Mary was a leaker

[RJNorton]

In researching this topic, I came upon a 1973 letter. I thought it was of interest. Here is the text:

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July 6, 1973

Senator Lowell Weicker
U. S. Senate
Washington, D.C.

Dear Senator Weicker:

On page 13, the July 9, 1973 issue of Time quotes your allusion to Abraham Lincoln's visit to Congress to vindicate his wife from charges of disloyalty.

You apparently relied on Sandburg, who is, alas, a notoriously unreliable source. We doubt that the incident ever occurred. The only evidence for its occurrence stems from a clipping in the files of the
Lincoln Library and Museum that appeared in a Washington newspaper sometime between 1904 and 1916 (the article was so clipped that the name and date of the newspaper do not appear).

The author of the article, one E. J. Edwards, says the "anecdote" (his word) came from General Thomas L. James. At the time James was Postmaster General in Garfield's cabinet an unnamed "member of the Senate committee on the conduct of the war in Lincoln's first administration" allegedly related the story of Lincoln's surprise appearance.

The anecdote seems very doubtful. For one thing, the Committee on the Conduct of the War was a joint committee, not a Senate committee. The biographies of Senate members of the committee do not mention the incident. Time alleges that the story came from the "committee's chairman." The chairman was Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, but his biographers, H. L. Trefousse and A. G. Riddle, make no mention of the incident.

Mary Lincoln's biographer, Ruth Painter Randall, questioned the likelihood that the event ever occurred, and she did this reluctantly because she liked to picture Lincoln's wife as a victim maligned by unfair criticism. The story would have fit Mrs. Randall's argument perfectly, but as an historian she knew she must discredit what, as a Mary Lincoln apologist, she may have wanted to believe.

Yours truly,

The Staff

Lincoln Library and Museum
Lincoln National Life Foundation
Fort Wayne, Indiana