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The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel Mark Epstein
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 47800
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0345477995
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.70922
EAN: 9780345477996
ASIN: 0345477995
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
From the Author: What's New in The Lincolns, Portrait of a Marriage? During the years I was researching and writing this book I was asked again and again: Have you found anything new, in facts or perspective? The answer is yes, and yes again. Everything is new in the sense that when one puts aside the stereotypes associated with the Lincolns, a rich and complex married life emerges. The stereotypes are: Mary was crazy, and Abraham was a saint. The most popular myth is that Lincoln married a madwoman, and suffered patiently and heroically through twenty-two miserable years of marriage. After my research, I reached two conclusions that shaped my portrait of the marriage. First, these two people loved each other deeply, from the time they met in Springfield in 1839, until his assassination in 1865. The second is that Mary was extremely interested in Abraham's career and speeches; whenever they could, the two of them talked about these things. She was a strong political partner for him. The rest of my work has been a careful gathering of details. Here again, there is a lot that is new. First, this is the only book about the marriage that recounts the Springfield years (16 years out of 22) in as much detail as the White House years. In Springfield the family achieved a delicate balance that was destabilized in wartime Washington. The story that began as a romance turns to tragedy. The Lincolns' courtship was stormy; he broke off their engagement in 1840, and they were not reconciled until 1842. New evidence indicates that Lincoln believed he had syphilis, and would not resume the courtship until he believed he was cured. I discovered letters from Mary's brother-in-law that shed light on the courtship, and the abrupt reconciliation and marriage in 1842. This is the first book to connect Lincolns reading of The Niles Register (a news magazine of the time) with his speeches against the Mexican War during his term of congress in 1847-48. In their Washington boarding house in 1848, the Lincolns witnessed the abduction of a black servant who was buying his freedom. Using newspaper accounts of the time I was able to detail this terrifying incident. Mary's physical abuse of her husband has mostly been a matter of rumor. In 1857 she is supposed to have hit her husband with a stick of firewood, injuring his nose. I was able to find store receipts for a gelatin plaster that Lincoln purchased on the date witnesses saw him wearing the plaster cast, on his nose, in court. Much has been written about the plot to assassinate Lincoln on his way through Baltimore for the inauguration. This book is the first to describe the danger to which Mary and her sons were exposed en route to Baltimore while Lincoln passed secretly from Harrisburg to Washington. The Presidential train with Mary aboard served as a decoy, and the journey through "mob city" was a nightmare. One of the most exciting moments of my research was in discovering a poem of Albert Laighton's that the Lincolns read together. It shaped the last lines of Lincolns' first inaugural address. Another was the discovery of a letter from a Washington physician describing Mrs. Lincoln's handling of a medical crisis in the White House (when her children had measles) that disproves the received opinion she was too unstable to handle such emergencies. There's a lot more that is new, but I don't want to spoil it here. I felt honored to be entrusted with these materials, and to tell the Lincolns' story. --Daniel Mark Epstein
Product Description
The first full-length portrait of the marriage of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in more than fifty years, The Lincolns is a fascinating new work of American history by Daniel Mark Epstein, an award-winning biographer and poet known for his passionate understanding of the Civil War period.
Although the private lives of political couples have in our era become front-page news, the true story of this extraordinary and tragic first family has never been fully told. The Lincolns eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information that makes husband and wife, president and first lady, come alive in all their proud accomplishments and earthy humanity.
Epstein gives a fresh close-upview of the couple’s life in Springfield, Illinois (of their twenty-two years of marriage, all but six were spent there). We witness the troubled courtship of an aristocratic and bewitching Southern belle and a struggling young lawyer who concealed his great ambition with self-deprecating humor; the excitement and confusion of the newlyweds as they begin their marriage in a small room above a tavern, and the early signs of Mary’s instability and Lincoln’s moodiness; their joyful creation of a home on the edge of town as Lincoln builds his law practice and makes his first forays into politics. We discover their consuming ambition as Lincoln achieves celebrity status during his famed debates with Stephen A. Douglas, which lead to Lincoln’s election to the presidency.
The Lincolns’ ascent to the White House brought both dazzling power and the slow, secret unraveling of the couple’s unique bond. The Lincolns dramatizes certain well-known events with stunning new immediacy: Mary’s shopping sprees, her defrauding of the public treasury to increase her budget, and her jealousy, which made enemies for her and problems for the president. Yet she was also a brilliant hostess who transformed the shabby White House into a social center crucial to the Union’s success. After the death of their little boy, not a year after Lincoln took office, Mary turned for solace to spirit mediums, but her grief drove her to the edge of madness. In the end, there was little left of the Lincolns’ relationship save their enduring devotion to each other and to their surviving children.
Written with enormous sweep and striking imagery, The Lincolns is an unforgettable epic set at the center of a crucial American administration. It is also a heartbreaking story of how time and adversity can change people, and of how power corrupts not only morals but affections. Daniel Mark Epstein’s The Lincolns makes two immortal American figures seem as real and human as the rest of us.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Facinating portrait of Lincoln and his Lady November 10, 2008
I come from Paris, Illinois and grew up with the mistique of Lincoln. He was a circuit Lawyer who tried cases in the Paris Court House. My parents owned a piano that matched one in the Lincoln White House. I heard a review of the book on NPR and was intrigued. Now is a great time to become more familiar with Lincoln. Our president-elect Obama makes reference to events and speeches recounted from Lincoln's Springfield days. It reads like a novel and paints wonderful vinettes of life in the 1830s thru 1860s.
I enjoyed the author's inclusion of information from letters to Mary's confidents and the interests that the Lincoln's share - theater, poetry and literature of the day. The book reads like a drama not unlike some of our more recent first couples of the land. The ambition shared, the personal failings of character they each had. Finally, the strength of character that made A. Lincoln such a remarkable President.
 Framing of the shrew October 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Epstein's biography of President and Mrs. Lincoln's marriage is relentlessly depressing. Is it an accurate reflection of their living relationship? Perhaps, but it is hard to see in this account the genius who belonged to the ages.
In Epstein's view, Lincoln's fault was an occasional distance that removed him spiritually and psychologically from a scene even when he was bodily there; Mary Lincoln's faults, were, well, everything else. No doubt she is a tragic figure in history, but painting her as relentlessly jealous, grasping, domineering, bitter, shrewish, over-ambitious, corrupt, and violent has the perhaps-intended effect of adding new arguments in favor of Lincoln's qualifications for sainthood. I was left feeling pity for her, and wonderment that he maintained his calm in the face of such a harridan. . . .
. . . And I was also left feeling that Epstein has stacked his argument. Surely no man, saintly as we know Lincoln was, would have voluntarily persevered so nobly of his wife really was as Epstein paints her. A marriage requires an attraction of eye, mind, and soul between two people that Epstein is never able to find.
Part of the problem with this book, is hinted at in Ken Burn's back-cover praise for the book: "Will we ever tire of trying to understand this man?" The primary sources, and prime facts, have already been mined and memorized so thoroughly that there is nothing new left by which we can get a handle on Lincoln, so Epstein's effort is bound to appear strained. And because there is little primary documentation that sheds light on the Lincolns' marriage, Epstein has to speculate and extrapolate too often. Epstein is finally left to argue at times that paucity of documentation is proof of distance, which may be true, especially during the White House years when some of Mary's absences and silences seem oddly timed--but may also be the result of historical accident (lost documentation) or intentional forgetfulness (selective destruction of documentation to maintain privacy).
Epstein's account does provide the value service of reminding us that Lincoln, so often portrayed as the larger-than-life lone hero, was in fact husband first, then father, then President, before attaining historical canonization. These reminders are most necessary and most interesting at times of the greatest danger in Lincoln's brief Presidential career--the 1861 train ride into Washington under threat of assassination, and the 1864 stand on the Washington, DC ramparts under threat of gunfire, for example.
The Lincolns: Biographer Epstein does a splendid job in presenting tumultuous and tragic marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln October 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was a poor Kentuckian who rose to national stature becoming elected our 16th President of the United States in 1861. Most lists of the best presidents place him at the top. His wife Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) was the daughter of the socially prominent Todd family of Lexington, Ky. Their marriage was difficult, tragic and worthy of the skills of a great biographer.Epstein succeeds in his portrayal of their troubled life together in nineteenth century frontier America and in the halls of power in Washington DC during the dark days of the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln married Mary in 1842. They were living in Springfield, Illinois where the state capital had recently been relocated from Vadelia.
Abraham had raised himself by the bootstraps., He began life as a poor lad growing up with very little schooling on the Kentucky and Indiana frontier. After migrating to Illinois he tried his hands at many jobs before become a circuit riding lawyer. Mary was a wealthy woman from Lexington who spoke French, was well educated and grew up a few miles from the home of Kentucky's famous Whig Senator Henry Clay. Mutual friends brought the two together drawn by passion, Whig politics and wit.
After a stormy courtship which led to a time of separation the two were wed in 1842. Lincoln was tall while Mary was short. Mary had a vicious temper, tart tongue and was moody. Lincoln and she became the parents of four sons. Robert the eldest was a Harvard graduate and became president of a railroad company. Eddie died in 1850 while Willie died in 1852 as a result of cholera while living in the White House. Tad died in 1871. Mary and Abraham were permissive parents; Mary never got over the tragic loss of her sons and two of her brothers fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The two were often apart for weeks as Lincoln tried cases across Illinois and served a term as a congressmen in Washington during the Polk administration. =Mary and the boys tried life in Washington but grew homesick for Kentucky and Illinois leaving the lonely Lincoln to fulfill his term as a one term congressman who opposed the Mexican War.
Lincoln won the White House as a Republican in the election of 1860 facing the problems of civil war. Northerners falsely accused Mary of being a Southern spy! Mary was much scorned by elite Washington society as being a crude Westerner. She spent lavishly on redecorating the White House earning a good deal of justifiable criticism from the public and her own frugal husband. Mary was jealous of other younger and more beautiful women in wartime Washington.
Abraham Lincoln was a melancholy man who kept his thoughts to himself. He was intellectually miles ahead of the moody Mary. The two kept relatively separate lives during the dark days of the Civil War. They did love one another and neither had extramarital affairs. President Lincoln knew how to handle Mary in her time of mental afflictions even though he sometimes suffered her wrath. She was known as a hellcat and many found it difficult to work with her. Others such as Senator Charles Sumner considered her a friend. Mary had a good heart often visiting wounded soldiers and helping friends. She was not an easy person to know or like.
Tragedy came to the couple when Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre on April 15, 1865. Mary was devasted never really recovering her mental stability following the death of Abraham, her children and the tragedies of the Civil War.
Hundreds of books have been written about both Lincolns but this is the best popular and readable history of their marital life. Epstein has done his homework.Epstein makes his two complex subjects come alive for the reader. The book is over 500 pages of small print which is detailed but never dull. An excellent book by an excellent biographer. Highly recommended!
 Way Too Biased in Favor of Mary September 29, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The "portrait" of this famous couple's relationship is not an accurate portrayal, rather it is a whitewashing of Mary Lincoln's destructive role in it. While there can be no doubt that it began with great cherishing on both sides, Mary's narcissistic, violent and venal character twisted their love into something so meaningless that little survived it but tolerant loyalty on his part and hysteria on hers.
As the author admits, it is no longer fashionable to paint Lincoln as a saint and the movement to rehabilitate Mary has gained momentum of late, especially as evidenced by Epstein's own "Portrait." In truth, Mary represented a civil war within the Lincolns' personal lives and was the worst possible mate for this complex man.
Nonetheless, Epstein would have you believe that Mary gave Lincoln self-confidence, was his intellectual equal, provided a nourishing home life and partnered him in his ambitions. She had long ago determined to marry a "president" and by damn, she'd make her man one even if he was too gutless to do it himself. And thus you have Epstein's version of Mary the dynamo and Lincoln her bright but vacillating vessel.
The objective evidence of their lives (i.e., less advocacy-prone studies than Epstein's), indicate that the substantive merit was on Lincoln's part and Mary was at first helpful, then incidental and finally detrimental to his success. Long before they reached the White House, Mary had become an albatross; unstable and frightening.
At first she was an amazing catch for this gangly lad - pretty and vivacious, well-connected, educated and flatteringly adoring. But the flaws in her personality surfaced within months of their marriage when he, abstracted at breakfast one morning, failed to take note of her chatter and she threw a cup of scalding coffee in his face, witnessed with horror by several residents of their boarding house. Other incidents of hitting, screaming, and slapping followed - including one when she smashed his face with a piece of firewood and another when she attacked him with a kitchen knife. And these were pre-presidential public displays - God knows what happened when no one was present to report it.
And how does Epstein report such violence? "So she struck her husband from time to time..." Not a big deal. It was beyond her control. And Lincoln "sulked and brooded and grieved over it if he could not laugh it off." Like most domestic abusers, Mary was contrite, but repeated the addictive behavior. And thank God for servants because she could beat them with impunity and regularly did so.
Mary's violence was so notable that the Springfield sheriff reported that Lincoln would sometimes pick up one of the boys and walk away until Mary "returned to her senses". Epstein writes about this domestic horror like it was just a normal backyard tiff instead of Lincoln trying to escape his wife's violent rages and protecting his children from possible harm. Epstein hustles this ugliness offstage in preference to imaginary scenes of fireside bliss where the two of them read poetry and Shakespeare and Lincoln even reworked his political speeches until the astute Mary was satisfied.
What astonished this reader more than Epstein's scenes of fictional harmony in Springfield was his deliberate refusal to acknowledge Mary's latent and later, patently manifest, mental illness. She suffered bouts of "moodiness", yes he admits that, but bi-polar? Epstein never mentions it, even in view of today's understanding of Mary's severe mental illness. (See Robert Lincoln's "Insanity File", in which her son discloses during conservatorship proceeding Mary's post-assassination paranoia, obsessive/compulsiveness and bizarre hallucinations: iron pins coming out of her eyes, an Indian ghost who peeled back her skull and removed her brains, then replaced them, and endless purchasing of hundreds of articles of unused clothing and curtains.)
The minutiae of the Lincolns' political journey to the White House is exhaustively documented, as is the marital breakdown the couple sustained once they had achieved their presidential dream.
Lincoln did the best he could for the good of the union and suffered for it profoundly. Mary, meanwhile, indulged in expensive shopping junkets, embezzled government funds, took instantly to influence peddling for her family and friends, tampered with the White House payroll, and engaged in actual treason. She was seen by all who interacted with her as overbearing, strange and demonic, even evil.
But it wasn't Mary's fault! It was the lack of time with her husband, her natural innocence and lack of a moral compass! It was Willie's sad death and the pressure and frustration of the job of having to look pretty and entertain all those people. No one understood the headaches and work, the having so much money to spend, and her desperation in trying to hide it once it got out of hand. Mary's sojourn as First Lady is a nightmare to read, but really, urges Epstein, don't blame her.
Epstein manages to equate Lincoln's failure to share military/state secrets with his duplicitous wife to a justifiable quid pro quo refusal on her part to come clean on her secret spending and unsavory relationships. And while Lincoln worked in a coma of exhaustion, Mary's sole objective was to keep him from knowing how serious her underhanded deeds had become. And of course to keep spending, spending, spending.
Lincoln's assassination was both a shock and relief to Mary, a horrible thing to say even now. But Mary's self interest had clearly grown beyond her. Narcissistic, mad and self indulgent as she was, Lincoln had been the only person who gave her latitude, compassion and tolerance, and it is no wonder that she lost her small scrap of sanity when he died. Lincoln had reigned in, even controlled to some degree, Mary's most unmanageable and disturbed personality manifestations, and his death triggered a complete implosion that lasted until her death seventeen later.
Anyone who parses the endless Lincoln studies knows well that, however great his genius, Lincoln was tortured by his own neurotic, insecure and depressive nature. But he was not psychotic. Mary was, destructively so.
"The Lincolns: A Portrait of a Marriage" is a long read and a well-researched one, but too partisan for a healthy portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and the reality of their internal dynamics. Worse, it minimizes the damage Mary's madness and greed had upon a truly great man and a nation in shock at itself.
Five stars for research but one for conspicuous bias = two stars.
Adequate September 17, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have not finished this book yet but will soldier on through to the end. I have read so many books about Abraham Lincoln and also about Mary Todd Lincoln and have found them much more readable. I feel the author has tried to drag out the narrative to fill a 500 page book. The lives of A. and M.T. Lincoln are so compelling and the book should be as well. P
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