Lincoln Wife's Insanity Retrial To Be Staged
Local judges and attorneys will decide the former first lady's fate using modern laws
Monday, Sep 24, 2012 | Updated 11:02 AM CDT
Getty Images
Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, dressed for
his inauguration in 1861.
Dramatic details delving into the life of Abraham Lincoln's
wife are about to take center stage.
Actors portraying Mary Todd Lincoln and others will showcase
retrials of her 1875 insanity case.
One staged retrial is scheduled for Monday in Chicago. The
other is in Springfield next month.
The events are being produced and sponsored by the Illinois
Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission and the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.
Mrs. Lincoln was tried when her son, Robert, brought
allegations of insanity against her. She ultimately was declared a "lunatic" and
placed in the Bellevue Sanitarium in Batavia, Ill.
Museum officials say this time around local judges and
attorneys, along with the audience, will get to decide the former first lady's
fate using modern laws.
Copyright Associated Press
Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Lincoln-Wifes-Insanity-Retrial-To-Be-Staged-170996871.html#ixzz27Qapn78M
Mary Todd Lincoln to be retried for insanity
Mary Todd Lincoln stood by her husband's side in 1865 as he died from a
gunshot wound to the head. Ten years later she was found insane.
After years of wandering the country and seeking to talk to the dead, she was committed by her son Robert Lincoln. Now, the nation's former first lady will get a new day in court.
Historians have long disagreed on Lincoln's alleged insanity. It has spawned books, Broadway shows, and now a retrial.
The Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum are giving Lincoln a new trial on Oct. 1 in Springfield, Ill., to see if such a pronouncement would be made today. The event will take place in a courtroom setting with period clothes but modern laws. Well-known judges will serve as lawyers, using their own legal strategies. Actors will play Mary Todd Lincoln and Robert Lincoln, her son who instigated her insanity trial in 1875. The audience will be the jury. (Auditorium seating is sold out, but auxiliary tickets are available www.wasmarylincolncrazy.com ) Former Governor Jim Edgar will narrate.
Lincoln's depression was evident when her 11-year-old son Willie died of fever in 1862. It was amplified when her husband was assassinated three years later. It went deeper when another son, Tad, died of pleurisy.
She criss-crossed the country on lavish spending sprees (she was a Southern belle who had been pampered by slaves as a child and expected luxury in her adult life) and successfully fought the U.S. government for a widow's pension. But Lincoln's mental state remained fragile as she dabbled in the spiritual world and conducted seances to talk to her dead husband.
Robert Lincoln, a rising Chicago lawyer who later became Secretary of War, said he was concerned by his mother's behavior. His only option, he said, was to petition a court, take control of her estate, and have her declared a lunatic.
Mary Todd Lincoln was found insane in 1875 and sent to the Bellevue Sanitarium in Batavia, Ill.
She exclaimed in court: "Oh, Robert, to think that my son would ever have done this!"
Lincoln began plotting her escape, saying her son was just trying to grab control of her finances. She wrote letters to legal advisors James and Myra Bradwell, who mounted a campaign to get her released. Lincoln was ultimately freed after about four months in the asylum.
After that, she bitterly feuded with her son and traveled throughout Europe. As her physical health failed, she returned to Springfield to live with her sister. Mary Todd Lincoln died in 1882 at the age of 63.
The Lincoln Museum said in a statement: "Even today, historians disagree whether the evidence against the First Lady was 'trumped up,' whether the procedures used constituted due process, and what would occur if today's modernized health laws were applied to the same facts."
We'll soon find out.
Follow reporter Nick Pistor on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nickpistor
After years of wandering the country and seeking to talk to the dead, she was committed by her son Robert Lincoln. Now, the nation's former first lady will get a new day in court.
Historians have long disagreed on Lincoln's alleged insanity. It has spawned books, Broadway shows, and now a retrial.
The Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum are giving Lincoln a new trial on Oct. 1 in Springfield, Ill., to see if such a pronouncement would be made today. The event will take place in a courtroom setting with period clothes but modern laws. Well-known judges will serve as lawyers, using their own legal strategies. Actors will play Mary Todd Lincoln and Robert Lincoln, her son who instigated her insanity trial in 1875. The audience will be the jury. (Auditorium seating is sold out, but auxiliary tickets are available www.wasmarylincolncrazy.com ) Former Governor Jim Edgar will narrate.
Lincoln's depression was evident when her 11-year-old son Willie died of fever in 1862. It was amplified when her husband was assassinated three years later. It went deeper when another son, Tad, died of pleurisy.
She criss-crossed the country on lavish spending sprees (she was a Southern belle who had been pampered by slaves as a child and expected luxury in her adult life) and successfully fought the U.S. government for a widow's pension. But Lincoln's mental state remained fragile as she dabbled in the spiritual world and conducted seances to talk to her dead husband.
Robert Lincoln, a rising Chicago lawyer who later became Secretary of War, said he was concerned by his mother's behavior. His only option, he said, was to petition a court, take control of her estate, and have her declared a lunatic.
Mary Todd Lincoln was found insane in 1875 and sent to the Bellevue Sanitarium in Batavia, Ill.
She exclaimed in court: "Oh, Robert, to think that my son would ever have done this!"
Lincoln began plotting her escape, saying her son was just trying to grab control of her finances. She wrote letters to legal advisors James and Myra Bradwell, who mounted a campaign to get her released. Lincoln was ultimately freed after about four months in the asylum.
After that, she bitterly feuded with her son and traveled throughout Europe. As her physical health failed, she returned to Springfield to live with her sister. Mary Todd Lincoln died in 1882 at the age of 63.
The Lincoln Museum said in a statement: "Even today, historians disagree whether the evidence against the First Lady was 'trumped up,' whether the procedures used constituted due process, and what would occur if today's modernized health laws were applied to the same facts."
We'll soon find out.
Follow reporter Nick Pistor on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nickpistor
Mary Todd Lincoln
As a girlhood companion remembered her, Mary Todd was vivacious and impulsive, with an interesting personality--but "she now and then could not restrain a witty, sarcastic speech that cut deeper than she intended...." A young lawyer summed her up in 1840: "the very creature of excitement." All of these attributes marked her life, bringing her both happiness and tragedy.Daughter of Eliza Parker and Robert Smith Todd, pioneer settlers of Kentucky, Mary lost her mother before the age of seven. Her father remarried; and Mary remembered her childhood as "desolate" although she belonged to the aristocracy of Lexington, with high-spirited social life and a sound private education.
Just 5 feet 2 inches at maturity, Mary had clear blue eyes, long lashes, light-brown hair with glints of bronze, and a lovely complexion. She danced gracefully, she loved finery, and her crisp intelligence polished the wiles of a Southern coquette.
Nearly 21, she went to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister Mrs. Ninian Edwards. Here she met Abraham Lincoln--in his own words, "a poor nobody then." Three years later, after a stormy courtship and broken engagement, they were married. Though opposites in background and temperament, they were united by an enduring love--by Mary's confidence in her husband's ability and his gentle consideration of her excitable ways.
Their years in Springfield brought hard work, a family of boys, and reduced circumstances to the pleasure-loving girl who had never felt responsibility before. Lincoln's single term in Congress, for 1847-1849, gave Mary and the boys a winter in Washington, but scant opportunity for social life. Finally her unwavering faith in her husband won ample justification with his election as President in 1860.
Though her position fulfilled her high social ambitions, Mrs. Lincoln's years in the White House mingled misery with triumph. An orgy of spending stirred resentful comment. While the Civil War dragged on, Southerners scorned her as a traitor to her birth, and citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason. When she entertained, critics accused her of unpatriotic extravagance. When, utterly distraught, she curtailed her entertaining after her son Willie's death in 1862, they accused her of shirking her social duties.
Yet Lincoln, watching her put her guests at ease during a White House reception, could say happily: "My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I...fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out."
Her husband's assassination in 1865 shattered Mary Todd Lincoln. The next 17 years held nothing but sorrow. With her son "Tad" she traveled abroad in search of health, tortured by distorted ideas of her financial situation. After Tad died in 1871, she slipped into a world of illusion where poverty and murder pursued her.
A misunderstood and tragic figure, she passed away in 1882 at her sister's home in Springfield--the same house from which she had walked as the bride of Abraham Lincoln, 40 years before.
The biographies of the First Ladies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The First Ladies of the United States of America,” by Allida Black. Copyright 2009 by the White House Historical Association.
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