Mary Todd Lincoln: Also called Mother Mary



Mary Todd Lincoln

According to Dave Blanchette at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois – after the Lincolns had children, Abraham always referred to Mary as “Mother” (and she to him as “Mr. Lincoln”).

Mary Lincoln (as she primarily referred to herself) certainly did strongly identify with motherhood.  When her beloved son, William Wallace Lincoln (Willie), died at age 11 during the White House years, Mary plunged into the first of many incapacitating depressions.  This was only compounded by the previous death of her son, Eddie - and the subsequent deaths of her husband, and of her son, Tad.

To cope with these worst nightmares of a loving mother and wife, Mary turned to spiritualism.  She had most likely begun learning about it during the 1840s and 50s.  According to her biographer, Jean H. Baker, by 1862 Mary was able self-induce psychic trances and dreams.  She also called upon the help of mediums in order to contact Eddie, Willie, and Alex (her Confederate stepbrother who had been killed in the Civil War).

According to the Lehrman and Lincoln Institutes, séances were regularly conducted for Mary Lincoln by a young medium named Nettie Colburn.  (These institutes also report that Abraham Lincoln attended one such session in which Colburn conveyed messages concerning the Emancipation Proclamation.)  Baker reports that Mary felt particularly comfortable with the family-like atmosphere of these Colburn séances, during which participants would sit holding hands in an intimate circle.

Since spiritualism was (and often still is) considered heretical by members of mainstream religions, Mary had to face even more public ridicule than usual.  Members of the public had deemed her insane, due to her dramatic displays of grief and intense mood swings.  Baker reports that the language used to describe spiritualism in those days was not all that different from the language used to describe insanity.  Words such as “trance,” “delirium” and “hysteria” were often applied to both.

Some today think that Mary’s behavior was in keeping with a bipolar diagnosis.  Others see her as the wife and “Mother” who was never able to recover from all her profound losses.

Resources

http://books.google.com/books?id=X84c9lc1wMsC&pg=PT281&lpg=PT281&dq=mary+todd+lincoln+spiritualism&source=bl&ots=aYhcZZgU9_&sig=EiUMMDI5IlBFAkdS2rgrrOrXJ7g&hl=en&ei=zRhXTf3eF8Gs8AaV7LiRBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&sqi=2&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=mary%20todd%20lincoln%20spiritualism&f=false

http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=709&subjectID=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Todd_Lincoln

Copyright February 18, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke