‘Loving Lincoln: A Personal History of the Women Who Shaped Lincoln’s Life and Legacy’
By Stacy Lynn
Southern Illinois University Press, 310 Pages
“Loving Lincoln” encompasses the women he befriended, defended in divorce actions, those who wrote to seek pardons and government offices for their husbands, writers like Ida Tarbell, Ruth Painter Randall, and Harriet Monroe, who wrote about his mother and wife — all to show that without their attention and affection, Abraham Lincoln could not have achieved greatness as a man and leader whose legacy is fulfilled every day in the work of those who tend to and emulate his example.
Stacy Lynn’s passionate and aggrieved book draws on her own dispiriting experiences that have helped her to identify with the women who have not been given enough credit for their contributions to Lincoln’s personal and public life. Working for many years on Lincoln’s papers, Ms. Lynn confronted sexism — expressed, for instance, in the comment of a senior male colleague who advised her not to wear so much eyeliner, as if that kind of criticism mattered any more than, she observes, mentioning a man’s comb over.
It is refreshing to read such a candid book, revealing how much a scholar’s personal experience can inform the study of her subject. Women are often subordinated in Lincoln biographies to accounts of major events in the service of a vision that has made Lincoln look like a self-made man.
No man is self-made, Ms. Lynn argues. A mother and step-mother, both of whom are depicted as more important than Lincoln’s father, furthered his ambition and his sensitivity to the lives of others that made him work that much harder for the public welfare of all Americans. Ms. Lynn cogently argues that Lincoln greeted women who came to see him in the White House as his constituents, even though they did not have the right to vote.
Mary Lincoln, and Ruth Painter Randall’s highly praised biography of her, receive significant attention, which shows that for all her faults — Mary’s tendency to alienate even staunch Lincoln supporters with her strenuous efforts on her husband’s behalf — Lincoln depended on her shrewd political acumen and independence. She nettled him but also helped him stay the course and make good on the greatness she knew was in him.
One of the most telling episodes in Ms. Lynn’s book is Ida Tarbell’s colloquy with John Nicolay, a Lincoln secretary and biographer, who told her that, in effect, she had no right to poach on his territory. An outraged Tarbell went on to discover new evidence that Nicolay said did not exist but that Lincoln’s son, Robert, produced for her. Tarbell’s biography has been lauded by many of Lincoln’s biographers, though her work is neglected today, as Ms. Lynn points out.
The sculptor Vinnie Ream, only 18 when she began her statue of Lincoln, had to brook male opposition because of her youth and sex, but she emerges in Ms. Lynn’s narrative as one of the great artists who captured Lincoln’s humanity.
Ms. Lynn quotes from many of Lincoln’s letters from the White House to women, demonstrating how much he believed they had contributed to the war effort. By asking for pardons, they helped Lincoln to facilitate the work of reconciliation that he knew must be pursued after the Civil War.
The sheer number of women Ms. Lynn describes constitutes so much of what most Lincoln biographers have neglected. These women reflect a part of history that has been lost or, in some cases, discounted. Yet women brought out in Lincoln some of his most eloquent language; they made him, you might, say, a better, capacious writer — attuned not only to the great forces of history but to the domestic lives of women whose daily heroism is cause for celebration in Ms. Lynn’s book.
It was a common thing to say in the second wave of feminism that the personal is political, and “Loving Lincoln,” fits that credo in its evocation of a man who even on the busiest days of war found the time and a place in his heart to engage with the women who wrote to him, visited him, and steadied him in some of the darkest days of his life.
Mr. Rollyson’s forthcoming book, “Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History,” includes a chapter on Mary Lincoln.
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