The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln

Appendix

APPENDIX Letters and Fragments by Mary Todd Lincoln, Discovered in the Insanity File The Insanity File contains, in whole or in part, twenty-five letters written by Mary Todd Lincoln to her daughter-in-law Mary Harlan Lincoln. There are also six letters from Mary Todd Lincoln to James B. Bradwell about her will. The letters to Mary Harlan Lincoln predate the crisis of 1875-76 by five years or more, but they exist today because of that crisis. Robert Todd Lincoln and his wife obviously saved them as proofthat the various possessions Robert's mother began demanding in 1875 and 1876 were in fact gifts to them. The younger Lincolns were always ready to acknowledge Mary's generosity to them, and they were probably not unwilling to surrender the items she demanded. The principle involved may have rankled Robert and his wife a little, but even that would not have stood in the way of their returning the objects. The possibility oflegal harassment over unreturnable items like fabrics used for clothing or baby clothes long since discarded surely was the cause for saving the letters. A new Old Clothes Scandal, this time involving legal suits of mother against child, was enough to give the publicity-shy Robert and Mary 147 148] APPENDIX Harlan Lincoln nightmares. Leonard Swett used the existence of the letters to great advantage in squelching Mary Todd Lincoln's vindictive threats and accusations ofthievery after her second trial. The nature of the letters which exist in the file reveals precisely how Robert and his wife treated his mother's letters. While their relationship to his mother was normal, they saved her letters, probably as cherished mementos. When the letters became necessary as possible evidence in a courtroom, they sorted them systematically . But at some time Robert also apparently destroyed those parts ofthe letters which had no evidentiary value and which, to his way of thinking, showed the disordered state ofhis mother's mind. Thus in some cases only a torn page with news of a box sent from Europe by Mary exists, the rest of the letter having been removed and destroyed by Robert in that period when he sought with some thoroughness to destroy any ofhis mother's letters which revealed her insanity. In the end, the letters did not have to be used as courtroom evidence, and they became accidental repositories of evidence of another kind: historical evidence ofthe relationship between Mary Todd Lincoln and the tragic remnants of her family. Robert or his widow allowed them to be used for that historical purpose once-when Katherine Helm, the daughter of Mary Todd Lincoln's half sister Emily, was doing the research for The True Story of Mary, Wife ofLincoln, published in 1928. Katherine, it must be said, did not use them well. She selected only a few ofthe letters for inclusion in her book, and those few she butchered. She corrected Mary's grammar and changed the style of her sentences. She eliminated lengthy descriptions of clothing for Mary Harlan Lincoln and her daughter Mamie, making Mary Todd Lincoln appear less materialistic . She left out Mrs. Lincoln's spiteful remarks on U. S. Grant, his family, and friends. She excised Mary's other gossipy criticisms of people she met in Europe. Katherine even eliminated Mary's bitter references to the city ofChicago. She did not include evidence ofMrs. Lincoln's attempts to escape customs duties on the goods she sent to her children. She removed from the record most of Mary's mentions of money and expenses. Justin G. and Linda Levitt Turner were trapped into giving Katherine Helm's dishonesty a gloss of scholarly respectability. APPENDIX r149 When they compiled their definitive Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, they had access to the text of the letters only through Miss Helm's book. Of necessity, therefore, they perpetuated her dishonest editing in their attempt at comprehensiveness in reproducing Mrs. Lincoln's letters. Evidence abounds, for example in the Barton Collection at the University of Chicago, that Miss Helm's intentions were such that her editing could not be trusted, and it would have been better had the Turners offered a cautionary note. Happily, the letters survived to tell their full story. To be sure, one must remember always the ones that did not survive. History will never know what Robert chose not to let posterity see. However, since his...