Mary Todd Lincoln's faux pas (plural), worse, and much worse

[Susan Higginbotham]

I looked up Burlingame's sources for the story about Mary and Clara chattering while Lincoln tried to give his speech. One is the October 7, 1867, Boston Daily Advertiser, which refers to Mary and a "gay party of ladies" in the window instead of just to Mary and Clara (and recounts the detail about Lincoln's pained look); the other is Clara's letter of April 29, 1865, in "We Saw Lincoln Shot," where she recalls standing at a window with Mary the night of the speech but doesn't mention herself or Mary drowning out the President. She adds that after the speech, the company went into Lincoln's room, where "Mrs. Lincoln declared the last few days to have been the happiest of her life."

Assuming that the Boston Daily Advertiser account, reported more than two years after the fact, is accurate, I don't see Mary as being insensitive here, just carried away by high spirits.