Oh, Mary! makes a monster of Mary Todd Lincoln – but has history been too harsh?

The legacy of US President Abraham Lincoln is beyond reproach: he emancipated the slaves and saved the Union in the American Civil War. That’s enough to enshrine him as one of the best to have ever served in the Oval Office. When it came to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, however, the history books have been less kind.

The First Lady is remembered as a tragic figure with a troubled mental state, which worsened throughout her life as she endured a series of devastating personal losses, including Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Prone to depression, headaches and tempers, she battled inner demons within and censure without. Her own son had her committed to an insane asylum.

While that does not sound like a story filled with laughs, Mary Todd Lincoln has inspired the darkly comic and deeply silly stage play Oh, Mary!, currently playing on Broadway in New York City and in London’s West End.

*Warning: spoilers for the stage play ahead *

Leaving historical accuracy far behind, it gleefully reframes her as a miserable alcoholic longing to escape her closeted homosexual presidential husband and become a cabaret star.

Who was the real Mary Todd Lincoln?

Mary Todd Lincoln was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 to 1865. Following his assassination, she would live for another 17 years, although she was consumed by her grief and deteriorating mental health.

Her sad end was the more poignant given that, in her youth, Mary had the makings for a successful role in the political landscape of Washington, DC, thanks to an upbringing that fostered her education, intelligence and social standing.

Born on 13 December 1818, she was the fourth child of a wealthy and well-connected businessman, Robert Smith Todd, and Eliza Ann Parker Todd, daughter of a prominent family. Mary lost her mother at the age of six and her father quickly remarried. With a total of 16 children, there was little affection in the Todd household.

Yet Mary received an excellent education: her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, was known as the ‘Athens of the West’ as it had grown into an intellectual and cultural stronghold for progressive thought. She had six years of studies, followed by four more at an elite institution called Madame Mentelle’s School for Young Ladies, where she excelled in numerous subjects, especially French.

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How did Mary Todd meet Abraham Lincoln?

In 1839, Mary moved to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister Elizabeth. As her sister’s husband was the son of a former governor of Illinois, Mary immediately became accustomed to socialising with politicians. One rising star of the Democratic Party, Stephen A Douglas, tried to court her.

The man who caught her eye, though, was a country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. With a dirt-poor upbringing and few prospects beyond a career in politics, he hardly made a fitting match with the accomplished, attractive and ambitious Mary. Yet their shared passions and intellectual pursuits brought them together and the two soon formed a close bond.

Although Mary’s family did not approve of Lincoln, the pair married at Elizabeth’s home on 4 November 1842. Over the next 11 years, living in Springfield, they had four sons – Robert, Edward, Willie and Tad – but it was not the happiest of marriages. Lincoln spent long periods of time away from home, either campaigning for office or travelling as a circuit lawyer.

Then, in 1850, their son Edward died from tuberculosis at the age of three. Coming less than a year after her father had passed away, a traumatised Mary fell into depression. It would not be the last time.

Yet all the while, she proved a crucial partner of her husband’s burgeoning political career, hosting events with influential people and acting as a behind-the-scenes counsel. With her support, he rose to be a presidential candidate for the anti-slavery Republican Party in the 1860 election – where, incidentally, one of his opponents would be none other than Douglas, the man who had unsuccessfully courted Mary.

Following Lincoln’s victory, the family moved to Washington, DC, and Mary prepared for her role as First Lady.

Was Abraham Lincoln gay?

Despite his marriage to Mary, the question of Lincoln’s sexuality has been widely debated with a growing school of thought claiming that he was gay or bisexual. Oh, Mary!’s Lincoln is very much married to Mary for appearances only.

In his youth, he was, according to his stepmother, “not very fond of girls,” and had intensely close relationships with several man, particularly Joshua Speed, a partner in a Springfield general store. Before his marriage, Lincoln shared a bed with Speed for a number of years, and they wrote intimate letters to each other. During his presidency, he was said to have shared a bed with his bodyguard, David Derickson.

Yet there is no definitive evidence of Lincoln’s sexuality. Such claims have been refuted with the argument that, in the 19th century, it was far from uncommon for men to share a bed in a non-sexual way. His relationships with men like Speed were a clear sign of intimacy, but not necessarily sexual attraction. The debate, therefore, continues.

Mary Todd Lincoln as First Lady

By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and the American Civil War was about to break out. This posed an immediate problem for Mary. As she was born to a slave owner in Kentucky, a state which now straddled the Union North and Confederate South, questions were raised about her loyalty. Indeed, she had a brother and three half-brothers had fought for the South; two of her half-brothers had died for it.

Mary, however, opposed slavery and was committed to her husband’s cause. To that end, she visited hospitals and battlefields, supported the Contraband Relief Association – which provided food, clothing, shelter and medical care to freed slaves – and set about sprucing up the White House in order to present a stable, modern government.

Those renovations came under attack from the press, who criticised her wild spending habits on the lavish redecorations. Around this time, in another moment of visible excess, she took to stockpiling expensive, glamorous gowns made by her personal dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, who had been formerly enslaved but had forged a reputation as a successful seamstress.

Vilified and unpopular, Mary then suffered the tragic loss of another son when Willie, aged 11, died of typhoid fever in 1862. Falling into despair, she did not leave her room for months and so missed the funeral, which was held in the East Room of the White House.

Meanwhile, the physical ailments that peppered her adult life worsened, including headaches, mood swings and almost manic fits of extravagant spending. In the years since, Mary’s health has fuelled countless attempts at diagnosis, ranging from bipolar disorder to an autoimmune disease called pernicious anaemia.

After her losses, a desperate Mary turned to spiritualism and even held seances in the hopes of reconnecting with her lost children. More loss followed just three years later when, on 14 April 1865 – just as the outlook appeared brighter with the end of the war – Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Mary was sitting next to him in Ford’s Theatre when he was shot in the back of the head.

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What happened to Mary Todd Lincoln after Abraham’s death?

With her mental health deteriorating in the aftermath of Abraham’s assassination, Mary fled the US – where grief and bad press plagued her – and travelled in Europe for several years. She grew increasingly paranoid about money, despite continuing her excessive spending, and lobbied for a widow’s pension from Congress, which was granted in 1870.

The following year, however, she had to endure yet another death: her son Tad, shortly after turning 18. Now in a deep depression, she returned to the US, where her last surviving son, Robert, became extremely concerned about her erratic behaviour.

He called for a trial on her sanity that resulted in Mary being institutionalised in 1875, confined to a sanatorium for several months. Even after being released and a second trial declaring her to be sane, the public humiliation was all but complete.

After a second escape to Europe, she spent her last years in failing health and living in Springfield once again.

On 16 July 1882, aged 63, Mary died of a stroke at her sister’s home, the same building where she had married Abraham almost 40 years earlier. She was buried alongside her husband and three sons in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.