Existing comment:
The First Lady:
Intelligent and ambitious, Mary was a woman ahead of her time. As a young woman she had displayed what was considered an unladylike love of politics. She and her mother [???] a political partnership long before the term was used.
Moving [???] from Kentucky, Mary and her family mirrored the divided nation. The First Lady had one brother, three half-brothers, and three brothers-in-law fighting in Confederate armies. Her son, Robert, became a soldier i the Union army. With the evidence on which to base their charge, some in Washington claimed that Mary Lincoln herself was a Southern spy.
"Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"The Prince of Rails":
Among their neighbors, it was widely agreed that the Lincolns spoiled their children. Both parents had unhappy childhood memories. Moreover, the loss of their son, Eddie, at the age of four, made them all the more inclined to indulge their remaining sons.
The Lincoln's oldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, never enjoyed the uncomplicated affection showered on his younger brothers. Lincoln's political ambitions made him an absentee parent. By the time he was president, his eldest son was enrolled at Harvard. Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, once described Robert as "a Todd and not a Lincoln." This did not prevent opposition newspapers during the 1860 campaign from lampooning the Railsplitter's firstborn as "The Prince of Rails." |