Charles Dickens, Edwin Stanton, and the Assassination

[Linda Anderson]

(03-06-2015 11:40 AM)Houmes Wrote:  

(03-05-2015 12:33 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I agree with Linda on that last assessment of Mrs. Lincoln's behavior irritating Mr. Stanton. Although I understand what she must have been going through, I have often thought that her behavior was atypical for a well-bred Victorian lady. Even today, I feel uncomfortable around "weepers and wailers" at viewings and funerals - and I don't consider myself a hard-hearted lady.

I admire strong women.

Maybe it's a cultural thing but I remember "weepers and wailers" at the Italian wakes I attended when I was growing up. Robert Lincoln wept at his father's deathbed but I guess he was quieter about it.

Here's an article from Slate.com that was excerpted from Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History by Richard Wightman Fox.

"Mary’s lengthy White House isolation gave Northern mourners a chilling crystallization of their own suffering. Until April 20, she did not even sit up in bed. Having been denied any semblance of a family deathbed scene at the Petersen House—Stanton refusing to let her bring in young Tad, or to let her mourn as inconsolably as she had wished—she settled into a deafening public silence.

"In doing so, she unintentionally bestowed a great gift on the American people. She handed her husband’s body over to the body politic. The people’s grief, and the people’s martyr, would take precedence over the family’s mourning and family’s loved one. Of course, family metaphors shaped the people’s perception of Lincoln during the war and after his death. The Union’s soldiers especially called him Father Abraham, but many others insisted that losing him felt exactly like losing a member of their family."

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/histo...cross.html