Lecture series ends with look at Mary Todd Lincoln
By Russ Morgan (Contact)
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Mary Todd Lincoln’s influence within the White House and the executive mansion’s effects on the Lincoln family were the topics of the final lecture in the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Symposium Wednesday night at the Granada Theatre.
Jean Baker, professor of history at Goucher College, started her talk, “Mary Todd Lincoln’s White House” by saying the first lady would have loved the Granada.
“She was a spiritualist late in her life,” Baker said, “and indeed that’s what got her into some difficulties. When I speak about her, sometimes I think she reappears, perhaps in the lights, these lovely lights tonight. And what she tells me is ‘Say good things about me. Don’t say those terrible things that my enemies have to some extent ruined my reputation with.”
Baker took the audience back to 1861, the day after President Lincoln gave his first inaugural address. Baker said on that day, Mary Lincoln “took the measure of her new house,” and was disappointed.
Even though the White House, or the President’s House as it was then called, had 31 rooms and was larger than any house in which the Lincolns had ever lived, Mary Lincoln was not impressed with the interior of the house, its less than spectacular furniture, peeling wallpaper and “tawdry” decorations.
“‘Seedy and dilapidated,’ reported Mary Lincoln’s outspoken cousin, Lizzy Grimsley,” Baker said. “In the opinion of these two sharp-eyed housewives from a prairie town, the mansion’s only elements appeared in the East Room and Red Rooms with their moldings, frescoed ceilings and carefully drawn proportions. But threadbare rugs, soiled upholstery and faded curtains diminished even the elements of these rooms.”
The two women decided to improve the president’s house, including finding new china to replace the chipped set that only was capable of serving 10.
During the Civil War, the president and his officials administered the business of the White House from a large south room on the second floor just down the hall from the family rooms.
“Like the ceremonial staterooms downstairs, these rooms had been neglected as well,” Baker said. “By all accounts from those who visited the second floor, the family rooms were meagerly decorated, with inferior furniture in dark, scarred mahogany. Relics from the days of James Madison’s administration.”
During the Civil War, the White House’s role in national matters took on an added significance, Baker said, “both symbolically and in reality.” The White House during that time came to serve three functions: as a home and private space for the president’s family (including school and playground for sons Tad and Willie), as an executive office for the business of the nation and the planning and execution of the war and as a location for ceremonial tasks, such as diplomatic dinners and soirees. Unlike in European countries, where these functions were separated, the White House filled all three purposes.
“For different reasons, in the United States the White House continues to fill these functions,” Baker said. “To her credit, Mary Lincoln immediately grasped the importance of the homes of the nation. Just as the domeless United States capitol conveyed the sense of an unfinished republic, ... so, in Mary Lincoln’s view, a shoddy president’s house would convey the powerlessness of a chief executive to foreign ambassadors, especially the French and British ambassadors, who were quite ready to recognize the Confederacy.”
Mary Lincoln set about redecorating the president’s house, Baker said, because she knew it would have international implications.
In her efforts to improve the White House, Mary Lincoln took trips to New York and Philadelphia to buy rugs, curtains and carpet. She sent a merchant to buy wallpaper from Paris for the Blue Room, and ordered a record day’s shopping of $2,000 for rugs and curtains.
“During her tenure as First Lady, she made as many as 10 trips” to New York and Philadelphia in her efforts to improve the White House, Baker said.
Mary Lincoln did not purchase much furniture, instead focusing on repairing and revarnishing existing furniture. One piece she did buy was the ornate mahogany bed that graces the Lincoln Bedroom, even though the Lincolns never slept in it.
Perhaps the most spectacular purchase Mary Lincoln made for the White House was a 200-piece set of Limoges china, with the United States seal on each piece.
Baker said that former critics of the White House, both foreign and native, were impressed with Mary Lincoln’s redecorative efforts, and the freshened White House, “the People’s House,” drew so much attention that attendants at state functions soon were leaving with souvenirs, curtain tassels, swatches of carpet and pieces of wallpaper.
The only structural change the Lincolns made to the White House was to cut a door from Lincoln’s second-floor office into the family room, so that he could retreat into the family room without traversing a corridor that was often filled with favor-seekers and constituents.
But while the White House provided a home for the Lincoln family and an office for the president, Baker said that while there the family was more isolated than ever.
“While her husband was home more than he ever had been in the past, the president also was not home at all,” she said. “He spent his prodigious hours attending to the proliferating business of the nation.”
And while the White House provided a place for the Lincoln children to play, there was tragedy there, too. The Lincolns were the first White House family since the Tylers to have young children while in office. The public enjoyed hearing about the exploits of young Tad and Willie, and light-hearted articles often were written describing the president playing with his sons. And while the young boys were encouraged to interact with their contemporaries, the demands of their father’s office led them to be cut off from meaningful relationships.
Then in February of 1862, Willie Lincoln died of typhus. The White House had its water pumped in from the Potomac River, and it is suspected that the river became contaminated with waste from Washington D.C.’s growing population and the soldiers stationed along its banks.
“And as it does for all first families, the White House ultimately altered the life of the family who lived there from 1861 until 1865,” baker said. “Every Lincoln had, for one reason or another, enjoyed the grandeur of the building and its public significance. But privately, life in the White House devastated this little band of five who had taken up residence in March of 1861. ...
“In the White House, ultimately, the private life of a family and the public duties of the president and the First Lady sadly and irrevocably merged, as along with a nation that had lost over 600,000 men, the White House claimed its casualties from the Lincoln family.”
Baker is the author or co-author of nine books, including “Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography,” along with 18 articles dealing with President Lincoln, women’s history and writing biography.
Jared Peatman of Texas A&M University opened the symposium with a speech, “The Centerpiece of American Racial Discourse?: The Gettysburg Address and the Civil War Centennial.”