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House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War

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There is no shortage of books that have been written about Abraham Lincoln, but very little has been written about Mary Todd Lincoln's dysfunctional family and Lincoln's relationship with them. House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War by Stephen Berry helps to fill in this gap.

Mary Todd Lincoln came from a prominent Lexington, Kentucky family. One of fourteen brothers and sisters, her family was fairly close-knit. Except for the death of her mother and her father's remarriage, Mary had a fairly happy childhood. Lincoln also took to Mary's large extended family and was closer to them in many ways than to his own. It wasn't until the beginning of the Civil War that this large clan showed just how selfish, conniving, materialistic and ill-tempered they could be. Berry claims that they weren't necessarily "a bad family; it made them a typical one" for that time period.

Berry gives as much detail as possible about each sibling, and how they interacted with Lincoln and his wife. The majority of them sided with the Confederates in the Civil War. Brothers Sam and Alexander and brother-in-law Benjamin Hardin Helm were killed in battle. Brother David was a sadistic jailer of Yankee prisoners of war. Brother George was known to loot from Yankee homes around battle sites. Brother-in-law Ninian Edwards was a Union profiteer, and brother-in-law Charles Henry Kellogg committed treason. Even sister Martha was accused of smuggling contraband to the Confederates through Washington, DC. "The Todds were a complicated swirl of affection and obligation, embarrassment and endurance. But they were, for better and often worse, Lincoln's family."

Berry shows great perception in how Lincoln viewed the Todds and how they defined the war for him. "Surveying the damage to his in-laws, Lincoln must have noticed here in one family, his family, was the nation and the war writ small...If the Todds did not help shape his interpretation of the war, they certainly resonated with it."

My one complaint with House of Abraham is that the body of the book is a bit short at 192 pages. In his epilogue, he includes only thumbnail sketches of the fates of Mary's siblings after Lincoln's assassination. However, in his defense, he also claims that after Lincoln's death, the family sort of disappeared from notice. Also, I have been to the Todd house in Lexington. Berry could have included some photos of this restored residence. Otherwise, House of Abraham is an interesting look at the personal battle Lincoln had to wage with his in-laws at the same time he was fighting the Civil War on the national stage.

Their have been some good Civil War family biographies lately. The Whalen's book on the Fighting McCook's and this book on the Todd family come to mind. Family biographies can help us understand the human cost of the Civil War as no other histories can. As family members die, we understand the war's causalities in very personal terms gaining an idea of what this costs those involved.

The McCook family had no conflicted loyalties, no question of who to fight for nor any hesitations in committing to a side. They were able to establish a record of service fighting for the Union that was unique. The Todd family had conflicted loyalties, questions on who to fight for and hesitated in committing to a side. A large slave owning family from Kentucky with an in-law in the White House would cause problems for everyone. Lincoln, his wife, her brothers & sisters their spouses created a series of confrontations, personal and political problems that make up this story.

The author introduces the Todd family and the principle people giving us a solid foundation for the story. Lincoln tries to keep as much of the family on the Union side as possible. His efforts delay some members "going South" and produce some real political problems in 1861 for him. Each year of the war is a chapter. This allows us to follow everyone from assignment to assignment or battle to battle. Against this backdrop, Lincoln's personal life and family problems becomes worse and worse. Each newspaper story, each battle death adds to Lincoln's problems and Mary's woes. However, at Springfield as Lincoln is buried, the Todd in-laws stand as family.

The author is easy to read and manages to keep all the story lines together. These are not likable people and he clearly does not like them. This come through in a number of places and may have colored the story. In addition, the author makes misstatements about the battle of Shiloh and the POW exchange. None of his mistakes are major but he is accepting of popular stories as opposed to good scholarship. A nice touch is to take each person from 1865 to his or her death. This is always something I look for in this type of book and feel is really important. The author does an excellent job on each person giving the reader a feel for who they were.

Overall, this is a very readable book. The people are well drawn allowing us to see their world and have some understanding of their choices. In addition, the author shows how the divisions in Lincoln's personal family helped him reach out to the national family as reflected in many of his speeches.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most-written about men in the English language. As a long-time Lincoln-buff, I don't mind that there are so many books, but I have to admit, I occasionally wonder if we've reached diminishing returns. A lot of Lincoln books are what I'd call "old wine in new bottles."

But House of Abraham really is that rare thing: a truly new and important perspective on Abraham Lincoln. Having read most of what there is on Abraham and Mary, let me just say what I think is new here: First, the author fleshes out the Southern wing of the Todd family for the first time. These are some seriously colorful characters: David Todd was arrested for desecrating corpses in a Richmond jail; Samuel Todd and Alex Todd were Confederate soldiers killed in action; George Todd abused African-American prisoners who had been taken while storming Battery Wagner; Emilie Todd, widow of a Confederate Brigadier, spent a week in the White House, despite the scandal; Margaret Todd smuggled contraband through Union lines, on and on. In all my reading I'd never known any of this.

Second, the author connects these scandals to Mary's growing unpopularity in Washington. Many books have mentioned that Mary lost three half-brothers on the rebel side (the author proves that it was only two), but none have demonstrated so clearly why her family-ties became such a problem.

Finally, while House of Abraham begins as a book about the Todds, it becomes more and more a meditation on family, on the nation as a family, and on Lincoln's evolving understanding of the War. Ultimately, the author convinced me that Lincoln saw the Todds as a microcosm of the nation and that he understood the war as a "mosaic of family crises."

As some of the other reviewers have pointed out, the book isn't very long, but considering it limits itself to saying something actually new about the most-written-about-man-in-America, I don't think that's surprising. Team of Rivals (which I loved) was 900 pages, but not that much of it was new. It was really the framing that was so impressive. In fact, I'd recommend reading Team of Rivals and then House of Abraham in succession. They make a terrific pair.

Stephen Berry's work House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War is a wonderful addition to the field of Lincoln historiography. His work is very insightful to the machinations of the Todd family. The Todd's were truly a family divided by the Civil War and its aftermath. The work is well written and researched throughly by the author. Lincoln's extended family, i.e. the Todd's were surely an embarassment for the president and his wife. However, even though many of the Todd's were confederate sympathizers, Lincoln always was supportive of his wife's sisters. This is a fine work on Lincoln and essential for Lincolnites to read.

Behind every name printed in a history book there is an underlying story that is only very rarely ever told. For even kings and queens, presidents and generals, politicians and other noted historical figures who shaped the times during which they lived, all have fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and of course whose family would not be complete without an in-law or two. In short, we all know the stories of the historical figures we like to read about, but what we may not know is the stories of the members of their families. History is not made by one person alone. For every general who goes off to war, there is a father, a mother, brothers and sisters, a wife and children who are left behind, to fret, to worry, to love, to pray and to mourn. Often times I have found myself reading a biography and come across a glancing reference to this family member or that, only to be frustrated to learn nothing more of said family member. I stop my reading for a moment and wonder to myself "I wonder what their story is?" Stephen Berry's "House of Abraham: Lincoln & The Todds, A Family Divided By War," is book that answers that question.

There most certainly is no shortage of books written about Abraham and Mary (Todd) Lincoln. The Lincoln's were very complex persons whose biographies rightly take up many thousands of linear feet of shelf space in libraries all around the world. But even the best biographies of Abraham and Mary only give fleeting glimpses of the lives or their family members or the Lincoln's relationships with them. Happily this is not a problem that plagues Mr. Berry's book.

Mary Lincoln's father, Robert Smith Todd was married twice, and had fourteen children who survived into adulthood. Abraham, not close to his own family, in many ways was closer with the Todd family than his own. In large part, Lincoln's life was shaped by his relationship with the Todd's.

Upon Lincoln's election as President of the United States the country found itself ripping into two halves, as did the Todd family. Of Robert Todd's children six sided with the Union and eight sided with the Confederacy. Berry states "of necessity and by design" his book "focuses on the fates and movements of the handful of Todds about whom the most is known and with whom Lincoln had the closest association." Representing the Northern wing of the family are Elizabeth Todd & husband Ninian W. Edwards, and of course Abraham & Mary (Todd) Lincoln. The Southern wing of the family, states Berry, has never been studied, and is represented by sisters Emilie and Elodie Todd and one brother, David Todd. Though the remaining siblings do appear in the book they are often cast as secondary characters in Berry's narrative.

Todd family narrative is nearly panoramic, as members of the family seem to have been everywhere during the war. Berry places them at the very beginnings of the Civil War at the inaugurations of both Abraham Lincoln and Confederate president, Jefferson Davis; follows them to battlefields Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Chickamauga; to the prisons and hospitals of the Confederacy, and finally ends with George Todd catching up with the fleeing Confederate government after the fall of Richmond.

Berry's the narrative of the Todd family deftly draws parallels to that of the larger "American Family." As the Todd family was torn apart by the war, so was the nation. As the Todd family suffered wounds and casualties so did the nation. After the war, the Northern and Southern wings of the family struggled with issues of reunion as they tried to put their past behind them as did the nation. The narrative of the Todd family, during and after the war, is in fact, the narrative of the United States.

My only complaint with the book is its lack of scope as far as the members of the Todd family are concerned. Berry notes "This book is not a complete biography of the Todds." He goes on to say that "following fourteen principal characters - and their spouses, and their children - over the course of a lifetime would be unwieldy." For a book whose text is a brief 192 pages, that is a weak argument, but still, the book adequately fills a void that has been too long over looked.

I thought that I had read (and knew) just about everything about Mary Lincoln. What a pleasure to read this book and find out so much about Mary's family that I never knew before. Another plus is that the book is so well written that it reads like a novel. I couldn't put it down.

One reviewer here "senses" that the author of House of Abraham did not like Mr. Lincoln's in-laws. To say I can't blame Mr. Berry for being perhaps a little disgusted with the behavior of some of the Todd clan would be an understatement. Indeed, considering what our 16th president went through in his long fought battle to hold this country together, only to be slain by a coward from the South just days after the first solid indication that the Confederacy had been given a thorough and well-deserved whuppin', courtesy of U.S. Grant, (i.e. the surrender of R.E. Lee on April 9, 1865, followed by the bullet that tore through the president's head just five days later), the behavior of the family of Mrs. Lincoln and Abraham's tolerance and kindness toward them, causes me to wonder why anyone would expect an author who might otherwise have been neutral, to feel kindly toward the president's in-laws?

If you read this book long enough ago to have forgotten parts (or haven't read it at all) I would refer to page 85 where begins the detailed description of David Todd's behavior in his short-lived position as commandant of a Richmond prison, where his assistant was Henry Wirz who later became commandant of Andersonville prison in Georgia, and the only man hung for war crimes after the war, although I personally think that Nathan Bedford Forrest should have preceded Mr. Wirz up the steps of the scaffold. But that's just me, and I sort of cringed my way through the story of Commandant David Todd, and have never had any particular fondness for NBF who may have been the South's head racist.

I knew very little about the Todd's before I read House of Abraham, and found it enlightening and well worth the time to read it, but I didn't come away with any noticeable degree of admiration for them.

There is no shortage of books about Abraham Lincoln. My own modest history library has seven titles. I am attracted to his life story because he was the most unlikely individual to become President and his achievements and wisdom confounded both his detractors and admires.

One aspect of his story that has always interested me was his marriage to Mary Todd. The biographies I have read mention the usual highlights - ambitious wife - hints of madness - compulsive shopper - and most intriguing several close family member with intimate connections to the Confederacy.

While living in Springfield Illinois Lincoln developed a strong family bonding with the Todd's. The fact that Lincoln had no brothers and sisters was all the more reason to "adopt" his wife's siblings as his own family.

Stephen Berry has written a masterful work brimming with insights into the Todd clan. The author has a great talent for crafting apt descriptions that contributed to the pleasure of reading. He details the curious relationships Lincoln he had with all of Mary's many brothers and sisters both before and during the war.

In addition the author's colorful descriptions of family life and society in Kentucky and Illinois helped this reader understand the powerful emotions that pulled this family asunder during the Civil War.

This was really and interesting book. I did not realize that the Todds and Lincolns were that closely related. Also, not not know that the Todds were deeply imbeded in Kentucky. Learn something new with every book.

This is an entirely new perspective of the Lincoln family, specifically that of his wife's. While there is much known about Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, as well as their oldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who was the only child to live to a ripe old age, I know very little about the Todd Family, and was especially intrigued that a book had finally been written on this little known side of the Lincoln family. Although the book was short, and, as admitted by the author, only a cursory story of several of the members of the Todd family could be done, it was admittedly an interesting book and whetted my appetite for additional information on the Todd Family. I found that the book added a few more pieces to the complex character and personality of Abraham Lincoln the man, and found further that his "melancholia" that is so much discussed was not solely due to the failures of many of his generals, the exorbitant loss of life in the battles of the conflict, the political intrigues of the Radical Republicans and the Democratic-Copperheads, but also partly due to the inner family turmoil that he and Mary experienced with their own family, specifically the Todds. Truly, Abraham Lincoln was quite prophetic when he said that a "House divided against itself cannot stand", and surely this could be said of the Todd family who themselves were divided with several family members serving in the armed forces of the Confederacy and the Union, several killed in battle, and one assassinated. I would recommend this book, and hope to see further detailed studies of the Todd Family in the future.