Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[kerry]

Animal abuse is a sensitive subject with me as well - it is interesting Robert thought to have that incident with Lincoln sewing the hogs' eyes shut excised from his biography. A lot of people, especially in that time, would not have cared about that long ago incident. Maybe he just knew how inconsistent it was with Lincoln's own beliefs, being the person who rescued the hog from the mud.

I've never understood how Mary's letter to him surfaced. All the insanity file stuff surfaced later, and all the other correspondence from that time seems to be gone (the "monster of mankind" letter). I imagine it was kept as documentation of the threats by somebody else, like a lawyer, but it's odd. What I find more interesting is that Robert and/or Mary destroyed virtually all correspondence, not just damaging stuff. A few preserved happier letters would have gone a long way in helping the reputation of the family. Imagine if we didn't have those few letters taken from the burn pile and the telegrams, which do so much in humanizing the Lincolns.