There are countless books written about Abraham Lincoln. Biographers and historians have long divided the fields of study: Lincoln's legal career, his presidency, his depressions, his Christianity, members of his government… There is even a separate book that describes the hundred best books about Lincoln. Of course, there will also be a whole library of works about the president's family, the main character of which was his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. All America once loved Lincoln, almost everyone shared the dislike for his wife.
Bellevue Place patient
In the second half of the nineteenth century, a psychiatric boarding house for we althy women was located in the suburbs of Chicago. The regime here was liberal - there were no guards, locks, bars and straitjackets. The patients lived in separate rooms, more reminiscent of ordinary rooms, they could go to the city and dine with Dr. Patterson's family. The only restrictions weremedical control, as well as the requirement to sleep and take medication in a boarding house.
One of the psychiatric patients was Abraham Lincoln's widowed wife, Mary. She entered the walls of the boarding house in 1875, but there are practically no documents left about this period in the life of the first lady. Only after almost a century and a half, the papers suddenly surfaced in the archives of the state of Kentucky - exactly where the sixteenth president of the United States of America was born. The documents were handed over to Dr. Patterson's granddaughter, who found them in her basement.
The folder contained personal letters, an arrest warrant for Mary Todd Lincoln, medical certificates, a list of medications taken, and so on. Apparently, Lincoln left the papers in a boarding house for the mentally unbalanced, and her son Robert Lincoln, who filed a petition for compulsory treatment of his mother, did not take them either.
Confirmation of rumors
There is no doubt that Mary was unbalanced, but whether she was mentally ill was unknown until recently. The discovered documents allowed to confirm that Lincoln's wife really suffered from a mental disorder.
Modern doctors also suggested that Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from progressive anemia. The disease usually begins with an autoimmune lesion of the digestive system, but obvious symptoms begin to appear only after a few years. The clinical picture includes the irritability of the first lady, and scenes of jealousy, and bouts of delirium, andhallucinations.
The cause of Mary's illness is not known for certain. Most likely, she was simply genetically predisposed to this pathology. The biochemically depleted brain of a woman simply could not cope with all the trials that fell to her lot - three of her four children died before they reached the age of nineteen.
Unhappy marriage
The couple went down the aisle, which turned out to be a thorny one for Lincoln, in 1842. This marriage was hardly planned by higher powers. The old bachelor offered his hand to the girl, then changed his mind, although she was a profitable party. Mary was educated, rich, pretty enough.
After her marriage, Mary Todd Lincoln turned out to be a jealous, grumpy and capricious woman. She was hysterical and unpredictable. Mary now and then mocked her husband's awkward figure, publicly noted the flaws in his appearance, she could even splash coffee in his face. It gave her pleasure to humiliate her famous husband in front of outsiders. The first lady either felt like roy alty or could take bribes.
Hatred of her husband was justified not only by the state of Mary's he alth. She came from a slave-owning family, and several of her siblings died in the Confederate army. So the relatives considered the woman who married Lincoln (for them, a national criminal) a traitor. The husband found excuses for Mary, as they lost three of their four sons.
From euphoria to depression
After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his widow moved to Chicago, to the onlyson. In those years, her character became even worse. The woman was in a state of euphoria, then she fell into depression. There was no middle ground. She became suspicious and sewed her savings into the petticoats of her dress. The widow of the president was fond of spiritualism, tried to commit suicide several times by throwing herself out of the window, sometimes she imagined fires.
Robert Lincoln got his mother forcibly sent for treatment, but she stayed in a psychiatric boarding house for only three months. Mary Lincoln did not want to put up with the fact that she was "a victim of psychiatric terror," as the press wrote. Because of the hype, she was discharged and sent to her sister. Soon the women left for Europe for a long time.
In the care of a sister
Little is known about the state of he alth of the President's widow after the psychiatric boarding house. Mary Todd Lincoln didn't want to see her son again. She sent him letters full of accusations of betrayal and the desire to quickly take possession of the inheritance. A year before the woman's death, something like a truce took place - Mary met with her son when he had already become Minister of War in the Garfield government.
The biography of Mary Todd Lincoln ended with her death in 1882. The son showed himself well in business and politics, got a loving family and three children. Mary's grandson died at the age of 16 after an unsuccessful operation, on which the line of the sixteenth president of the United States was interrupted in the male line.
