Mary's Reputation

[LincolnMan]

That's it! Still hilarious after all these years.

[brtmchl]

(07-16-2012 11:34 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Thanks for the suggestion to read Dr. Evans's book, Roger. I had never heard of it. I know that the Mary-bashing seems to be quite prevalent among the Lincoln scholars today. One in particular was almost vicious.

It would be interesting to put some of them in petticoats and see how they dealt with losing a mother at an early age, not getting along with the stepmother, being married to someone they loved who had a totally different style, losing children at an early age, dealing with a husband pre-occupied with a Civil War and subject to depression, and finally having that husband shot while you are holding his arm. I could go on about the treatment that she received from Congress...

Gene, thanks for the kind words you posted about her trips to help the wounded soldiers. Most authors forget to mention that.

Not to mention serious charges of treason aimed against her, the press ruthlessly attacked her, continually citing that many of Mary’s siblings, were Confederates. Her half sister, Emilie, came to live with the Lincolns after her husband was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, causing many negative rumors about “rebels in the White House.” These accusations continued when another half sister, Martha, who was the wife of a Confederate officer, arrived in Washington. Even though the Lincolns never saw her while in town, actually they refused to see her, rumors circulated that when Martha had left Washington she carried medicine and other items back to aid the Confederacy with the help of Mrs. Lincoln. Some even made the claim that Mary passed along military secrets as well.

During this time, the Lincolns lost their son, Willie, on February 20, 1862.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Alledgedly, when Martha came to Washington in March 1864 Lincoln snapped once and said:"If Mrs. W. did not leave forthwith, she might expect to find herself within 24 hours in the Old Capitol Prison."
The Richmond Enquired published a story that Martha, when she went back south, brought a uniform with her with buttons of pure gold, worth $30,000. Although not true, the story caused bad publicity for Lincoln in the election year.

[Gene C]

In the book "The Hour of Peril", Daniel Stashower says,
"Privately, (Henry) Villard was glad to be rid of her, however briefly. In a memoir written many years later (after Lincoln's inaugural trip to Washington), he lambasted Mrs. Lincoln as greedy and utterly lacking in propriety, and accused her of accepting gifts for 'the use of her influence with her husband' in securing political appointments. Villard claimed that Mrs. Lincoln nearly delayed her husband's departure that morning, throwing herself on the floor 'in a sort of hysterical fit' until he yielded to yet another of her demands." (p135)

Has any one heard of this incident? The Memoirs of Henry Villard are in Internet Archives, but I could not locate the second part of Stashower's quote from Villard's Memoirs.

[RJNorton]

(09-23-2015 03:01 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Has any one heard of this incident? The Memoirs of Henry Villard are in Internet Archives, but I could not locate the second part of Stashower's quote from Villard's Memoirs.

Gene, I found this description on p. 701 of Herndon's Informants:

"The latter (i.e. Mary Lincoln) was on the floor in a sort of hysterical fit, caused by L's refusal to promise the position of Naval officer of the NY Custom House to Isaac Henderson, who had sent a diamond brooch to a Springfield jeweler to be given to Mrs. L. in case she could secure the promise of this office. The fit continued until the promise was obtained. Henderson was, in fact, appointed. He was afterwards indicted by the Grand Jury for defrauding the Government, & tried before Judge Nelson, but was saved from conviction by some technicality."

This description was in a letter from Horace White to Herndon dated January 26, 1891. White was quoting what Hermann Kreismann told him. From what I can tell Kreissman and Villard knew each other, but the description stated above came from Kreissman, not Villard. I assume Kreissman told Villard the same story (and that is how Villard heard of it). Thus, it appears to me that the alleged incident was witnessed by Kreissman, not Villard. It allegedly happened in the Lincolns' home during the period when Lincoln was President-elect. Kreissman said it happened after the election but before departing Springfield.

[HerbS]

Villard's accounts of Lincoln are an excellent resource for research!I used his information on Lincoln coming through Rochester,NY on the train.

[Eva Elisabeth]

His original name was Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard, born in Speyer, then Kingdom of Bavaria.

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi guys-
Here is what MTL biographer Ruth Painter Randall has to say about the alleged tantrum incident as conveyed by Villard on pgs 174-175 of "Biography of a Marriage"-

".....As Villard's version of that story is told in Lincoln on the Eve '61, Lincoln was delayed in arriving at the depot on the morning of February 11, and Kreismann was sent to see what was wrong. Kreismann went to Lincoln's room and "opened the door in response to Lincoln's 'Come in'. Mrs. Lincoln was lying on the floor, evidently quite beside herself." The account continues: "....with his head bowed and a look of utmost misery, Lincoln said: 'Kreismann, she will not let me go until I promise her an office for one of her friends.'" Lincoln is said to have yielded, and have started for the station with his family. There is good reason to believe that Kreismann was not even in Springfield at this time.

There is an inconsistency in this account as to Lincoln's conduct. For him, kind husband and astute public-relations man that he was, to call out in answer to a casual knock on the door by an unknown person, 'Come in", when his wife was in the condition described, is uncharacteristic in the extreme. Likewise one who guarded his utterances as President-elect with almost superhuman caution would never have made to a casual politician so damaging a statement as to say that his wife was forcing him to appoint a man he did not want to appoint.

Villard makes unfavorable statements about Mrs. Lincoln that can be proved untrue. Later mentioning in Washington she regularly visited the Union soldiers in camps, he wrote "....the truth was, that she had no liking for them at all, being really, as a native of Kentucky, at heart a secessionist." The rumor that Mrs. Lincoln was disloyal was part of the whispering campaign during the war. It will be shown later how completely she was for the Union in thought and in action. She was never a secessionist; a native of Kentucky yes, but for that matter Kentucky did not secede. Villard's statement is ignorant in more respects than one.

The account of the Kreismann story as happening on the day of Lincoln's departure from Springfield is not acceptable. Mary was doubtless in a highly emotional state then, with rumors of danger to her husband and with her determination to be at his side on the journey. If she was begging for anything that morning, it was possibly his consent that she join him next day in Indianapolis, which is, of course, what she did.

But the Kreismann story as it appears in the Herndon-Weik manuscripts is not placed on the day of Lincoln's departure. According to a letter of Horace White, written Jan 26, 1891(thirty years after the event) Norman B. Judd and Herman Kreismann went to Springfield after Lincoln's election and made an appointment to see him. When Lincoln was late for the interview, Kreismann was sent to his home to find out what was wrong and a servant ushered him into the room where Mrs. Lincoln was having hysterics. According to Kreismann's story, she was trying to persuade Lincoln to make a certain appointment in which case she was to receive a diamond brooch as a reward for using her influence. The story rests entirely upon the word of one man, into whose mind and motives one cannot look fully. We do know, however, from his letter already quoted, that Kreismann was unfriendly to Mrs. Lincoln and was accepting and repeating gossip about her. A good deal hinges on the point as to where he got that detail about the brooch; that part of the story smacks of certain fabricated rumors that circulated later in Washington and we do not know at what time Kreismann told his tale. By the time Horace White wrote Herndon in 1891, Kreismann had gone back to Germany to live. Realizing the dubiousness of the story, White cautioned Herndon not to use it on his(White's) narration, adding justly that it would be best not to use it at all.

Herndon, of course, seized eagerly on the tale, saying "....I will venture all I have that the story is correct"......

A second-and third-hand story told thirty years after the event under these conditions cannot be accepted as reliable evidence.

[L Verge]

Toia - Thank you so much for this posting! When this incident was first described here, I thought it highly unusual and unlikely that Mr. Lincoln would ever have let anyone else (especially a man) see his wife in such a state - if she indeed was that way.

[L Verge]

In the process of researching for an article, I ran across this excerpt from the writings of Noah Brooks, who actually was a defender of Mary Lincoln. Uncharacteristically, Michael Burlingame allowed it to remain in his editing for the publication on Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks!

The wife of the President has been so frequently and cruelly misrepresented and slandered that, though hesitating to approach so delicate a subject, your correspondent cannot refrain from saying a word in strict justice to this distinguished and accomplished woman. When the present Administration came into power, the National Capital was infested as well as besieged by rebels, and every conceivable means was adopted to render the members of the new Administration unpopular. To this end slanders innumerable were circulated concerning the habits of the Presidents and his family; and it is not many months since when candid and loyal men were to be found believing that our temperate President drank to excess, and that Mrs. Lincoln was a vulgar, ill-bred woman. Such stories are scandalous, and though time has done justice to the President, who is seen and read of all men, Mrs. Lincoln is denied the privilege of defense, and in the privacy of a house-hold clad in mourning has not yet had justice done her by the public. The slanderous tales of those who prayed daily that ‘Lady Davis’ might occupy the White House are still circulated and believed, and loyal people, more shame to them, without knowing the truth of what they repeat, still allow themselves to become the media for the dispersion of scandals as base as they are baseless. It is not a gracious task to refute these sayings, but the tales that are told of Mrs. Lincoln’s vanity, pride, vulgarity and meanness ought to put any decent man or woman to the blush, when they remember that they do not know one particle of that which they repeat, and that they would resent as an insult to their wives, sisters or mothers that which they so glibly repeat concerning the first lady in the land. Shame upon these he-gossips and envious retailers of small slanders. Mrs. Lincoln, I am glad to be able to say from personal knowledge, is a true American woman, and when we have said that we have said enough in praise of the best and truest lady in our beloved land.

[Angela]

This is part of a very large dispatch, titled “How they live at the White House”, that Noah Brooks send on November 7 in 1863 and which is very interesting to read.

And I cannot detect anything that I would think “uncharacteristically” in adding it to this particular publication.
Quite the contrary since I find Prof. Burlingame to be a most thorough scholar and historian.

[L Verge]

(06-26-2016 02:48 AM)Angela Wrote:  This is part of a very large dispatch, titled “How they live at the White House”, that Noah Brooks send on November 7 in 1863 and which is very interesting to read.

And I cannot detect anything that I would think “uncharacteristically” in adding it to this particular publication.
Quite the contrary since I find Prof. Burlingame to be a most thorough scholar and historian.

I am not questioning his ability, only his characteristic tendency to "dis" the First Lady whenever possible.

[Susan Higginbotham]

I noted this account of Mary on another thread. This is from Josie Underwood, a young woman from a Unionist Kentucky family who traveled with her father on business to Washington in the summer of 1862. She writes of Mary Lincoln, "I was most agreeably surprised when I met her. Instead of seeing the loud, common woman the papers had made her out to be--she was really a handsome gentle woman dressed in deep mourning (for her little boy--not long dead) her conversation was agreeable. Her manner gentle--Mr. Etheridge thought---this owing to the sadness which was very apparent though she did not intrude it upon us--only responding to Pa's very appropriate expressions of sympathy and then tactfully passing on to other subjects."

[Angela]

(06-28-2016 08:15 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(06-26-2016 02:48 AM)Angela Wrote:  This is part of a very large dispatch, titled “How they live at the White House”, that Noah Brooks send on November 7 in 1863 and which is very interesting to read.

And I cannot detect anything that I would think “uncharacteristically” in adding it to this particular publication.
Quite the contrary since I find Prof. Burlingame to be a most thorough scholar and historian.

I am not questioning his ability, only his characteristic tendency to "dis" the First Lady whenever possible.

It's really interesting how differently this can be perceived. To me it never comes across as "dissing" but rather as providing a fully rounded picture. As you yourself mentioned - when it comes to mere fact, he does not leave out the things he might personally not agree with.
The different conclusions that are drawn from all these facts might lead to personal opinions not everybody agrees with but I am not sure I would call that "dissing".

[ReignetteC]

A few years ago, at the Surratt Conference, Laurie recommended Gerry Van der Heuvel's Crowns of Thorns and Glory because I was interested in reading a balanced perspective about Mrs. Lincoln. (Thank you, Laurie!)

Here's a review from Library Journal:

This extremely readable dual biography is as gripping as any novel. Recounting the parallel lives of the only two women in American history to have served concurrently as "First Lady," it details how both reacted, from a feminine viewpoint, to the strains of their husbands' politics during the war. It also shows how both were the victims of political hostilities, bitter criticisms, and malicious gossip from an aggressive press. General readers will find timely press criticisms of Mary's "extravagance" and reports of her resort to seances and spiritualists in hopes of overcoming her young son's death. In Varina's words, the book demonstrates the "bitterness of being a politician's wife." Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.