Word: lincolner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Goodwin's book on the political genius of Abraham Lincoln is to be published in October by Simon & Schuster
...they're all of the above--and loony too. That was Mary Todd Lincoln's uniquely miserable lot: to be despised in nearly every way that a First Lady is capable of being despised, both during her lifetime and ever since, while suffering in nearly every way that a human being can suffer. The fact that Mary was married to a President who has been admired in nearly every way that a President can be admired has never helped matters any. It may have sealed her fate...
...most charitable construction that Mary Lincoln's friends can put on her strange course is that she is insane," wrote the Chicago Journal of the widow who, in the wake of her husband's assassination, had returned to Illinois in a state of conspicuous mourning that drew the opposite of public sympathy, particularly when she tried to raise money by selling off her fanciest clothes at auction. When Robert, the only one of her four sons whom she hadn't had to bury before his time, committed his aging mother to an asylum while taking control of her assets...
What did she do to deserve such vilification? As her modern biographers have pointed out, Mary Todd Lincoln's greatest sin, perhaps, was to be born in the wrong century. The daughter of a prominent Kentucky family whose mother died when she was just a girl, Mary was a bright, well-educated woman who dared to involve herself in her husband's career. In 1847, when Abraham Lincoln traveled to Washington to take his seat as a newly elected Illinois Congressman, Mary had the presumption to accompany him--an unusual move for a political wife back then...
Mary Todd Lincoln had no such luck, though--except, of course, to become the negative role model for every First Lady ever since and also, perhaps, for the First Husbands of tomorrow. If Mary's tortured ghost (and she believed in ghosts--they were among her only companions at the end) could offer those First Spouses any advice, it might come down to this: Stay in the background, avoid having your fortune told and don't--at least not before speaking to your spouse--purchase new clothes or change the White House wallpaper. Your nation may soften its view...