5fish
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
- Location
- Central Florida
History has vilified Mary Todd Lincoln or cast her in a bad light, Why? I search and found her Champion a writer named Irving Stone a writer of historical fiction and Biographer. Many of his books were made into movies in the 1950's like Van Gough starring Kirk Douglas and Michaelangelo starring Charlton Heston were based on books by Irving Stone. He wrote a historical fiction novel about Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln's marriage and implies the romance of the ages...
I found this gem: Mary Todd Lincoln: Final Judgement? by Irving Stone... It is 16 pages long and out of print... I guess it was a speech he must have given on the topic...
I found a website on the above pamphlet... Mary Todd Lincoln must be sacrificed so Lincoln can be a Folk-god...
Snippets...
IRVING STONE Mary Todd Lincoln: A Final Judgment? A the outset I would like to suggest that there is not one Mary Todd Lincoln to consider, but four.
The first three phases are important to American history. The last phase, of the lonely, haunted woman wandering over the face of the earth, waiting for the day when she would rejoin her husband, are of little importance to history.
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Final Judgment' been a man, she would have gone on to a university degree and the fulfilling career to which brains, character, training, good looks, and exciting personality would have entitled her.
IRVING STONE of commentators have carried backward their impressions from the post-assassination letters to form their judgment of what kind of a wife, mother and First Lady, Mary Lincoln had been before that assassination. There is solid evidence that this kind of prejudiced thinking is continuing to this day. Another part of the explanation lies in Herndon's indefatigable energies and hatred. Even three years after Mary's death he was still spewing forth in public such offal about Mary Lincoln as "liar, subject to fits of madness, a tigress, imperious, insolent, a she-wolf, soured, gross, avaricious." Hate can do no better. Unless, of course, it is the curious invention of an Ann Rutledge, of Lincoln's love for her... the one and only great love of his life. All of this rank nonsense designed to prove that Lincoln never loved his wife! Why? The core of the problem, I have come to believe, lies in the world's uncritical, all-encompassing adoration of Abraham Lincoln as something considerably more than a man. In many minds he has made the transition from folk-hero to folk-god, in something of the same process that enveloped Alexander the Great. As a folk-god, it would not have been possible for Abraham Lincoln to have loved a mortal woman, any mortal woman. Had he done so, that would have reduced him in stature. In order to maintain him as the great folk-god, it was necessary to give him a wife who would be the worst and most insupportable wife since Xantippe. To all of the tragic burdens which Abraham Lincoln had to shoulder during the Civil War, his stature as a folk-god would be enhanced by adding one more ever-present and inescapable burden, Herndon's "female wild cat of the age." The more we beat Mary Lincoln down, the more we raise up Abraham Lincoln, until he towers in the skies above us, a dark, bearded God, giving life to Adam, his American people. The more we hate Mary Lincoln, the more we love an immortal Abraham Lincoln. This is the mystique which has poisoned the pages of history on which the name of Mary Todd Lincoln appears. This is also the reason why there cannot be today, and perhaps never will be, a final judgment on Mary Lincoln. The uninformed American public has developed a vested interest in their condemnation
Links I found to the pamphlet...
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln2/5656420.0001.001?view=toc
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln2/5656420.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
I found this gem: Mary Todd Lincoln: Final Judgement? by Irving Stone... It is 16 pages long and out of print... I guess it was a speech he must have given on the topic...
I found a website on the above pamphlet... Mary Todd Lincoln must be sacrificed so Lincoln can be a Folk-god...
Snippets...
IRVING STONE Mary Todd Lincoln: A Final Judgment? A the outset I would like to suggest that there is not one Mary Todd Lincoln to consider, but four.
The first three phases are important to American history. The last phase, of the lonely, haunted woman wandering over the face of the earth, waiting for the day when she would rejoin her husband, are of little importance to history.
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Final Judgment' been a man, she would have gone on to a university degree and the fulfilling career to which brains, character, training, good looks, and exciting personality would have entitled her.
IRVING STONE of commentators have carried backward their impressions from the post-assassination letters to form their judgment of what kind of a wife, mother and First Lady, Mary Lincoln had been before that assassination. There is solid evidence that this kind of prejudiced thinking is continuing to this day. Another part of the explanation lies in Herndon's indefatigable energies and hatred. Even three years after Mary's death he was still spewing forth in public such offal about Mary Lincoln as "liar, subject to fits of madness, a tigress, imperious, insolent, a she-wolf, soured, gross, avaricious." Hate can do no better. Unless, of course, it is the curious invention of an Ann Rutledge, of Lincoln's love for her... the one and only great love of his life. All of this rank nonsense designed to prove that Lincoln never loved his wife! Why? The core of the problem, I have come to believe, lies in the world's uncritical, all-encompassing adoration of Abraham Lincoln as something considerably more than a man. In many minds he has made the transition from folk-hero to folk-god, in something of the same process that enveloped Alexander the Great. As a folk-god, it would not have been possible for Abraham Lincoln to have loved a mortal woman, any mortal woman. Had he done so, that would have reduced him in stature. In order to maintain him as the great folk-god, it was necessary to give him a wife who would be the worst and most insupportable wife since Xantippe. To all of the tragic burdens which Abraham Lincoln had to shoulder during the Civil War, his stature as a folk-god would be enhanced by adding one more ever-present and inescapable burden, Herndon's "female wild cat of the age." The more we beat Mary Lincoln down, the more we raise up Abraham Lincoln, until he towers in the skies above us, a dark, bearded God, giving life to Adam, his American people. The more we hate Mary Lincoln, the more we love an immortal Abraham Lincoln. This is the mystique which has poisoned the pages of history on which the name of Mary Todd Lincoln appears. This is also the reason why there cannot be today, and perhaps never will be, a final judgment on Mary Lincoln. The uninformed American public has developed a vested interest in their condemnation
Links I found to the pamphlet...
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln2/5656420.0001.001?view=toc
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln2/5656420.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
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