An American Marriage

[David Lockmiller]

(06-07-2021 01:46 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  I wonder if Professor Burlingame ever mentions that Mary Lincoln made many trips to hospitals to take food, flowers, etc. to injured soldiers? Or that she read to the soldiers, wrote them letters (and wrote letters for them), and once raised $1,000 for the Christmas dinner at a military hospital?

The answer is: Yes, he did make reference to her kindness to the wounded soldiers under the section caption "First Lady: Visiting the Front and Hospitals" (Abraham Lincoln: A Life, by Professor Michael Burlingame, Vol. Two, pages 494-95.

At Falmouth, Mrs. Lincoln visited hospitals and unostentatiously distributed small gifts. In Washington, too, she often made "Good Samaritan" calls on the wounded. On one occasion, Lincoln gave her $1.000 out of his own pocket to buy Christmas turkeys for the hospitalized troops and helped her distribute them. She won praise for "the generous devotion with which she has tenderly cared for the sick and wounded soldiers." Pro-Confederate elements in the capital might sneer at her as the "hospital matron," but Unionists applauded "her errands of mercy to those brave men who are cheered by her visits and benefited by her liberal donations." (Footnote 156.)

It is unclear to me if the "$1,000 for the Christmas dinner at a military hospital" (referenced by Roger in his post) are one in the same.

Not many people may know this: Professor Burlingame's great-grandfather was a Union soldier captured at Petersburg and incarcerated in Andersonville. Treatment of Union prisoners of war was much different.