Mary's friends

[kerry]

(04-02-2017 08:31 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Kerry,

The link required a log in, but I was able to download a couple of articles, one of which mentions the Louisville article. Here are the links.

https://ibb.co/gY1RwF

https://ibb.co/j94FOv

Notice that all of these are Democratically-controlled papers and all have an obvious anti-Radical bias in them. All are located in the South. In the second link the word "Book" is put into quotation marks and the author claims the book is nearly ready for the press. That should send up a couple of red flags. First, why is "Book" in quotation marks? Second, if the book was nearly ready for press, that means that Mary, or whomever the ghostwriter would have been, was working on it at the time that Mary was in deep mourning for her husband. Another red flag is the unnamed "Illinois editor." Strange that the editor happens to be from Illinois, the same state that Lincoln was from and was laid to rest in and where Mary was living. Why not Indiana or Kentucky, since Lincoln had lived in both? Because for the attack on Radical policy, which this article clearly is, to be effective, having the source as an Illinois editor, the state most closely connected to the assassinated president, gives it more "punch." Plus, it is no coincidence that the Illinois editor mentions John A. Logan, considered by many Democrats in Illinois to be a traitor to the party.

The second article is equally telling, especially in its attempt to refute the notion that Mary Lincoln was suffering mentally, which she obviously was. The editor, not wanting to betray his own party loyalties, puts the term "late lamented" in quotes, so as to not make it appear to come from his own pen, rather from somewhere else he is merely quoting. Again, the gist of the article is how this so-called "book" will cause the Radicals to howl. Also, it's interesting that they call her "The Government's widow."

Interestingly, the first article, which appeared in the Cumberland (Md.) Alleganian, was published on February 28, 1868 while the second article appeared in the Petersburg (Va.) Index on April 16, 1868, long before Mary left for Europe. So, I don't think this attempt to tie Mary into anti-Radical politics has anything to do with Reid.

Now, one could ask is it possible that Mary still had the idea in her mind of writing a book, and some anti-Radical Illinois Democrat caught wind of it and decided to use the president's grieving widow as a symbol of how even the great martyr Lincoln's wife saw through Radical perfidy? I'm not convinced. First, the timing is off. Mary wouldn't have been seriously working on a book (meaning the actual writing and not just thinking about it) at this point. Even if she hired a ghostwriter, it still doesn't make sense. She was still too wrapped up in her grief, and she was becoming more and more mentally unstable. Second, Robert, seeing the state his mother was in, would never have let such a scheme move forward even in fits and starts.

I personally don't believe a book was ever seriously in consideration. By that, I mean the research, the writing or the shopping around of a manuscript or the possibility of a manuscript. That certainly isn't to say that publishers might not have wanted to approach Mary or Robert, but in my opinion, the reason Mary's biographers failed to mention it is because it never happened.

Best
Rob

Those are good points, and it may well have all been made up. I wrote it off at first but Mary was up to so much in that time period (and was clearly so enraged and wanted to be heard) that I come back to it. I agree Robert would not have agreed to it - but during this time, while Mary was certainly grieving, she was also writing tons of letters (some to shape the Lincoln story, such as her comments on the broken engagement, Shields duel, and the age she was when married) and plotting the Old Clothes "scandal" in defiance of Robert's wishes. I definitely agree the articles have a partisan bent and are trying to make the points you suggest. I just think there may have been something to it. And that Robert and some other people did shut it down, but she restarted once in Germany. But now that I look again and see how it was almost exclusively published in the South, I doubt it more. It was published in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and, weirdly, Australia, as well.

Another interesting thing I found was that Weik claimed he saw correspondence going back and forth from Mary and Herndon. Weik claims that one of "Mary's friends" was Herndon - his interpretation may be wrong, but it is interesting that he makes the claim. Maybe they quietly made up:

"Outside of her husband and kindred it is fair to assume that Mr. Herndon knew Mrs. Lincoln more thoroughly and comprehended her peculiar construction better than almost any other person in Springfield. The popular notion fathered by numerous writers that the two were hostile to each other and at outs most of the time has no sure foundation on which to rest.That they did not in-variably and completely agree on all subjects is doubtless true, but it does not necessarily follow that they hated each other. In fact the correspondence between them, much of which I have been privileged to read, as well as the many facts I gathered during my association with Mr. Herndon, convince me to the contrary. I cannot, therefore, resist the conclusion, regardless of the things which have found their way into the columns of some of our newspapers and magazines, that Mr. Herndon and Mrs. Lincoln, all things considered, held each other in generous and reasonable esteem."