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BOOK REVIEWS Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography.By Jean H. Baker. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987. Pp. xv, 429. $19.95.) Jean Baker has written a first-rate, eminently readable biography of Mary Todd Lincoln set against a richly detailed account of the era in whose terms her life must be understood. The work's illuminating theme is loss and compensation which, though conjectural, is convincingly demonstrated. Over and over again, throughout her life, Mary Lincoln felt herself victimized by losses, including : loss of the family spotlight to a newborn brother; the death of another brother in infancy; the loss as an impressionable six-year old of her mother in childbirth; having to share her father's love and attention with a hated stepmother and numerous half-siblings; the marriage and departure of her eldest sister, a mother substitute; deprivation after her own marriage of her husband's companionship by his frequent absences on the circuit; the passing of her father and maternal grandmother; loss of her second son, Eddie, at three from tuberculosis; the traumatic death of her third-born and favorite son, Willie, probably of typhoid; the assassination of her adored husband, the ultimate loss; and the demise from pleurisy of her youngest son, Tad. Always self-centered, Mary Lincoln perceived these losses as abandonments which, together with her stepmother's disciplinary technique of shaming, cumulatively undermined her self-esteem and left her feeling unloved and unlovable. She compensated, according to Baker, for her deprived sense of self by an overweening need for recognition as "somebody." This need actuated all her behavior, but the male-dominated ethos of her era prevented her from filling it in a direct manner and forced her into more oblique ways of bolstering her fragile ego. Unfortunately for herself, Mary Lincoln utterly lacked any saving sense of moderation, a deficiency Baker attributes to her growing up in unruly, self-indulgent Lexington , Kentucky, where the frontier atmosphere afforded no lessons in discipline and self-restraint; and so she pursued these modes of compensation to such excess that they backfired and tragically made her an object of derision. She shopped prodigally for clothes and White House furnishings, a behavior she rationalized as befitting her own and the nation's status, because enhancing her person and surroundings armored her sense of self. To this end she traveled widely, unescorted or inappropriately accompanied , provoking charges of unladylike or—worse yet—immoral conduct, as well as accusations of unsuitable extravagance in wartime. Moreover, the activity generatedlargebills that conflictedwithher personal miserliness, this stemming from a need to accumulate money to 272CIVIL WAR HISTORY shore up her impoverished ego. So she tried to get others to pay her piper. The quid pro quo was patronage—a word in her husband's or some other official's ear—which begat charges of influence-peddling. A lifelong, "unfeminine" interest in politics and a desire to gain recognition through her husband (then the only possible route for a married woman), whose potential for greatness she sensed early on, led her to arrogate to herself the role of political partner. Although this presumption irritated David Davis and other male associates of Lincoln, she was helpful in his pre-presidential career. Once in Washington, shestruggled to retain this position but found herself beyond her depth and the president slipping away from her, which exacerbated her sense of loss. Her impact was confined to casual matters of patronage, but her political "meddling" brought opprobrium. Devastated by the loss of Willie and later of her husband, Mary Lincoln thereafter sought distinction in excessive mourning, grieving inconsolably and ostentatiously spending the rest of her life in black. Feeling abandoned, she resorted to spiritualism to recover the reassuring presence of her husband and children. Notwithstanding that many respectable people turned to spiritualism in time of sorrow, it was widely regarded as disreputable; and her persistence in it, along with her continued immersion in grief, soon led to accusations of lunacy. Emotionally bereft, needing money, and still coveting recognition, the Widow Lincoln launched a bizarre sale of her old clothing and a self-directed solicitation of funds both public and private, regarded by her as her due, that amounted...

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