To Mrs. Lincoln more than to any other President’s wife was the White House an ambition. She had ever aspired to reach it, and when it became her home, it was the fruition of a hope long entertained, the gratification of the great desire of her life. In her early youth she repeatedly asserted that she should be a President’s wife, and so profoundly impressed was she with this idea, that she calculated the probabilities of such a success with all her male friends. She refused an offer of marriage from Stephen A. Douglas, then a rising young lawyer, doubting his ability to gratify her ambition, and accepted a man who at that time seemed to others the least likely to be the President of the United States.

Mary Todd was a Kentuckian by birth, and a member of the good old Todd family, of Lexington. Her younger years were spent in that homely town of beautiful surroundings, with an aunt who reared her, she being an orphan. Childhood and youth were passed in comfort and comparative luxury, nor did she ever know poverty; but her restless nature found but little happiness in the society of her elders, and she went, when just merging into womanhood, to reside with her sister in Springfield. The attraction of this, then small place, was greatly augmented by the society of the young people, and Mary Todd passed the pleasantest years of her life in her sister’s western home. On the 4th of November, 1842, at the age of twenty-one, she was married to Abraham Lincoln, a prominent lawyer, of Illinois. A letter written the following May, to Mr. Speed, of Louisville, Kentucky, by Mr. Lincoln, contains the following mention of his domestic life: “We are not keeping house,” he says, “but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by a widow lady, of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a week. I most heartily wish you and your Fanny will not fail to come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a room prepared for you, and we’ll all be merry together for a while.” The pleasant spirits in which the husband wrote, must have argued well for the married life they had entered upon. Although much in public life, Mr. Lincoln was holding no office at the time of his marriage, but four years later he was elected to Congress, and took his seat December 6th, 1847. Mrs. Lincoln did not accompany her husband to Washington, but remained at her home. It was a season of war and general disturbance throughout the country, and while her husband attended to his duties at the Capital, she lived quietly with her children in Springfield. In August he returned to enter upon the duties of his profession, and to “devote himself to them through a series of years, less disturbed by diversions into State and National politics than he had been during any previous period of his business life. It was to him a time of rest, of reading, of social happiness, and of professional prosperity. He was a happy father, and took an almost unbounded pleasure in his children. Their sweet young natures were to him a perpetual source of delight. He was never impatient with their petulance and restlessness, loved always to be with them, and took them into his heart with a fondness which was unspeakable. It was a fondness so tender and profound as to blind him to their imperfections, and to expel from him every particle of sternness in his management of them.”

At this time Mrs. Lincoln was the mother of four children, and though one had passed on to the higher life, her home was one of happiness. Ministered to by a husband who never knew how to be aught but kind to her, and surrounded by evidences of prosperity, her lines had fallen in pleasant places, and she was considered by her friends a fortunate woman.

Mr. Lincoln was a hard student and constant reader, and was steadily progressing in knowledge. Thrown among talented and educated gentlemen, and possessing an intense desire for improvement, he had become, during the years of his married life, a superior lawyer and statesman. His was an aspiring nature, striving for the golden truths of sage experience.

His enemies sometimes speak of him as a man who owed his eminence rather to the contrast between his social and his political rank, between his qualifications and the place in history which it was his fortune to fill, than to his personal character or his political capacity, but the estimate is not a true one. A man so revered as is his memory by all classes of his countrymen, had a character untarnished by corruption, and a moral refinement far above the comprehension of the average public man. He was in his domestic life the embodiment of fidelity and gentleness. His career as a statesman, and not the manner of his death, places him next to Washington in the hearts of Americans. His services to the country rank as the noblest performed in its history after those of Washington. Opportunity, while it did much for him, was not all that made Lincoln great; it was his readiness to meet the emergency when it came; his ability to seize the occasion, and use it to the honor of his country, and his own lasting fame.

Mr. Lincoln was so intensely individual in his career, and his life was so devoted to public affairs, that it is with difficulty that a sketch of Mrs. Lincoln can be written that is not largely composed of the events pertaining to the official life of her husband. The White House during her life in it was the reverse of gay. Officials were the chief callers at the mansion, and the movement of armies, and the news from the front occupied the attention of its inmates. She was less fortunate than any lady who had ever preceded her in this respect, and to judge of her success in her position, it is needful to keep in mind the conditions under which the administration existed.

The Republican Convention at Chicago verified Mrs. Lincoln’s prophecy of being the wife of a President. It assembled the 16th of June, 1860, and after a close contest between the two favorites of the Republican party—Governor Seward and Mr. Lincoln—the latter was declared unanimously nominated as a candidate for the Presidency. In Springfield, Mrs. Lincoln waited in her own home for the result of her prediction, and when at noon the cannon on the public square announced the decision of the Convention, breathless with expectancy, she scarcely dared to ask the result. Her husband, in the excitement of the moment, did not forget her, but putting the telegram in his pocket, remarked to his friends that “there was a little woman on Eighth street who had some interest in the matter,” walked home to gladden her heart with the good news. That Friday night must have been the very happiest of her life, for few women have ever craved the position as she did, and it was hers! Crowds of citizens and strangers thronged her home all the afternoon, and the roar of cannon and the wild, tumultuous shouts of excited men filled the town with a deafening noise. At night the Republicans marched in a body to Mr. Lincoln’s house, and, after a brief speech, were invited, as many as could get into the house, to enter, “the crowd responding that after the fourth of March they would give him a larger house. The people did not retire until a late hour, and then moved off reluctantly, leaving the excited household to their rest.”

And now commenced the life which Mrs. Lincoln had so long anticipated, and if her husband was not elated, she was, and the hearts of these two, so nearly concerned in this great honor, beat from widely different emotions. “He could put on none of the airs of eminence; he could place no bars between himself and those who had honored him. Men who entered his house impressed with a sense of his new dignities, found him the same honest, affectionate, true-hearted and simple-minded Abraham Lincoln that he had always been. He answered his own bell, accompanied his visitors to the door when they retired, and felt all that interfered with his old homely and hearty habits of hospitality as a burden—almost an impertinence.” She, annoyed by the crowds who thronged the house, and the constant interruptions, found it so intolerable that Mr. Lincoln took a room in the State House, and met his friends there until his departure for Washington.

Mrs. Lincoln was not greatly inclined to observe the requirements of her social position, and she thereby lost opportunities of advancing her husband’s interests of which she perhaps was unaware. She did not rightly estimate the importance of conciliatory address with friend and foe alike, and seemed not conscious of the immense assistance which, as the wife of a public man, she had it in her power to give her husband. And this was all the more singular for the reason that she was very ambitious.

Just after the election, a circumstance occurred which Mrs. Lincoln interpreted in a manner which forced one to recall the predictions of her childhood. Mr. Lincoln thus repeated it. “It was after my election, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great ‘hurrah, boys!’ so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it—nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home, I told my wife about it, and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was a ‘sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the second term.”

Mr. Lincoln regarded the vision as an optical illusion, caused from nervousness, “yet, with that tinge of superstition which clings to every sensitive and deeply thoughtful man, in a world full of mysteries, he was so far affected by it as to feel that ‘something uncomfortable had happened.’” Viewed in the light of subsequent events, Mrs. Lincoln’s prophetic interpretation of the vision had almost a startling import.

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their three boys, accompanied by a number of Mr. Lincoln’s old friends, left Springfield in a special car, and all along the route they were welcomed by the people with every demonstration of hearty good-will. It was a time of anxiety, and the throngs that gathered about the newly elected Chief Magistrate seemed impelled by a stronger feeling than mere curiosity or excitement. Between Chicago and Indianapolis, the stations were decorated, the towns and villages were gay with flags and flower-bedecked mottoes, and wherever a stop was made, men, women and children grasped the hand of Mr. Lincoln, and wished him a safe journey and all success in the trying place he was going to fill.

An immense crowd cheered him as the train reached the depot at Indianapolis, and a national salute was fired in his honor. The Cincinnati committee of reception, filling his car, met the party there, and accompanied it next day. The train passed by the burial-place of General Harrison, who had for a short month occupied the Presidential chair, and here the family of the deceased patriot were assembled. Mr. Lincoln bowed his respects to the group and to the memory of his predecessor.

The morning of the fourth of March, 1861, broke beautifully clear, and it found General Scott and the Washington police in readiness for the day. The friends of Mr. Lincoln had gathered in from far and near, determined that he should be inaugurated. In the hearts of the surging crowds there was anxiety; but outside all looked as usual on such occasions, with the single exception of an extraordinary display of soldiers. The public buildings, the schools and most of the places of business were closed during the day, and the stars and stripes were floating from every flag-staff. There was a great desire to hear Mr. Lincoln’s inaugural; and at an early hour, Pennsylvania Avenue was full of people, wending their way to the east front of the Capitol, from which it was to be delivered.

At five minutes before twelve o’clock, Vice-President Breckinridge and Senator Foote escorted Mr. Hamlin, the Vice-President-elect, into the Senate Chamber, and gave him a seat at the left of the chair. At twelve, Mr. Breckinridge announced the Senate adjourned, and then conducted Mr. Hamlin to the seat he had vacated. At this moment, the foreign diplomats, of whom there was a very large and brilliant representation, entered the chamber, and took the seats assigned to them. At a quarter before one o’clock, the Judges of the Supreme Court entered, with the venerable Chief-Justice Taney at their head, each exchanging salutes with the new Vice-President, as they took their seats. At a quarter past one o’clock, an unusual stir and excitement announced the coming of the most important personage of the occasion. It was a relief to many to know that he was safely within the building; and those who were assembled in the hall regarded with the profoundest interest the entrance of President Buchanan and the President-elect—the outgoing and the incoming man. A procession was then formed which passed to the platform erected for the ceremonies of the occasion, in the following order: Marshal of the District of Columbia, Judges of the Supreme Courts and Sergeant-at-Arms, Senate Committee of Arrangements, President of the Senate, Senators, Diplomatic Corps, heads of departments, Governors of States and such others as were in the chamber.

After the reading of the inaugural and the oath of office, administered by the venerable Chief-Justice Taney, Mr. Lincoln was escorted back to the White House, where Mr. Buchanan took leave of him, and where he received the large number of persons who called to see him.

During the afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln took possession of the White House, and her eventful life commenced in Washington.

The following days were spent with her sisters in happy bustle and excitement, arranging for the first levee, and domesticating themselves in their new abode.

It was held the 9th of March, and was the only one of the season. Her personal appearance was described in these words:

“Mrs. Lincoln stood a few paces from her husband, assisted by her sisters, Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Baker, together with two of her nieces, and was attired in a rich pink moire-antique, pearl ornaments, and flowers in her hair and hands. She is a pleasant-looking, elegant-appearing lady, of perhaps forty, somewhat inclined to stoutness, but withal fine-looking and self-possessed.” The levee was a brilliant one, and many citizens and strangers, not accustomed to taking part in the gay world about them, did themselves the pleasure of paying their respects to the new President and his family. It was perhaps the proudest occasion of Mrs. Lincoln’s life—a triumph she had often mused upon and looked forward to as in store for her. The desire of her heart was gratified, and she was mistress of the White House.

Mrs. Lincoln was a fortunate woman in that she secured the measure of her ambition, but it was the impartial judgment of her friends that she was not a happy person. The match was an unfortunate one, in that it united two people of widely divergent tastes and characteristics. Mr. Lincoln was utterly devoid of those social qualities which would have made him agreeable in the drawing-room and in the presence of fashionable people. His wife was fond of society, pleased with excitement, and gratified to be among the gay and brilliant company which she, by reason of her husband’s position, found herself in. She would have made the White House, socially, what it was under other administrations, but that was impossible. She found herself surrounded on every side by people who were ready to exaggerate her shortcomings, find fault with her deportment on all occasions and criticise her performance of all her semi-official duties. The state dinners were abandoned and she was said to be parsimonious. Weekly receptions were substituted, and her entertainments were made the topic of remark. The first two years of the administration of Mr. Lincoln were years of the severest trial to him, and his gloom and absorption affected his family. The death of Willie, the second son, occurred during this period of anxiety, and for nearly two more years the President’s family were in mourning. Mrs. Lincoln grieved long and deeply over her loss, and it was not possible for either husband or wife to allude to him without showing intense feeling. Mr. Lincoln rarely mentioned his name, and Mrs. Lincoln never afterward entered the room where he died, or the Blue Room in which his body lay. Several instances are told by Mr. Carpenter, the artist, of the affection entertained by the President for his sons. On one occasion while paying a visit to Commodore Porter at Fortress Monroe, “Tad,” the youngest son, accompanied his father, and the latter, noticing that the banks of the river were dotted with spring blossoms, the President said, with the manner of one asking a special favor: “Commodore, Tad is very fond of flowers; won’t you let a couple of your men take a boat and go with him for an hour or two along shore, and gather a few? it will be a great gratification to him.” On another occasion, while he was at Fortress Monroe awaiting military operations upon the Peninsula, he called his aide, who was writing in the adjoining room, and read to him selections from “Hamlet” and “King John.” Reciting the words where Constance bewails her imprisoned lost boy, Mr. Lincoln said: “Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not a reality? Just so I dream of my boy Willie.” Overcome with emotion, he dropped his head on the table and sobbed aloud.

A man who could thus feel towards his children may well be called an excellent father: and such Mr. Lincoln was. He was, as a lady relative of his who spent many months in his house said of him, “all that a husband, father and neighbor should be: kind and affectionate to his wife and child and very pleasant to all around him. Never,” said she, “did I hear him utter an unkind word.”

Mr. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln’s law partner, who knew both husband and wife well, summed up his estimate, based on long acquaintance, in a single sentence: “All that I know ennobles both.” Mrs. Lincoln was a lonely woman much of the time spent in the White House. The President had but little leisure to devote to her, and the state of the country was such that any display or gayety seemed out of keeping with the position she occupied. In the summer of 1864, the political canvas absorbed attention, and much of the season Mrs. Lincoln spent at the watering-places. In the autumn she renewed the receptions, and after the re-election of Mr. Lincoln the White House habitués saw promise of more pleasure than had been enjoyed there. The New Year reception of 1865 was the most brilliant entertainment given by the administration. Thousands of people paid their respects to the President and Mrs. Lincoln, and congratulated them on the confidence reposed in him by the people. The war was drawing to a close, and the North was inclined to look upon the Union as well-nigh restored. The inauguration was anxiously looked forward to, and when it was safely over the people breathed freer, and gave up the fear that had oppressed them.

There was general rejoicing in the land when the long anticipated peace was declared. General Lee surrendered on the 9th of April, and the White House was the scene of excitement from that time on to the close of the President’s life. People thronged to congratulate him, and from all parts of the nation telegrams poured in upon him. The 14th of April was the fourth anniversary of the fall of Sumter, and on that evening the President, Mrs. Lincoln, Major Rathbone, of the United States army, and a daughter of Senator Harris attended, by invitation, the performance at Ford’s Theatre. A large audience greeted the President as he took his seat at the front of the private box. As he sat waiting for the curtain to rise on the third act, looking pensive and sad, as was his wont, he was shot from behind by John Wilkes Booth, the leader of a gang of conspirators, who had carefully matured their plans to kill the President and members of the Cabinet. The shot was a deadly one, and total insensibility followed it.

Mrs. Lincoln, unnerved by the sudden and terrible event, was assisted from the theatre to a house across the street, where her husband had been taken. She remained beside him until death released him from all pain. The return to the White House was a journey never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The grief of Mrs. Lincoln and her children was shared by a nation of people, but nothing could restore the dead, or give back the husband and father who went out from their midst so well only the evening before.

The afternoon of the day on which the President was shot he was out driving with his wife, and she subsequently remarked that she never saw him so supremely happy as on this occasion. When the carriage was ordered she asked him if he would like any one to accompany them, and he replied, “No; I prefer to ride by ourselves to-day.” During the ride his wife spoke of his cheerfulness, and his answer was: “Well, I may feel happy, Mary, for I consider this day the war has come to a close;” and then added: “We must both be more cheerful in the future; between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have been very miserable.” His household was very miserable from that awful night.

The grief manifested by little Tad, the youngest son, on learning that his father had been shot was touching to behold. For twenty-four hours he was inconsolable. He frequently said that “his father was never happy after he came here,” and asked questions of those about him as to their belief in his being in heaven. He seemed resigned when this idea fastened itself strongly in his mind, and in his simplicity he imagined that his father’s happiness in heaven made the sun shine brightly.

Mrs. Lincoln never recovered from the shock. After the death of the President she remained in the White House five weeks, too ill to depart. The remains of her husband were borne back to Illinois, through towns, villages and hamlets, bearing every outward token of woe, and the cortege was met at each stopping-place by thousands of mourners who paid their respects to the great dead. Impressive scenes occurred all along the route, and the funeral pageant which met the remains at Springfield was the largest ever assembled in the country. Robert Lincoln, the eldest son, accompanied the remains, and after all honor had been paid the body of the martyred father, he returned to remove his mother to their future home.

The White House was like a public building during these sad weeks. The officials were embarrassed under the extraordinary circumstances, and the mansion was given over to servants. The soldiers on duty there had no other authority than to keep out the rabble, and no one felt justified in taking charge of the house while Mrs. Lincoln remained. The new President, Mr. Johnson, disavowed any inclination to hasten her departure; and when at last Mrs. Lincoln removed from the building, it was in the condition to be expected after the hard usage it had received subsequent to the tragedy.

Mrs. Lincoln left Washington accompanied by her sons, the youngest, “Tad,” being her special care and protection.

The country learned with sincere regret of the death of this lad after the return of the family to their western home. Mrs. Lincoln, after all the excitement and the trials through which she had passed, was unable to live quietly in any place, and travelled with the hope of recovering her health. In 1868 she went abroad and remained a considerable time in Germany. During her stay there she asked Congress for a pension, her letter to the Vice-President bearing date of January 1st, 1869. The bill was presented by Senator Morton, of Indiana, and was adversely reported upon by the Committee on Pensions. It read as follows:

“The committee are aware the friends of the resolution expect to make a permanent provision for the lady under the guise of a pension; but no evidence has been furnished to them, or reasons assigned why such provision should be made. If such was the intention, the committee submit, the reference should have been made to some other committee, as the Committee on Pensions, at least for some years past, have not thought it compatible with their duty or the objects of their appointment to recommend in any case the granting of any special pension, or any pension of a greater amount than is allowed by some general law. If they thought the amount so allowed too small, they would feel it incumbent on them to report a general bill for the relief in all similar cases. If the increase proposed was on account of extraordinary military or naval services, the proper reference would be to the military or naval committee. Under all these circumstances, the committee have no alternative but to report against the passage of the general resolutions.”

It was, however, granted her by a later Congress.

Broken in health and depressed in spirits, Mrs. Lincoln has lived in various countries, much of her time for several years being spent in France. She has not and will not recover from the catastrophe which robbed the country of its President, and her of her husband. With him died all her hopes of ambition, of home-life, and of rest and companionship in old age.

In October, 1880, Mrs. Lincoln returned to the United States from France on the steamer Amerique, and among her fellow-voyagers was Mlle. Bernhardt, the French actress. The New York Sun, in describing the arrival and reception of the latter thus incidentally mentions Mrs. Lincoln:

“A throng was assembled on the dock and a greater throng was in the street outside the gates. During the tedious process of working the ship into her dock there was a great crush in that part of the vessel where the gang plank was to be swung. Among the passengers who were here gathered was an aged lady. She was dressed plainly and almost commonly. There was a bad rent in her ample cloak. Her face was furrowed, and her hair was streaked with white. This was the widow of Abraham Lincoln. She was almost unnoticed. She had come alone across the ocean, but a nephew met her at Quarantine. She has spent the last four years in the south of France. When the gang plank was finally swung aboard, Mlle. Bernhardt and her companions, including Mme. Columbier of the troupe, were the first to descend. The fellow-voyagers of the actress pressed about her to bid adieu, and a cheer was raised, which turned her head and provoked an astonished smile, as she stepped upon the wharf. The gates were besieged, and there was some difficulty in bringing in the carriage which was to convey the actress to her hotel. She temporarily waited in the freight office at the entrance to the wharf. Mrs. Lincoln, leaning on the arm of her nephew, walked toward the gate. A policeman touched the aged lady on the shoulder and bade her stand back. She retreated with her nephew into the line of spectators, while Manager Abbey’s carriage was slowly brought in. The Bernhardt was handed inside, and the carriage made its way out through a mass of struggling ’longshoremen and idlers who pressed about it and stared in at the open windows. After it, went out the others who had been passengers on the Amerique, Mrs. Lincoln among the rest.”

Mrs. Lincoln went at once to Springfield, where her sister resided, and took up her abode with her, leading thenceforth a quiet and retired life. Her only son Robert was appointed Secretary of War by President Garfield. Some years previous to that event he had married the daughter of ex-Senator Harlan, and has a family of children growing up about him.