yes, we're very excited to be talking about Mary Lincoln, and we know that in some of your writing about Mary Lincoln, that you've argued that in her early life she was mischaracterized by many men. So I wonder if you could tell us about how they mischaracterized her and why this was important.
Lois Romano 02:00
Well, when I say early life, it would be it would be post presidency or in the presidency, and maybe a little bit before he was elected. But she she had a strong personality. She was a little bit volatile, and she rubbed some people the wrong way. Her biggest nemesis was actually Lincoln's former law partner, a guy named William Herndon, who probably did the most damage to her, and and it was very personal and visceral. He was mad because she wouldn't invite him to her home for dinner when they were in Springfield, and he felt slighted by her. But her instincts weren't that off with him. He was an abolitionist, which was not a place to be when you were on the rise in politics in the 1850s. You know, Lincoln was more moderate, and he was a drunk, and so Mary just didn't like her Lincoln's affiliation with him, and so didn't want to encourage it in any way. And he did her an enormous amount of damage.
Colleen Shogan 03:01
Is he the one that called her Mary Todd Lincoln? Is is that where that came from?
Lois Romano 03:06
I'm not sure, but he would always be derisive about the Todds, like they're just too aristocratic. They're this, they're that, and she he would always say she all she does is have aristocratic parties, which really wasn't true. But he just, and I think he was jealous because he felt like she she was an impediment to him getting closer to Lincoln, and so after Lincoln died, he anointed himself sort of the foremost expert on Lincoln pre presidency, and he went around all over Springfield and and and in Menard County to do a whole history on Lincoln before the presidency, and during that time he found out that Lincoln, like this is one example, he had a crush on some girl, and they might have dated a little bit, and he blew that up into this mammoth thing, like it was this great lost love, and Lincoln really never loved Mary, and this is he did this while Mary was still alive, and he just had a weird ax to grind. He was going to write a book. He never could pull his act together to write the book, but he made like a bunch of notes that he copied, put in a safe. Other men then used those, and they were very anti-Mary. These notes, and so that's how some of this stuff started to get out. That had a very negative take on Mary.
Colleen Shogan 04:23
Where did Mary Todd grow up? What was her origins? Was she from a rich family, poor family? What did they do?
Lois Romano 04:30
She she was from a very very well placed family. She grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. Her dad was a merchant, but and also a politician. He was a lawyer. His father had helped founded Kentucky. One of her relatives was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. So by the time she was born, and and Lexington itself was a very developed community. So by the time she was born, she was kind of thrust into this. It was called the Athens. The West. It had stores. It had haberdasheries. It had silversmiths. It had paved roads. It had mansions. So she grew up very well healed. But also tragically, her mother died when she was about six, and her life was, you know, thrown into chaos.
Colleen Shogan 05:18
Did her father remarry?
Lois Romano 05:20
He did remarry much sooner than the family would have wanted. I think after maybe 18 months, and it wasn't the normal period. But he needed a mother for these. I think there were five kids at that time, so he married someone, a woman named Betsy, and she then had nine more kids. So Mary was just lost. I mean, she had a very trying, sad childhood.
Colleen Shogan 05:41
So, how did she come to meet Abraham Lincoln and talk about their courtship? It's a little tumultuous, isn't it? It was very tumultuous.
Lois Romano 05:48
So, she she had an older sister who was from the first marriage and the oldest in the family, and she, you know, the way she got out of Lexington was she married a young man that she met at Transylvania University. His father was arguably the most powerful man in Illinois. He was the governor, and so when they got married, she was very young, maybe 1718, They moved to Springfield, Illinois, and and moved into a nice home, and so it was it was very prominent family in Illinois. She then systematically brought to Springfield the daughters of that first marriage, and she would bring them there for the purpose of marrying them off. And I believe Mary was the third daughter. So when one would get there, find a husband, and so when Mary was 20, she took her little coach ride and went to Springfield. And by that time, the brother-in-law was in the state legislature with Abraham Lincoln, and that's how she met him. And the capital-they had just moved the capital to Springfield, and so the Edwards's home, his name was Ninian Edwards. Their home was sort of the center of social activity for Springfield. So she's this new arrival, Abell, and you know, from Kentucky, and they would all the politicians would gather, and she was enormously popular. And she met him at a cotillion dance about two months after she arrived. But then he would start coming to the sisters' gatherings, and that's how they kind of clicked.
Colleen Shogan 07:15
They got together, then they broke up, and then right, they got back together again.
Lois Romano 07:19
They did. It was a it was a very volatile relationship. They both were very difficult personalities. Lincoln was a depressive, not a manic depressive, but just a depressive. I mean, he would go into these deep funks, and he was doing extremely well, but he still had a very bad self image of himself. And Mary was what we call bipolar now. She was a manic depressive, so she had she had really great highs. So when they got together, they were sort of matched to a certain degree, personality wise. And she saw something in him, and he definitely saw a spark in her. Her family didn't understand it because when her sister brought her there to meet a husband, she thought, it would be somebody much more well-tealed. I mean, he was sort of a ragamuffin. I mean, he was very successful in the legislature, but he dressed poorly. He wore mismatched socks. He didn't have two dimes to rub together, and that's not what the sister had in mind. So, between you know, there was all of that, and he was just not sure that this is what he wanted to do, so I guess they agreed to marry. Although they didn't make a big public announcement, but about six months later on New Year's Day, he broke it off with her, and and she was devastated. But he actually had a nervous breakdown, which was fascinating because she put up a good front. By now she's like 22, maybe, and she's still going all the parties. But she she was carrying a torch for him, and she would keep very close tabs on him. He just started circling the drain, and this is very well documented. He couldn't go to work, and nobody no one ever was sure why. But a couple of psychotherapists believe it was because too much got disrupted in his life. At the same time, he broke it off with her. His best friend was moving back to Kentucky. His career was still going well, but he had made a couple of missteps. Today, they probably would have given some some serious medication to him, and it took him about three months to get out of it, to to climb out of this. So, 18 months later, neither of them had found anybody else, and their friends thought, "Well, you know, maybe we should try to see if we can sort of bring them back together again."
Colleen Shogan 09:30
And it worked.
Lois Romano 09:31
It did work. Yeah, and she was very secretive about it because she was sort of embarrassed about the breakup, and so when they started seeing each other, the editor of the newspaper and his wife said they could use their house for their rendezvous, and she didn't tell her sisters, and so they would meet there. And then one day, Abraham Lincoln shows up at the minister's door. He just says to Mary, "We're going to get married today," and there is speculation that some. Did happen that they might have consummated their relationship, and he just felt like, oh, I better, I got to get on with this now, and so he runs unto Mary's brother-in-law on the street, and he said, Mary and I are going to get married tonight. And he was like, what? And he said, well, Mary is my ward. He said, that's fine if that's what you want to do, but you have to do it at my house, and that's how it happened.
Colleen Shogan 10:21
Now, how was Mary influential in Lincoln's early political career?
Lois Romano 10:27
Abraham Lincoln was an enormously successful politician, but he was very awkward. And what Mary gave him was social standing. She entertained. She she sort of was the precursor of how to entertain politically, she was a gatherer or convener, and she would have these parties when the legislature would gather, and she would bring everyone to her home. She was also her family were Whigs, and Henry Clay was from Lexington, and that and he at that time, if you recall, Henry Clay was a huge deal. He had been Speaker of the House. He had been the Secretary of State, and Lincoln was a Whig, and he adored Henry Clay. So she, Mary, was just unusually politically astute, and so she would give him some guidance. She would give him some advice. I mean, look, Lincoln was a fabulous politician. So I don't want to overstate this, but she was a full partner, and she was
Colleen Shogan 11:25
eager for him. And she was eager.
Lois Romano 11:26
I mean, she she believed the White House was her destiny, and she believed it was their destiny, and and she took it a little too seriously. Like Lincoln had took the long view. He knew, like if she thought somebody crossed him, she would cross them off their list, but Lincoln wouldn't do that. He would be like, you know, Mary, if it was up to you, we'd have no friends. He said, but you know, we need all these people. But she was extremely loyal. His beliefs were her beliefs, and she believed that it was her role to get him to the White House.
Colleen Shogan 11:56
So she's born a Southerner, and she finds herself in the White House with the outbreak of the Civil War, how did she confront that all-encompassing issue at during Lincoln's presidency?
Lois Romano 12:10
She confronted it very well. People reacted to her poorly. She was all in on the Union, and and and she was always all in on Lincoln. She was just 100% loyal, and she believed in the Union. She believed the Union should be kept together. I wouldn't call her an abolitionist, but she ascribed to what he viewed as that slavery was a bad thing. But you know, what are we going to do with it? But the fact that she was a Southerner and she was from a border state, but nonetheless, in her family, this three half brothers, a brother, and I think three brother brothers in law were all aligned with the Confederacy. Her her one one famous brother in law who was a general, and then three and then three half brothers fought in the and so she and everybody knew this. This was all public information. They fought for Jefferson Davis, and so she was just under attack from the minute she got to Washington. Everybody thought she was a spy, which she wasn't. I mean, she she just basically xed out her family. She's like, "This is who we are, and if you're going to fight against my husband, I'm against you."
Colleen Shogan 13:18
So Americans were dubious of totally, yeah,
Lois Romano 13:22
And and in Washington too, and and people forget this now. But Lincoln was slow on slavery; he did not like slavery, but he was very slow to end it because he was trying to keep the Union together, and fundamentally, he didn't believe that whites and blacks could coexist. So he he ascribed to what Henry Clay ascribed to, which was colonialization. Yes, let's free the slaves, but let's just send them back to colonies in Africa. So he was just he was trying to figure out how to do this without without breaking up the union, and and his position became okay. The slave states can can keep slavery, but we're not going to extend it. She ascribed to all of that, but nobody believed it. And it became easier for men, abolitionists, to attack her than him. They didn't want to be seen attacking the president, and so they came after her.
Colleen Shogan 14:17
Tell us about the death of Willie Lincoln in the White House, and in 1862, it affects both Abraham Lincoln and Mary Lincoln, but it it impacts her perhaps even more.
Lois Romano 14:30
It was a terrible loss for both of them. He was from from all I've I've researched and read. He was as as she called him. He was the idolized child. He was kind and smart, and and I think she favored him because he was a lot like Lincoln. He was brilliant and low key, and just a good boy. And the two younger boys got sick from cholera because the water was so unsanitized at the time. Even living in the White House, they were being pumped in bad water. They both got sick at the same time, and the younger one recovered. But Willie, who I was 12 at the time, succumbed, and it would-it was awful. They were paralyzed, and Lincoln was was greatly affected. But he had a war and a country to run. She took to her bed for three weeks and would not get out of her bed. She cried all the time. They had to ask her sister to come. It was also a turning point. You know, Mary was not good at coping with certain things, and it was. And she, you know, when we were younger and with mental illness, if you're not being treated, you can you find coping mechanisms. But as you get older, it becomes harder because at this moment in her life, she wasn't going to have any more children. She was in her mid 40s, and so there was nothing to look forward to. When she had lost a child earlier and then had two more kids, she just saw this as at the as as a terrible end of the road for her. And Lincoln would go to his grave here in Washington at the cemetery in Georgetown, and and they would leave a chair out for him, and he would just sit there and talk to Willie. She couldn't be in the White House, so they moved to the cottage for extended periods of time. It was mostly the summer, but and finally, what helped her get through is they hired a nurse to come take care of her, and she asked the nurse. The nurse was was helping the injured soldiers. You know there were there was 1000s of soldiers in makeshift hospitals all over Washington, and she said to the nurse, "Why don't you give that up and come stay with me at the cottage? And the nurse said, "No, I'm not going to give that up. But why don't you come to the hospitals?" And that's what she did, and and that's what really saved her. She would go almost every day, and she would tend to these wounded soldiers, and read to them, and write letters to their families, and she would send over all sorts of food and gifts and alcohol, you know, to drink for the for the soldiers.
Colleen Shogan 16:56
What a great example of resilience!
Lois Romano 16:59
That's who she was. She was resilient. She persevered, and she was resilient.
Colleen Shogan 17:03
Resilience is finding another path, and she clearly found another path.
Lois Romano 17:06
Yes she would continue. I mean, she got so much thrown at her, you know, grief and and upheaval, and she had depression, and she would just find ways to cope and to try to get to the next thing, and she wouldn't get defeated when everybody was on her and picking on her, and she said, "I think at one point, you know, I'm I'm just the scapegoat for everything, but she just would find a way, and she she was she was resilient.
Colleen Shogan 17:32
So after Lincoln's assassination, you know, Mary Lincoln fades, I think, a lot from the attention of the American public, but her story certainly does not end there. And there's much more turmoil and events that happen in her life. Can you tell us about those?
Lois Romano 17:50
She fades from contemporary history a little bit, our history, but she doesn't fade from public view. So
Colleen Shogan 17:58
people are watching her. They
Lois Romano 17:59
are watching her. The press always found her, and so she he dies, and and she's not popular, and they try to raise money for her like they they used to do these subscription campaigns. Nobody wants to give any money. He actually Lincoln died with some money, and about the equivalent of a million and a half dollars, but he didn't have a will, so they ask this Davis Davis, who is of ally of of Trump's [Lincoln's] and sitting on the Supreme Court to be the executor. He holds up the estate for I'm trying to think now two years maybe, and she needs the money. He's giving her an unacceptably low allowance for a first lady, and it was awful. She was humiliated. She couldn't afford to buy a house. She's living in rooming houses, and and it was just a horrible period. And she kept writing and asking him for more money. She finally raises some money. She buys a house, but then she can't maintain it. She decides she has to raise money, so she decides to sell all her White House clothes, and she goes to New York under a pseudonym, and she brings all these trunks with her. She finds a broker to do it. Now, keep in mind, Jackie Kennedy does this many years later and is celebrated for it, right? And her family has big
Colleen Shogan 19:16
auctions for her. Big auctions,
Lois Romano 19:17
millions of dollars erased. So Mary goes under a pseudonym. It's not long before people find out where she is and she's selling this stuff. She gets some bad advice from the brokers who tell her to write letters to them, fake letters saying how terrible she's been treated by the Republicans and that they should be helping her. They in turn bring it to the Republicans, trying to blackmail them. It doesn't work. The whole thing blows up, and she she's again humiliated. People, I counted. I think 2000 stories were done about how she's a national embarrassment because she had tried to sell her clothes. Finally. The estate settles and then decides she's going to leave the country. There's two sons left. One is now a lawyer who is not being nice to her, and then the other one is 17, and she takes him and he has his own trust fund. She still hasn't, you know, released the money. She takes him, and they go to Germany and she puts him in a private school, and he has his own trust fund for that. And she she creates a new life for herself. So she has a period of sort of some peace.
Colleen Shogan 20:28
Why doesn't she stay there? Why does she come back?
Lois Romano 20:31
She comes back because she does have the still remaining son here, and he has a baby. And the 17 or 18 year old now misses him and wants to see the baby, so she stays there, and then she she decides she comes back to Chicago, and by now the estate has been settled. She has a little bit of money, and she's going to try to build a life for herself in Chicago, where her son is.
Colleen Shogan 20:57
When I was at the National Archives, I viewed many times her petition to Congress for a presidential widow's pension. So, can you talk about her petitioning for this pension? Is she successful, and how does that affect how we view presidential widows?
Lois Romano 21:17
That's a group. That's a great question. She tackles that while she's in Germany, and and she had some allies in Congress, and she also had some enemies. You know, again, there's somewhat of a fixed narrative on her that she was disloyal to the country, which she wasn't. So, so these allies, both in the House and the Senate, they launch a campaign for this, and it's that, and it's like a five-year battle. I mean, it goes on and on, and and people are making writing letters saying she shouldn't get it, and other people are writing that she should. She finally gets it passed by the House, and then a few months later she gets it passed by the Senate, and and it was precedent setting because up until that point presidential widows didn't get a dime, and and and the the Congress was flummoxed by this. They said, "Well, you know, we're giving it to the to the widows of the soldiers, but we're not giving it to the widow of the commander in chief." And keep in mind, Mary is the first widow of an assassinated president. He died because of that war, so she so she does finally get it.
Colleen Shogan 22:16
So, what happens to Mary Lincoln going forward from that in relation to her only at that point surviving son,
Lois Romano 22:23
I say in the book that I wrote that she her legacy was shaped by two men: one that she loathed and one that she loved. And the one that she loved was William Herndon, and the one that she loved was her son. So she she comes back, and now we're sort of in the mid 1870s. She comes back and she, you know, is traveling around. She's living in Chicago, and she decides to take a trip to Florida. And well, and this is in 1875, so it's it's on the 10th anniversary of Lincoln's death, and there is no question this woman has PTSD. Nobody knew what it was at the time, so she's all of a sudden confronted with all these memories of her husband, and there's articles being written, and there's you know store windows and stuff, and she gets it in her head that something is going to happen to her son, and by the time she's finished developing this storyline in her head, he's dying and he's not right. So she goes to she goes to Western Union. She says, "I have to get back to Chicago. My son's dying." She writes to the law partner. His law partner law partner says he's not dying. He's fine, and she won't listen to him. She gets on a train, goes there, and when she gets there, she does find that he's well, but she is really off at this point. She is totally off her game. She is not emotionally stable. She is probably impacted by several things. One is PTSD because of the anniversary, and the other is because of her high anxiety. She was being given all sorts of medications, and medications that can make you hallucinate, be paranoid, hear voices, and so one moment she could be totally lucid, and then another moment out of it. So she gets back, and he stays in the hotel with her one night, or a few nights, and she's not. She's acting erratically, and one of the things that would drive him crazy. This two things: she saw spiritualists, and that's how was part of her coping mechanism in the
Colleen Shogan 24:31
White House too. In the
Lois Romano 24:32
White House too, right? But so by now she's lost a husband, and and she's now lost three sons. We didn't talk about the third son dying, but she's lost three sons. She's seeing spiritualists. They come to her hotel, and she shops manically. She would buy things that she didn't need, so she would go into stores. And she's living at a hotel, and she would buy. I
Colleen Shogan 24:52
buy a lot of things I don't need. Exactly.
Lois Romano 24:54
She would buy curtains that she would never hang. I mean, she would buy jewelry she wasn't going to wear. She would buy dresses. She. Wearing black for the rest of her life, she thought she was being followed by men, and she actually was. Her husband put Pinkerton guards on her, and so they're trying to fault her for being paranoid. But yet she was being followed, so finally he decides he can't take it anymore. The shopping is driving him crazy, and and seeing the the spiritualist is driving him crazy, and he goes to two of his father's former friends and says, "I can't have her out there." I mean, he was mostly just embarrassed because she was idiosyncratic. I mean, she wasn't harming a soul, and she wasn't harming herself, and she actually wasn't spending real money. She was a miser in a lot of ways, so she would spend the interest on these bonds, but she was never touching principle, so he didn't. She he wanted her to stop spending money. He couldn't stand that people were talking about her, so he goes to these two guys and he says, "You know, we have to confine her, and he brings together a team of five doctors, and maybe six, and one was a regular doctor of hers, off and on. One examined her once, and the others had never met her, and they all put together affidavits saying she's insane and needs to be institutionalized, and then they rig a trial. And at that point, they had to bring her. They couldn't. They we were a little beyond of men just saying let's institutionalize her. They had to go through a trial, but it was a totally rigged trial, and he managed to institutionalize her.
Colleen Shogan 26:22
How did she get out?
Lois Romano 26:24
She got out because she's just again resilient and so smart. So she gets in there and she's depressed. She's humiliated. She's in this sanitarium. It was a high-end sanitarium about an hour outside of Chicago. Her hair turns gray. She won't see anybody. The only people she'll see is her son, and then one day a reporter shows up and goes to the director and says, and he's she's doing a piece on this place in Batavia, and he she says, "can I see Mary?" And the director, very ill-advised, decides, well, maybe it will help Mary, and I'll, I'll let's put them together. So he goes to Mary, and Mary says yes, and so they have a whole conversation. The reporter, you know, basically writes the storyline that you know. Well, yes, she looked day, she looked this. I mean, everything that she read in the trial, but but she also said that Mary was very coherent when it came to talking about her old friends. The reporter leaves, and it was like this thing came to life in Mary again. She thought, "Wait a minute! I know people. I have friends. What am I doing in here?" Like it gave her her confidence, her mojo back. And this is just like six weeks after she'd been there, so she writes a letter to this couple. They're they're very prominent attorneys. He's a judge, and she's a woman attorney who can't pass who's passed the bar, but they won't let her into the bar. And she said, "Can you come see me? She's now totally got her wits about her, and she's not taking any medications anymore. And she says, "Can you come see me and bring the editor of one of the newspapers", so they get this note from her, and they're friends with her, and and and they think, okay, something's going on because not only does she want to see us, but she's asking us to bring the editor of a very prominent newspaper. They show up without the editor, and she tells them the whole story. She said, "I shouldn't be in here. Look at this. This bar is on the windows. I'm fine." And they agree with her, and they tell the director. They say, you know, and they can't do anything because it's it's been a court order. But they say to the director, you know, okay, yeah, she's a little off, but she doesn't belong here. And then the three of them, Mary and the two lawyers, they launch a public opinion campaign, which was extraordinary. I mean, they do op-eds. They get friends to come visit, and Robert, the son, thinking that she's safely ensconced, he goes on a two-week vacation. Bad move. Bad move. He goes on the vacation, and all of a sudden, the director is sending him telegraph saying, "Okay, people are showing up here. There's reporters showing up here. Another reporter showed up. These two lawyers. I can't get them out of here." Like, and and Robert's like beside himself, and he's like finally says to the director, "You shouldn't let them in anymore. But the director is like, "I don't want to deal with this, right? I'm supposed to be a a high end sanitarium for well heeled women. I'm this is not a prison. And he says to Robert, "You know, she's doing a lot better. You know maybe we should just let her go visit her sister," and basically she just completely outmaneuvers the system and her son, and gets herself out of there in three months. It was wild.
Colleen Shogan 29:31
Spends the rest of her life in Springfield.
Lois Romano 29:33
She did. She went back to Europe though. She went back to Europe for a number of years actually because she said to her sister she got them. She had she finally gets out, but the son is still in control of the money, and that was never going to stand. And she she just said, you know, I've got to have the money back, and he doesn't want to give her the money back. He's not spending it, but he doesn't believe she could have control of it. He was a he he said she was obsessed with money. He was really obsessed with money. He was afraid that if she got control of it, she would spend it, which she wouldn't do. So she got. She finally got the money back. It took her about seven or eight months, and she said to her sister, "I can't stay here because I walk down the street, and everybody's going to think I'm crazy. And she then goes by herself to France and spends five or six years there, and spends you know most of the rest of her life there until the last two years.
Colleen Shogan 30:19
I recently went to New York City and I saw the Tony Award-winning play called "Oh Mary," and it's a parody of Mary Lincoln. It's it's humorous a play, I guess you could say. And as a scholar of Mary Lincoln, it's it's kind of outrageous in many ways as well. And as a scholar of Mary Lincoln, I wanted to ask you what you thought of that play, and I wondered if you could talk to us about, you know, this notion that comedy is is tragedy plus time. Is it okay to laugh about these things at this point in time?
Lois Romano 30:54
It's a great farce, and I think it's incredibly creative. The the young man who wrote it, Coloscolo, said he'd never he didn't do any research on her, which I don't think was true. I think he fessed up that he did a little bit of research. It's it's highly entertaining, and and I think the one thing that's that struck me about it is like it's it's a complete over the top farce. Has nothing to do with who she was. But two things struck me. One is that that here we are the the play launched in 23 or 24. Here we are, 160 years after her death, and people still think they can say anything about her. Like, well, we'll just do Mary Todd Lincoln because we heard she was a head case back in the day, and we'll just make her an alcoholic, frustrated cabaret singer, and she didn't drink or sing. And and I make that point in the book that that over the years people just felt like they copied what the people before them said, so so that was my one takeaway. And then my second takeaway is that in a way both of these characters, the real Mary and the fictional Mary, had some similarities. They were both trapped. They were both put in boxes and frustrated and trapped in a situation not of their own making of being in the White House and just trying to get out and be who they were in different ways. One was a huge exaggeration, and one was just Mary trying to be Mary and trying to be herself. So you know, I guess I would say it wasn't that far apart from reality in the end, although it was highly exaggerated.
Colleen Shogan 32:26
And you are the author of a new book on Mary Lincoln. Can you tell us the title of the book?
Lois Romano 32:33
The title of the book is "Is An Inconvenient Widow: That The Torment and Trial and Triumph of Mary Ted Lincoln," and my thesis of the book is that Mary Mary couldn't catch a break, and that history has been wrong about her. That yes, there is a negative storyline, and some of it is true. You know, she was irascible. She did have a temper. She did have high anxiety. She made some mistakes, even in the White House, you know, she she padded some bills and did some things that you couldn't get away with today, but she also made huge contributions. I mean, she was in on that war from the beginning. She would go to the she would go to encampments. She would go to drills.
Colleen Shogan 33:16
She certainly doesn't get credit for that.
Lois Romano 33:17
She does not. She went to the front lines with Lincoln once, I mean things that no other first lady, I'm not sure, had had ever done, and very few after. I think there might be some stories of some of some first ladies going to war zones, and she gets credit for none of that. She also redecorated the White House, which she got enormous grief over, and she made some missteps in that she overspent a bit, but the truth is, in any other era, she would have been like Jackie Kennedy's era, anybody's era. She would have been praised for giving the White House. The White House was in tatters when they got there, to giving it an elegance. So I basically try to rehabilitate her. I mean, that's what I try to do in the book.
Colleen Shogan 33:58
So in pursuit of which you have written the essay on Mary Lincoln tries to uncover lessons from our nation's history that are relevant to today and our future. So, what can we learn from Mary Lincoln?
Lois Romano 34:11
Perseverance and resilience. I think that's her story. I mean, she she persevered in the face of an enormous, enormous, you know, loss and grief and criticism, and she was resilient. She would keep, you know, coming back, and she would try to make new friends and try to reinvent herself. I mean, and things that you know the the smartest minds would tell you to do today. You know, try to reinvent yourself. Try to find something. Try to find some new friends. She was incredibly resilient. The other lesson is that that is for us to always, as historians, to look at is the the human toll of the people, the women, the men that are behind the public officials, you know, and what they have to endure. And she had to endure quite a bit. Public life cost her. Enormous amount, and she never gets you know she never catches a break for that.
Colleen Shogan 35:05
Well, thank you very much, Lois Romano. Thank you for having for joining us on In Pursuit. To read Lois Romano's essay on Mary Lincoln and to enjoy other great In Pursuit essays and podcasts, visit in pursuit.org. In Pursuit with Colleen Shogan is a podcast by More Perfect. The series is written and produced by Jim Ambuske. Production services provided by Stand Together. Our theme music is Kleos by Charlie Ryan. Audio mixing by Curt Dahl of CD Squared. Please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app, and tell us which Americans inspire you.
