Mrs. Lincoln: A Life

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Abraham Lincoln is the most revered president in American history, but the woman at the center of his life-his wife, Mary-has remained a historical enigma. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America.

Authoritative and utterly engrossing, Mrs. Lincoln is the long-awaited portrait of the woman who so richly contributed to Lincoln's life and legacy.
Book Description Abraham Lincoln is the most revered president in American history, but the woman at the center of his life, his wife, Mary, has remained a historical enigma.

In this definitive, magisterial biography, Catherine Clinton draws on important new research to illuminate the remarkable life of Mary Lincoln, and at a time when the nation was being tested as never before. Mary Lincoln's story is inextricably tied with the story of America and with her husband's presidency, yet her life is an extraordinary chronicle on its own.

Born into an aristocratic Kentucky family, she was an educated, well-connected Southern daughter, and when she married a Springfield lawyer she became a Northern wife-an experience mirrored by thousands of her countrywomen. The Lincolns endured many personal setbacks-including the death of a child and defeats in two U.S.

Senate races-along the road to the White House. Mrs. Lincoln herself suffered scorching press attacks, but remained faithful to the Union and her wartime husband. She was also the first presidential wife known as the "First Lady," and it was in this role that she gained her lasting fame. The assassination of her husband haunted her for the rest of her life.

Her disintegrating downward spiral resulted in a brief but traumatizing involuntary incarceration in an asylum and exile in Europe during her later years. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America.

Authoritative and utterly engrossing, Mrs. Lincoln is the long-awaited portrait of the woman who so richly contributed to Lincoln's life and legacy. Questions for Catherine Clinton Q: Why did you decide to write about Mrs. Lincoln in this book? A: Of course, it was a daunting task to take on this project in the wake of so much new information on Lincoln and his world, and with the Lincoln Bicentennial looming on the horizon.

But I knew that Mary Lincoln was being lost in the shuffle of the new Lincoln literature. With an outpouring of new work on Abraham Lincoln every year it's been over twenty years since the last biography of Mary. When it was written, we did not have the cache of new letters (uncovered by Jason Emerson) which showed Mary's state of mind during her incarceration.

We also did not have the past quarter century of Civil War scholarship which has contextualized and expanded our appreciation of what it truly meant when families were divided by war. Q: Was Lincoln's wife a southern sympathizer? A: No, and this is one of the misconceptions I hope to counter in my study, although I do portray her as a daughter of the Bluegrass, and brought up to be a proper southern lady.

However, she had always been unconventional--temperamental, articulate, not only better read than her husband (and conversing with diplomats on state occasions in French) but she had more than ten years of formal education. She also became a partisan abolitionist when he befriended Charles Sumner, and was opposed to anyone who advocated disunion.

At the same time, when Elmer Ellsworth, the war's first casualty--shot while tearing down a rebel flag in Virginia in May 1861--was killed, his murderer was shot dead--a brother of a Dr. Jackson from her hometown of Lexington. So in this first armed encounter when Virginia se