She was the first first lady
By CARL HARTMAN
“Mrs. Lincoln / A Life” (Harper, 415 pages, $26.99), by Catherine Clinton:
Mary Anne Todd was a petite version of the Southern belle: 5 feet tall, lively, well-educated, daughter of a prosperous slave-holding Kentucky family; perhaps a bit overripe for marriage at almost 24.
Most of the Todd family fought for, or sympathized with, the slave states in the Civil War two decades later. Mary became a passionate abolitionist. Her closest confidante for many years was of mixed race: Elizabeth Keckly, the White House dressmaker. Abraham Lincoln, a practical politician, approached slavery more cautiously.
Known for unconventional and sometimes irreverent wit, Lincoln once remarked that God was content with a single “d” but the Todds needed two. Her father, Robert Todd, nevertheless reconciled to the marriage and helped their meager finances.
They had had a rocky courtship. The engagement was broken off, then revived. She must have seen a future in the ugly, lanky 6-foot-4 member of the Illinois Legislature, who had an irregular income as a lawyer. At 33, he had spent less than a year in school but intense reading and his own observation had given him a hatred of slavery and — like his bride to be — a love of poetry.
Until his election as president in 1860, they lived in a modest Springfield house for nearly 18 years, with one hired servant.
The book concludes with an assessment more sympathetic that that of many Lincoln scholars, but still critical: “Her unconditional love sustained Lincoln’s growth to greatness. She was a woman of intense intellect and passion who stepped outside the boundaries her time prescribed and suffered for it.”
She had her triumphs. Her biographer describes her as gliding into an inaugural ball — attendance 5,000 — “wearing blue silk, bedecked with pearls, gold and diamonds. She dazzled the crowd and wanted to savor the feeling. When Lincoln left at midnight, his wife stayed on — dancing polkas and schottisches into the night.”
Much of her suffering was due to her fondness for luxury and lack of inhibition in maintaining an income to sustain it. At one point, her debts for clothes and jewelry reached $25,000 — the amount of the president’s annual salary and roughly $500,000 in today’s money. Some of that may have gone for admired furnishings to the White House.
She was the first president’s wife to be called “first lady.” And grief over the murder of her husband pervaded the rest of her life, along with the deaths from disease of three sons. She died in 1882 at age 63.