Mary's friends

[Rob Wick]

Kerry,

The link required a log in, but I was able to download a couple of articles, one of which mentions the Louisville article. Here are the links.

https://ibb.co/gY1RwF

https://ibb.co/j94FOv

Notice that all of these are Democratically-controlled papers and all have an obvious anti-Radical bias in them. All are located in the South. In the second link the word "Book" is put into quotation marks and the author claims the book is nearly ready for the press. That should send up a couple of red flags. First, why is "Book" in quotation marks? Second, if the book was nearly ready for press, that means that Mary, or whomever the ghostwriter would have been, was working on it at the time that Mary was in deep mourning for her husband. Another red flag is the unnamed "Illinois editor." Strange that the editor happens to be from Illinois, the same state that Lincoln was from and was laid to rest in and where Mary was living. Why not Indiana or Kentucky, since Lincoln had lived in both? Because for the attack on Radical policy, which this article clearly is, to be effective, having the source as an Illinois editor, the state most closely connected to the assassinated president, gives it more "punch." Plus, it is no coincidence that the Illinois editor mentions John A. Logan, considered by many Democrats in Illinois to be a traitor to the party.

The second article is equally telling, especially in its attempt to refute the notion that Mary Lincoln was suffering mentally, which she obviously was. The editor, not wanting to betray his own party loyalties, puts the term "late lamented" in quotes, so as to not make it appear to come from his own pen, rather from somewhere else he is merely quoting. Again, the gist of the article is how this so-called "book" will cause the Radicals to howl. Also, it's interesting that they call her "The Government's widow."

Interestingly, the first article, which appeared in the Cumberland (Md.) Alleganian, was published on February 28, 1868 while the second article appeared in the Petersburg (Va.) Index on April 16, 1868, long before Mary left for Europe. So, I don't think this attempt to tie Mary into anti-Radical politics has anything to do with Reid.

Now, one could ask is it possible that Mary still had the idea in her mind of writing a book, and some anti-Radical Illinois Democrat caught wind of it and decided to use the president's grieving widow as a symbol of how even the great martyr Lincoln's wife saw through Radical perfidy? I'm not convinced. First, the timing is off. Mary wouldn't have been seriously working on a book (meaning the actual writing and not just thinking about it) at this point. Even if she hired a ghostwriter, it still doesn't make sense. She was still too wrapped up in her grief, and she was becoming more and more mentally unstable. Second, Robert, seeing the state his mother was in, would never have let such a scheme move forward even in fits and starts.

I personally don't believe a book was ever seriously in consideration. By that, I mean the research, the writing or the shopping around of a manuscript or the possibility of a manuscript. That certainly isn't to say that publishers might not have wanted to approach Mary or Robert, but in my opinion, the reason Mary's biographers failed to mention it is because it never happened.

Best
Rob