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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 knowledge of the Civil War period.
Although the private lives of political couples have inside our era become front-page news, the real story of the extraordinary and tragic first family has never been fully told. The Lincolns eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information which makes couple, president and first lady, stand out in all their proud accomplishments and earthy humanity.
Epstein provides fresh close-up view of the few’s life in Springfield, Illinois (with their twenty-two years of marriage, all but six were spent there). We witness the troubled courtship of aristocratic and bewitching Southern belle and a struggling young attorney who concealed his great ambition with self-deprecating humor; the excitement and confusion of the newlyweds as they get started their marriage in a little room above a tavern, and the early signs of Mary’s instability and Lincoln’s moodiness; their joyful creation of the home on the border 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 famous 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 essential to the Union’s success. After the death with their little boy, not really 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 long run, there was little left of the Lincolns’ relationship save their enduring devotion to one another and to their surviving children.
Written with enormous sweep and striking imagery, The Lincolns is an unforgettable epic set at the guts of a crucial American administration. Additionally it is 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 information seem to be as real and human being as ordinary people.
