![]() Later, in a tell-all book about the days after the assassination, Mary’s servant, dressmaker, and confidante Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley recalled “the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions” of the bereft widow. She terrified onlookers with her expressions of pain. Lincoln was making within the White House. Soon after Lincoln’s death, Washington was filled with rumors of the scenes Mrs. But Mary, who had also lost two of her sons in childhood and who is thought to have been bipolar, showed no restraint in her grief. Though the era was known for its lavish displays of mourning, social custom also dictated that upper class women suppress their emotions in public. The first whiff of trouble came in the form of Mary’s own reaction to her husband’s death. This created friction during her husband’s life, and after his death it would prove disastrous. Women, even famous wives, were expected to focus on the home and not seek attention or appear in public, but Mary loved the spotlight and had a knack for publicity. Mary Todd Lincoln had always had a hard time meeting the severe expectations for women of her era. But at the time, Mary’s behavior was seen as evidence that she was an improper woman. Today, we might see her erratic behavior as evidence of her possible bipolar disorder or as a sign of the trauma and loneliness she experienced during the chaotic days following her husband’s murder at the hands of actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. After his assassination, she struggled to survive-and became a laughingstock despite her precarious mental health. ![]() It was a stark preview of what awaited the First Lady after Lincoln’s death on April 15, 1865. Nearby, her husband was dying-but his wife of 23 years wouldn’t be there to see it. Hours before, she had witnessed the point-blank assassination of her husband Abraham Lincoln at the nearby Ford’s Theatre now, she had been banished from the president’s bedside by a furious Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who kicked her out of the room when she began to cry hysterically. Mary Todd Lincoln paced the parlor alone.
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