The Madness of Mary Lincoln

1. Much like an April Day

1 Much like an April Day On Wednesday April 12, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln wrote a playful yet tender note to his wife notifying her that he would join her daily carriage ride on Friday, the fourteenth. It was a pleasant spring day, and the Lincolns, who rode alone at the president’s request, discussed their plans for life after his presidency. They would travel across America to visit California, then to Europe, and Lincoln particularly wanted to visit Jerusalem.1 They considered whether to return to their house in Springfield, Illinois, or live in Chicago upon Lincoln’s retirement from the White House.2 “During the drive he was so gay,” Mary said, “that I said to him, laughingly, ‘Dear Husband, you almost startle me by your great cheerfulness,’ he replied, ‘and well I may feel so, Mary, I consider this day, the war, has come to a close.”3 The Lincolns continued the blissful closeness of their afternoon carriage ride at Ford’s Theatre that night, watching a performance of Our American Cousin in the company of Clara Harris and Major Henry R. Rathbone.4 Mary was supremely happy, and she smiled and leaned onto her husband several times.5 “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?” she whispered contentedly to her husband. “She won’t think anything of it,” the president replied. When John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot into Lincoln’s brain during act 3, scene 2, Mary Lincoln was holding her husband’s hand.6 “The president is shot!” she shrieked as Booth leaped to the stage from the twelve-foot-high box and cried, “Sic semper tyrannis!”7 As soldiers, civilians, and physicians crowded into the presidential box, Mary Lincoln pleaded with Dr. Charles Leale, “Oh, Doctor, do what you can for my dear husband, do what you can for him.”8 Lincoln’s body was carried across Tenth Street to the Petersen house, while the stunned First Lady followed. Twenty-one year-old Captain Robert Lincoln, just returned from the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and visiting with his friend John Hay in the White House, was sent for, and he arrived at the Petersen house not long after.9 While Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton directed the machinations of the government manhunt from a side room of the Petersen house, Mary Lincoln was alternating between weeping at her husband’s side and wailing in the front parlor. “Why didn’t he 6 7 . Much like an April Day shoot me?” she shrieked when she saw one acquaintance. “Why didn’t he shoot me?”10 Clara Harris, covered in her fiancé’s blood from his arm wound caused by Booth’s dagger, tried to comfort the First Lady, but every time she approached, Mary would look on her with horror and scream, “Oh! My husband’s blood, my dear husband’s blood!”11 Robert comforted his mother during this period and at times stood vigil in the death room, seeking his own comfort from Senator Charles Sumner.12 When Lincoln finally breathed his last at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, Mary Lincoln’s grief was inconsolable. Robert escorted his mother back to the White House, where they reunited with the youngest Lincoln boy, Tad, who had been at the National Theater that night watching a children’s play. “Returning to Mrs. Lincoln’s room, I found her in a new paroxysm of grief,” Mary’s seamstress, Elizabeth Keckly, later wrote.13 “Robert was bending over his mother with tender affection, and little Tad was couched at the foot of the bed, with a world of agony in his young face.”14 Keckly was with the Lincolns in the White House during those dark post-assassination days. She watched as the First Family became adjusted to their new reality, especially the relationship and reactions of Robert and Mary. “Robert was very tender to his mother in the days of her sorrow. He suffered deeply, as his haggard face indicated, but he was ever manly and collected when in the presence of his mother.”15 President Andrew Johnson allowed Mary Lincoln much latitude in her bereavement as to when she would move out of the White House. She did not vacate the house until more than one month after the assassination. On May 22, 1865, Mary and her boys left to begin a new life in Chicago.16 In the audacity of John Wilkes...