My last post brought up the remark of Alexander Williamson that Mary Lincoln made no effort to win popular favor. People who appreciated the kind of intense, polarizing, independent-minded personality she possessed always found her a lot simpler and more agreeable than most. Many with such a personality suffer in the historical record because so many people find them alienating or incomprehensible, and complexity gets lost with time and repetition.
One of the first things about Mary Lincoln that caught my interest was the general quality of her friends and associates. Someone who was overwhelmingly shallow and obnoxious wouldn’t have ended up in such a crowd, let alone become such an object of concern to them in her widowhood. She was no doubt difficult, but must have had a lot going for her.
Many of her friends were also difficult, intense, and/or eccentric, which makes sense. But some just got along well with this kind of person, like Williamson did. The opinions of both groups tend to contradict the picture often painted of her, which is that of someone who unintentionally gave offense due to her penchant for sarcasm and lack of emotional control. There is some truth in this, but her self-confidence and independent-mindedness is often under-emphasized, or treated as wildly out of place for a woman in that era, and therefore purely negative and accidental. Then and now, there are some people, women among them, who don’t optimize for likeability. Williamson’s comments show an awareness of this. Even Mary Clemmer Ames, whose characterization has been given undue weight in the historical record*, noted Mary Lincoln “took no pains to mollify her judges or to win the affections of any one who stood outside of her own personal regard.”
To get a better sense of Mary Lincoln’s personality, it is worth considering a few other remarks that don’t get a whole lot of attention.
After Lincoln’s election, abolitionist politician Joshua R. Giddings paid him a visit. He knew both Lincolns from their time sharing a boarding house many years earlier, while Lincoln was in Congress. He wrote home that Mary was “smart - and speaks right out in plain terms what she thinks.” When Alice D. Shipman was a young woman, she interacted with the then-widowed Mary Lincoln:
“She was vivacious and mercurial, full of repartee and dash, but never unrefined, and though by nature light-hearted, was not light-headed . . . She was perfectly frank and extremely spirited, and when she thought the occasion demanded it, capable no doubt of a cutting expression. To her native independence and candor of speech, I think, may be ascribed most of the actions and utterances at which strangers or mere acquaintances took umbrage. Those who knew her better understood that no offense was meant, and took none . . . Her individuality, as already intimated, was marked, and she had the courage of it.” The New York Sun, October 18, 1896.
Shipman does not portray her as a blunderer, but as blunt. Mary Lincoln generally meshed well with other blunt people.
J. K. C. Forrest, active in the Chicago newspaper and political community and stationed in Washington during the war, gave a similar assessment.
Mrs. Lincoln was not only a brilliant but an exceptionally independent woman. She never for a moment hesitated to express an opinion on any leading topic of the day or any public character. At times these opinions were biting.
Again, that she had a sharp tongue is well-acknowledged, but this is often portrayed as a regrettable emotional issue, largely separate from her high intelligence, and not a frequent manifestation of an independent and opinionated mind. Of course, it is possible to be both inoffensive and an independent thinker, but that’s not the point I’m making. Like Shipman, Forrest spotlighted her independence as the thread tying many of the other traits together, and is matter-of-fact about this rather than admonishing.
In the 1890s, Forrest mentioned Mary Lincoln in his newspaper column several times. He was often critical of her, but he had more ire for her powerful critics, blaming jealousy of Lincoln’s success for the bitterness of Illinois politicians even after the war. Mercilessly dismissing the judgment of another hostile group, he explained that Mary Lincoln possessed “a buoyant originality and independence of thought and manner which, while attractive to the intelligent, was repellent to the dull and stupid social nonentities with whom she came into contact.” We can only guess at who he had in mind, but I am working on a longer post about Forrest’s observations.
As you can probably see, Forrest was also very blunt. It was a far more common trait in that era. One of the things that makes it hard to understand Mary Lincoln is that she grew up in a time where successful people were often colorful, bold and combative in a way that is now much more uncommon. For one example, look at the life of Mary’s cousin, Cassius Clay. (Muhammad Ali was originally named after him, or, rather, after his father, who was named after Clay.) Wikipedia notes “Clay had a reputation as a rebel and a fighter,” and from the page, you can see why. At the same time, he had quite the career as a diplomat.
Cassius Clay was an early Southern planter who became a prominent anti-slavery crusader. Clay worked toward emancipation, both as a Kentucky state representative and as an early member of the Republican Party.
Clay was elected to three terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives, but he lost support among Kentucky voters as he promoted abolition. His anti-slavery activism earned him violent enemies. During a political debate in 1843, he survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gun. The scabbard of Clay's Bowie knife was tipped with silver, and in jerking the Bowie knife out in retaliation pulled this scabbard up so that it was just over his heart. Sam Brown's bullet struck the scabbard, and embedded itself in the silver. Despite being shot in the chest, Clay drew his Bowie knife, tackled Brown, cut out his eyes, and finally threw him over an embankment.
In 1845, Clay began publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky. Within a month he received death threats, had to arm himself, and regularly barricaded the armored doors of his newspaper office for protection, besides setting up two four-pounder cannons inside . . .
Clay served in the Mexican–American War . . . While making a speech for abolition in 1849, Clay was attacked by the six Turner brothers, who beat, stabbed and tried to shoot him. In the ensuing fight, Clay fought off all six and, using his Bowie knife, killed Cyrus Turner.
…Clay was briefly a candidate for the vice presidency at the 1860 Republican National Convention, but lost the nomination to Hannibal Hamlin.
…President Lincoln appointed Clay to the post of Minister to the Russian court at St. Petersburg on March 28, 1861.
…Recalled to the United States in 1862 to accept a commission from Lincoln as a major general with the Union Army, Clay publicly refused to accept it unless Lincoln would agree to emancipate slaves under Confederate control. Lincoln sent Clay to Kentucky to assess the mood for emancipation there and in the other border states. Following Clay's return to Washington, DC, Lincoln issued the proclamation in late 1862, to take effect in January 1863.
Clay resigned his commission in March 1863 and returned to Russia, where he served until 1869. He was influential in the negotiations for the purchase of Alaska.
…In 1872, Clay was one of the organizers of the Liberal Republican revolt. He was instrumental in securing the nomination of Horace Greeley for the presidency. In the political campaigns of 1876 and 1880, Clay supported the Democratic Party candidates. He rejoined the Republican party in the campaign of 1884
He had returned from Russia with an extra kid, and his wife refused to tolerate his infidelities any longer, so he divorced her for abandonment. Related to this, two of his daughters became women’s rights advocates. They used the Clay fighting spirit to change divorce laws to protect women like their mother.
Many years later, aged 84, he married “the 15-year-old orphaned sister of one of his sharecropping tenants.” He died in 1903 of "general exhaustion," and who could blame him after all that?
Kentuckians and people of Scotch-Irish heritage, like Mary Lincoln and Cassius Clay, were often singled out as the biggest, most independent personalities in that already flamboyantly individualistic era. The first thing Kentucky-born Lincoln said when introduced to Emerson was “I once heard you say in a lecture, that Kentuckian seems to say by his air and manners, ‘Here I am; if you don’t like me, the worse for you.’” Out of context, this seems like a descriptive statement on Emerson’s part; it was actually an approving judgment. Lincoln’s remark has been correctly described as an act of “playful self-defense” against the proper New Englander, and was appreciated as such.
Women were supposed to show more restraint than men, but women like Jane Swisshelm, who loved to go on about her “Covenanter” ancestors, were visible exceptions. Virtually no one else went quite as far as she did, but there was a lot of room for combative eccentricity for the generation that reached adulthood during “The Second Great Awakening.”
For anyone interested, a carte-de-visite of Willie Lincoln that Mary gave to Cassius Clay is now up for auction.
*The remarks of Mary Clemmer Ames will be covered in a future post.