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Concept Version 3
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Abraham Lincoln's Family

After President Lincoln’s assassination, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln secured the first life pension for the widow of a president, and their son Robert rose to prominence as a lawyer and politician.

Learning Objective

  • Discuss the experiences of Mary Todd and Robert Lincoln in the aftermath of President Lincoln's death


Key Points

    • President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.
    • Mary Lincoln, President Lincoln’s wife, was the first widow of a president to argue for and secure a life pension similar to those given to widows of U.S. soldiers.
    • After the president's death, Mary led an eccentric life, suffered from mental illness, and was involved in public controversies.
    • Robert Lincoln, Mary and President Lincoln’s only surviving son, remained a prominent figure in business and Republican politics for the remainder of his life, serving as secretary of war in the administrations of James Garfield and Chester Arthur and as minister to England in Benjamin Harrison’s administration.

Term

  • modiste

    A fashionable dressmaker and/or seamstress.


Full Text

On April 14, 1865, as President Abraham Lincoln sat in a box at Ford’s Theatre with his wife Mary and two other theatergoers, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot the president in the back of the head. Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House and his cabinet was summoned. Mary and her son Robert Lincoln sat with the president through the night. President Lincoln died the following morning. Following her husband’s death, Mary was reportedly became unhinged with grief. Having lost two sons previously, and then her husband, she suffered from a deep depression that manifested itself over the years in increasingly erratic behavior, including paranoid tendencies and professed desires to self harm. 

Deeply in debt following many years of extravagant spending, she was the object of scandal for attempting to sell various items, including old clothing, for cash in New York. In 1868, Elizabeth Keckley, Mary’s former modiste and friend as well as a former slave, successful businesswoman, and civil activist, published Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, a book that attempted to provide insight not only into Keckley’s experiences during her time in slavery, but also into Mary’s life and character following the scandal. Unfortunately, the publication earned Keckley derision and criticism, and Mary viewed the publication a breach of trust and privacy. On July 14, 1870, two years after publication of the book, Mary was granted a life pension in the amount of $3,000 (or $56,139 in 2016 dollars), which was unprecedented at the time and passed by a small margin on account of how many congressmen Mary had alienated over the years. Approval only was gained after Mary wrote numerous letters to Congress, drawing comparisons between herself and the widows of soldiers.

Robert Lincoln, who had served on Ulysses S. Grant’s staff as a captain in the Union Army at the end of the Civil War, remained active in Republican politics after his father’s death. Robert was discussed as a possible Republican candidate many times, but never mounted a campaign, with the exception of his elected position as town supervisor of South Chicago from 1876 to 1877. Nonetheless, Robert was appointed secretary of war during the administrations of James Garfield and Chester Arthur and served as minister to England during Benjamin Harrison’s administration. In 1897, he succeeded George Pullman as president of the Pullman Palace Car Company, a company he had previously served as counsel and remained affiliated with until his death.

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