Did Mary Lincoln need committal?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Donna and Bill,
you say Mary wouldn't meet the criteria for being institutionalized. Do you think Robert was aware of this? I still wonder about his motives after reading Harold Holzer. Bill, you believe his motives were solely honorable and intented to protect Lincoln's legacy, but this action (and he may had known in advance) did probably more damage to Mary's reputation and thus to the legacy than handling the situation in another, private way, as Roger suggested. (Roger, yours is a great statement. I, too, think although we may speculate about other people's characters and motives we are not allowed to judge them since I believe we all might have acted the same way if we had to face the same experiences, and Mary's are for sure hardly imaginable.)
Harold Holzer emphasizes that Robert obviously suffered a lot from that his younger brothers were treated differently and with much more indulgence than he was. Do you think all this - maybe subconsciously -had an influence on his decision, too?
Is it right that later on he made an attempt to reconcile with Mary?

BTW, some of you manage just to quote a passage instead of an entire post. How do you do this?