Customer Reviews

The Madness of Mary Lincoln

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I should say first that my own works on Mary Lincoln were generously referenced by Jason Emerson, with whom I had some correspondence as he prepared his book. My article, "Mary Lincoln's Final Illness: A Medical and Historical Reappraisal" (with co-author the late Robert Feldman, a neurologist)was published in the Journal of the History of Medicine,1999, volume 54, 511-542; also "Mary Lincoln's 'Suicide' Attempt: A Physician Reconsiders the Evidence", published in the Lincoln Herald, 2003. I can make both articles available if you write to me at bertzpoet@yahoo.com.

Feldman and I show quite substantially that Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from a spinal cord degeneration called tabes dorsalis, and that the physicians who examined her in 1882 (commissioned to do so by Congress as it considered her plea for a pension) were experts in that disease. The signs and symptoms of that physical illness were the major pieces of 'evidence' to impute insanity at her trial. As for her delusional state in the run-up to the trial and just after, it is clear that this was a post-traumatic stress reaction to the 10th anniversary of her husband's murder -- it was not the first time that she had other, less severe, 'anniversary' reactions, something she herself recognized.

Although the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder is interesting, given her high strung and volatile personality with a mania for shopping, it can only be conjecture. Curiously enough with only four months of being in the asylum (truly a rest home for her, no medications or constraint,)in the years following, she showed no more classic manifestations of Bipolar Disorder; in fact, rather mellowed and reconciled with her son.

Emerson's book is splendidly written and a fine contribution to the field of Lincoln studies.

Norbert Hirschhorn MD

Whether you agree or disagree with Mary Todd Lincoln's diagnoses, this book brings to light much of her suffering and pain. She did not have an easy life, and, I can relate to her son Robert's efforts to "do what was right" for his mother, while trying to maintain somewhat of a normal life for himself and his own family. I bought this book after seeing Jason Emerson review it on C-Span. An interesting book.

A very balanced and carefully researched work into the controversial subject of Mary Todd Lincoln's behavior. Mrs. Lincoln was judged insane by an Illinois court, at which she could not legally testify. She was taken to the courtroom by a Chicago sheriff at the request of her son, Robert Todd Lincoln. After some months and the help of some friends, she was released to her sister in Springfield, Illinois. Well documented with numerous footnotes and a bibliography. Highly recommended for those interested in women's history, the Lincolns, and the Civil War.

Based partially on newly discovered Mary Lincoln letters, the work is a "must have" for those interested in the Mary Lincoln saga. It offers information I've never read before. The book is well written and quite captivating.

the book is chock full of information about the lady but also about her
lesser know role as a mother and wife. it is concise and has many unknown
facts about her personal life and her social life. for people who enjoy
learning the "off" parts of our countries history and it's players, this
is a good read.

I had just finished reading "Stealing Lincoln's Body" and became interested to read further into Mary Todd's life. This book is extremely well written and opened my eyes to the many facets of Mary Lincoln. This is generally not a genera of books I would typically read. That having been said, I believe this is an excellent insite into Mrs. Lincoln.

I found this book to lend key insight into the troubled mind of an often-misunderstood woman. I also found her relationship with Abraham Lincoln to be anything but "normal." She was actually his second choice among her own sisters, and it appears theirs was a relationship fraught with extreme highs and lows, not always attributable solely to her flaws.

Initially a tad (no pun intended) eccentric, the horrors she experienced ultimately served to unravel her. Seeing her husband and children die before her very eyes was simply too much, leading to her confinement in a "home," by her loving son Thomas. As is frequently the case in these matters, she felt that Thomas, a good and worthy man, had betrayed her and spent the remainder of her days vilifying him.

The writing is clear, though a bit plodding at times. An historian's fascination with minutiae sometimes clouds the narrative flow, particularly for the casual reader.

Nevertheless, there is much to learn here, and much to recommend this woman's sad tale.

Mary Lincoln was an interesting character in US history, played a background role with perhaps the greratest President. What happened to her after he was assassinated, and how she faced those years until her death is the story told by this book. The material presented is well referenced, and the book is well written. For those interested in history, or in medical treatment for 'insanity' in the second half of the nineteenth century, this is a good read. It also provides some interesting insights regarding Lincoln's surviving son and his wife. It's a good readable book.

Did Abraham Lincoln suffer a mental illness?

Well, the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge, may have pushed him for a time to the edge of despondency. But are we to believe that Father Abraham pulled off nothing less than the saving of democracy while also battling a severe mental disorder? No. He might have been sad, but he wasn't mad.

But his poor wife Mary was a different story. So one easily concludes after reading (in one sitting) The Madness of Mary Lincoln, a fascinating and well-crafted later-life biography by newcomer Jason Emerson of the Great Emanicpator's disturbed wife.

It is the riveting, and pathetic, tale of Mary Lincoln's involuntary commitment to an insane asylum in 1875, as mandated by a jury trial involving her sole surviving son, Robert. It also relates the meddlesome efforts of her friend, social crusader Myra Brantwell, to secure her release one year later. And it is a sleuthing tale about the only recent discovery, in a long-forgotten attic-relegated footlocker of Robert Lincoln's lawyer, Frederick Towers, of 25 personal letters and other documents of Mary Lincoln, bringing to light lusciously rich new historical evidence from the hand of Mary herself.

While obviously problematic as a diagnosis backward in time, the book's appendix contains a reasonable assessment from a modern day psychiatrist that identifies Mary's affliction as BiPolar disorder with psychotic features. In the end, it seems that Robert was left with no choice but to undertake the drastic measure of committing his own mother against her will for her own protection. Painfully, the episode leads to Mary's estrangement from Robert, of whom she later refers in her letters as the "monster".

This book hits an audience trifecta. First, with its detailed account of the fate of Mary after Lincoln's assassination, it will inform Lincoln fans. After her release, for instance, did we know that Mary spent nearly four years in relative seclusion in France? Or that son Robert, eventually a successful lawyer, became chairman of the board of the Pullman Company and a self-made millionaire?

Second, it will intrigue students of historiography. Especially in the Lincoln field, where so much of what we know has been already so much picked over, it is invigorating to learn of a vast new source material turning up out of the blue, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. What the historians and surviving family members, and of course lawyers, decide to do with these materials makes for a fascinating technical read.

Third, it will interest those who deal with mental illness. Mental illness is no joke, even in 1875. When a mentally ill loved one lacks insight into his or her illness, there can be nothing more wrenching for family members. Any family member who has had to force the commitment a mentally ill loved one will understand the excruciating dilemma this posed for Robert.

Beyond this trifecta is the added bonus of its economical prose and digestible length. The writing is well crafted and very accessible to the reader, not always the case with certain pompous, more "learned" histories that weigh as much as cinder blocks. The content is refreshingly sized for rapid intake and digestion. Emerson gets the job done in under 200 pages, even with extensive footnotes that authenticate nearly every fact in this PowerBar of a book.

Congratulations to Jason Emerson on a first-class piece of history all around! Emerson is apparently now writing a book on Robert Lincoln. I can't wait to see it.

Although I have read a few books on Lincoln, I was unaware that his wife Mary was committed to an insane asylum in 1875 (ten years after her husband's assassination) by her only living child, Robert. In those days, she had to have a trial to be declared insane, and the whole matter was kept relatively private. But once committed, with Robert appointed as her conservator, Mary started agitating to be released and to resume control over her finances--she was a compulsive spender, that being part of her illness. She enlisted the aid of a brilliant couple, the Bradwells, with Mr. being a judge and Mrs. having been trained as a lawyer who was not admitted to the bar because she was a woman. They took up her cause and went to the press, eventually forcing her premature release into the care of her sister in Illinois. But Mary was not a well woman; she made a suicide attempt when her trial was just over and later acquired a pistol and was threatening to kill Robert. By today's standards, she was clearly "a threat to self and others" when she was committed and even after her release.

In the publicity that ensued, there was controversy over whether Robert was a loving son who had done his best to obtain the highest possible care for his mother or an avaricious heir who wanted to seize control over her and her money. Emerson goes to primary sources and does a beautiful job of proving the former, portraying Robert as a Victorian man to whom the idea of "duty" was paramount, despite great personal cost to himself. He returned her finances back to Mary, $8K to the good, which was a huge sum of money in those days. And he permitted her release to appease her, ever knowing that should something catastrophic occur, all responsibility and liability for that would rest on his shoulders.

But, to me as a psychologist, the best part of the book was its effort to put a more formal and modern diagnosis on Mary's "madness." The author did a tremendous job of collecting contemporaneous accounts of her behavior and symptoms, and then in an appendix he asks a psychiatrist to render his opinion. The verdict? Bipolar Disorder with delusions and hallucinations, and personality traits that reflected paranoid, histrionic, narcissistic, and borderline tendencies--with a tinge of Post-Traumatic Stess Disorder (PTSD) as well. While it is always tricky to "retrofit" modern criteria to a person long dead who was not examined with those standards at the time, there is abundant evidence here to support his case. All in all, this was a psychological and historical narrative that was well worth the read.