Mary’s intellect and service to the nation during the Civil War should have defined her as one of the most consequential first ladies in American history. Instead, her private struggles and public controversies shaped her legacy. She was harshly judged by her contemporaries and excoriated by both her husband’s enemies and a sensational press corps for her lavish spending and mercurial temperament. Compounding her challenges, her half-siblings fought for or were aligned with the Confederacy, opening the door for detractors to say almost anything about her. She was accused of being coarse, a traitor, a thief, and an advocate for slavery.
Only in recent years have scholars acknowledged Mary’s resilience and significant contributions during the nation’s lowest moment. She used her position to unflinchingly support the Union, with an uncommon visibility that helped transform the role of First Lady. Not a month after Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter, triggering the war, she ventured with Sumter’s heroic commanding officer, Robert Anderson, to Philadelphia and New York, where she visited a factory making Army uniforms, went to an encampment to greet 2,000 cheering soldiers, and turned heads when she showed up for a Sunday service at abolitionist Rev. Henry Ward Beecher’s church. She was breaking new ground and influencing her successors. Unlike her predecessors, who had stayed mostly out of the public eye, she was making a political statement. Mary Lincoln intended to be seen and heard.
In Washington, she housed troops in the East Room, ministered to grievously wounded soldiers at nearly every Washington hospital, and visited front lines and camps from New York to Virginia. Courageously, she refused the entreaties of General Winfield Scott to flee Washington for safety when the capital was threatened with invasion. She refurbished a dilapidated White House and opened its doors to thousands of visitors to reinforce national unity and boost morale. Although her Kentucky family owned slaves, she loyally supported Lincoln’s gradual evolution on racial issues, backing his efforts to limit slavery’s expansion during the 1850s and, later, his Emancipation Proclamation. As First Lady, she donated money and gifts to raise awareness of the dire conditions in which formerly enslaved people were living.
But Mary’s early story was written by men who tried to destroy her, who emphasized her foibles while ignoring her kindness and generosity and commitment to the nation, creating a narrative that remained largely unchanged for more than a century. She suffered a series of crushing personal losses that defined her life and exacerbated her fragile mental state, outliving three of her four sons, as well as her husband, who was murdered as they held hands at Ford’s Theatre.