Sons and parents

[Susan Higginbotham]

As I read the verdict, "is a fit person to be sent to a State Hospital for the Insane," this simply meant that she met the criteria to be placed in a state hospital; it didn't mean that she would have to go to one if there was a suitable alternative. I can't see an Illinois judge at the time, even a Democratic one, forcing President Lincoln's son to send his mother to a state asylum when there was a private asylum in which she could be placed at his (or his mother's) own expense. What would be the point of such petty behavior? Any small satisfaction the judge might derive from it would be outweighed by the public outrage, I suspect.

RTL had consulted with Dr. Patterson before the trial, so he must have known of his qualifications and got some idea of his establishment before he took his mother there.

I'm a little wary of Schreiner's book. I have a copy, and the author acknowledges using novelistic techniques in his book--"turning indirect statements into direct quotations or carrying the narrative through imagined thought processes." With no footnotes or endnotes, it's difficult to tell what is the author's invention and what is not.