Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[Susan Higginbotham]

(12-16-2017 05:17 PM)kerry Wrote:  

(12-16-2017 12:25 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Thanks, everyone, for giving me a better view of young Robert. I might learn to understand him better in later life.

I did read Goff's book first, but I admit to getting bogged down in Emerson's "Giant." Some of that could be because I have had a working relationship with Jason over the years, and he has spoken at Surratt conferences several times on both Robert and Mary. I know his feelings about Mary and have tended to think that his better portrayal of Robert was done to further discredit Mary's behavior. I may have to rethink my position.

After doing so much research into Mary's life, every time I go to write something, I get bogged down in this seemingly unavoidable tension. There should be away to evaluate both fairly without "promoting" one over the other, but it is surprisingly difficult. I agree with Emerson that Robert generally was trying to do the right thing as he saw it, but I think he had a narrow conception of what that was, as many people do. It is impossible to ignore the fact that society was so limiting of women that Mary had no choice but to fall out of bounds, and it's odd to me that Robert never seemed to look at it that way. The debate isn't settled by explaining, "well, under the norms of the time, she was super embarrassing to the Lincoln legacy." Of course she was considered embarrassing. Should Robert have allowed it to get to him so much? How much did Lincoln care about that while he was alive? Did he have a right to live free of embarrassment? (It is interesting to read about George Washington and Prince Philip's mothers, and how they dealt with it). Those are the better questions, in my opinion. To me it all boils down to Mary being fundamentally bored in an intellectual sense, and looking for an opportunity to be enterprising where there were few legitimate opportunities for women to do so. In a modern context, I think the judgment comes down to people's life philosophies, and goes far beyond just Robert and Mary's interactions. People who care foremost about following the rules and being normal/quiet are going to sympathize with Robert; people who care foremost about personal expression/freedom are going to sympathize with Mary. I think Emerson was right to look at Robert's many accomplishments and examine his perspective, as the existing literature on him missed a lot of that, but there's still more to it. I keep feeling like a Mary "defender" when I'm just trying to be accurate, and part of that is because it's hard to avoid defending someone so harshly criticized, but it seems so difficult to strike the right note.

One point I keep coming to is the comment about "your game of robbery." Emerson connects that to the gifts, and concludes she was irrational. Robbery has a specific meaning - taking things from your person, by force. I feel like those terms were used more precisely at the time, especially by a woman in a family of lawyers. She used it specifically to Swett when he threatened to take her bonds by force. I think the robbery comments were all related to the bonds, or other property he'd held as conservator. The taking back of the gifts was her way of accusing Robert of ingratitude; not a literal robbery/theft accusation. The threat to publish them was to show Robert as benefiting more from her than being drained by her, not a theft accusation.

I think it's actually quite possible to sympathize with both Mary and Robert. I certainly do.