White House Lectures; Abraham Lincoln

Were. Xeroxes proud to underwrite the public television presentation of the White House lectures Abraham Lincoln. The. Raps no president had greater doubts. Nor more brilliantly resolved them. On the subject of this inaugural lecture. Abraham Lincoln that I know. Is President. Lincoln abolished slavery. And he saved the Union. Perhaps no leader has been so severely tested. Before or since.

Stories of his patients his humanity his accessibility to even the homeless petition to spread throughout the north millions begin to refer to him as Father Abraham. For the first time. In American history how many people in the United States begin to see that the occupant of the White House was their representative. The first of a series of presidential essays about the office the White House lectures Abraham Lincoln. There was nothing extraordinary about his upbringing. He lived as comfortably as any boy could being raised on the American frontier. He lived in a log cabin and as most others in this time his formal schooling totaled less than a year. But what sets Abraham Lincoln aside from all others in his time and in history was not education or class rather his ability to convince a nation that democracy could and would be a lasting form of government. It was

Abraham Lincoln who gave us the timeless declaration that this government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth. Is unwavering belief in that statement would lead the country into a bitter war. Lincoln would no longer allow the issue of slavery to divide the American people. I guess that he is the present. President that is. Respected by all. Who freed the slaves. But he preserved the Union. And so it's. I know he's very special. In my book just in my scheme of things. But I think that's probably true of all the schoolchildren. And certain to be true of the people that see this lecture because he's he was so special. Ladies and gentlemen the president of the United States. Mrs. Bush Please be seated.

Well Professor Donald and Mrs. Donald it's a Chief Justice Rehnquist Chief Justice Burger I understand is here Secretary Cheney and the honorable in Cheney. Distinguished members of the Congress. General Powell let me welcome you to the White House and Barb and I are very pleased to have you here. It's a privilege. We're proud to host this lecture on the presidency of the United States. And this is the first in a series of lectures on the men who have held this office. And it seeks to make them come alive. What were they like how did they live. How was history the history of America's house molded by their dreams to occupy this office is to ask those questions and certainly to feel a kinship with those who have gone before. For each in his own way sought to do right and thus achieve good. And each felt a sacred trust

with every American. And often wondered I suspect how they could be worthy of that trust. Perhaps no president had greater doubts nor more brilliantly resolved them than the subject of this inaugural lecture. Abraham Lincoln of Eleanor as President Lincoln abolished slavery and he saved the Union. Perhaps no leader has been so severely tested before or since. And yet we remember Abe Lincoln not merely for what he did. We revere him for what he was. Lincoln was a strong man an arm wrestler a rail splitter yet also a mix of kindness and humility. He was at once a hard and gentle person a man of grief and yet of humor for he knew as he told Secretary of State Seward that if he did not tell stories he felt his heart would break. Tonight we have with us a distinguished man who undoubtedly

will tell stories. His name is David Donald the Charles Warren professor of American history at Harvard University a native of Mississippi. Mr. Donald graduated from the University of Illinois where he was a student of the great Lincoln scholar J.D. Randall. He has taught at some of America's greatest universities and has written eight books about Lincoln and the civil war twice receiving the Pulitzer Prize and biography. Moreover our guest is now working on a new biography of America's 16th president. One of the great scholars of perhaps our greatest president. Professor David Donald and thank you sir for being present. Thank. You Mr. President Mrs. Bush. Chief Justice

Rehnquist distinguished guest. It is of course an immense Ahmed to be here and I can't tell you how gratified I was when President and Mrs. Bush asked me to give this inaugural lecture. It is of course most appropriate that the first lecture on the presidency should be about Abraham Lincoln a subject that lends itself to an infinite number of very significant subjects. And there could be a talk this afternoon on Lincoln and the crisis of the Union. It could be a talk on Lincoln and emancipation. There could be a talk on Lincoln the politician they could be a talk on Lincoln in foreign relations on Lincoln and reconstruction all of these are weighty and significant topics which indeed I do hope that I will address in a book before very long. They are not my subject today or my scope here or my task here is a much more limited one tonight.

So low to the ground. My task my hope is to talk about the Lincoln's in the White House and how they lived what life was like in the White House during the Lincoln years. One of my colleagues in Cambridge told me that especially since we're being filmed by PBS I should call it upstairs downstairs in the White House. But that is indeed my thing. A few weeks after Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated president 1861 our own friend asked him how he liked living in the executive mansion as the White House originally called in those days. Brooding Lincoln said he was reminded he thought he was rather like the reprobate in the Springfield who had been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a radio. If it wasn't for the honor of it he said he'd much rather walk. That ride detached attitude was to serve Lincoln world during the next four years.

Unfortunately it was not an attitude that his wife Mary Todd Lincoln could share. When the lichens moved in the White House on March 4 1861 they were less prepared than any previous occupant. But they do this and challenges. They would have to face first of all they were remarkably young Lincoln with one exception was the youngest president elected up until that time. And Abel Illinois a lawyer who gained a national reputation in his debates with Stephen A Douglas Lincoln had no administrative experience of any kind. He had never been governor of the state. Now even Mayor of his town of Springfield. A profound student of the constitution and an assiduous reader of the writings of the founding fathers. He had remarkably little practical knowledge of the government that they had established. He had heard only a single rather unsuccessful term in Congress back in the 1840s and had

not come back to the national capitol since that time. The Lincoln in the 1850 years had conducted a considerable political correspondent across the nation. When he was helping organize the Republican Party he had few personal acquaintances and no close friends in the nation's capital. In charge of the country's Foreign Relations. He had no correspondents abroad and no acquaintance with a ruler of any foreign power. Nearly a decade younger than her husband Mary Lincoln was equally unprepared to be the wife of a president. The daughter of a world to do manufacture and Vergine. She had grown up in comfort in Lexington Kentucky and had received the best instruction of a liberal at the time including some instruction in print but for the past 25 years Mary Lincoln had lived in the sim a frontier town of Springfield with only an occasional visit to Kentucky and one unhappy winter in Washington when her husband was in Congress in a

modest frame house on Eighth Street in Springfield. She had made a comfortable middle class home for her husband and their children like Lincoln she had no friends in Washington. It's clear that if the Lincolns had occupied the executive mansion during the most triangle of times they would have had many adjustments to make. But he didn't 61 the circumstances were particularly difficult. The states of the Gulf South had already ceded and formed the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis and it hit. Confederate forces ringed Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor one of the few remaining Union installations still in the south and they threatened it momentarily. It's the same time the border states of the Union it was teetering between secession and loyalty. Lincoln had to face this crisis as the first Republican president first president

elected by his party who had to bring together discordant groups that had never before worked together. Even while he was trying to face this crisis he was besieged by demand for office on the part of Republicans who had helped bring him his victory besieged by these office seekers. Lincoln City he sometimes got like a hotelkeeper who was asked to rent rooms in one wing of his establishment while he was trying to put out a fire. In the other. Mary Lincoln's problems were equally severe because she was the wife of a Republican and she ardently and consistently supported her husband's political career and views the southern women who dominated Washington society and resolve to snap the book. The few New England win in the capital have distrusted her because she was Southern born and because eventually four of her brothers and three of her brothers in law enlisted in the Confederate army.

Just imagine if you could This would be as though Eleanor Roosevelt had three brothers and three brothers and four brothers who were officers in the German army during World War Two that was a comparable kind of situation it was easy to see why you would distrust such a person. Easterners in general were sure that Mary Lincoln was an uncouth frontier woman doubtless is an educated as is Indian squaw a baby smoking a corncob pipe. Anything that she did or failed to do was sure to be scrutinized and criticized very carefully. The Lincoln's Inn must have had too many misgivings on that first day in the White House on March 5 as they begin to explore the executive mansion. It's not clear that any of either of them had ever been in the building before. Certainly ex-president James Buchanan retiring President Buchanan gave no preview of the mansion. He did up the lift.

Initially the Lincolns were overwhelmed by the size of their new resident with it as we all know. Magnificent 31 rooms not counting the conservatory various outbuildings and stables. While the East Room alone was big enough to hide their entire Springfield house. After a quick inspection Lincoln who cared almost nothing about his physical surroundings pronounced the mansion in good shape and ready to settle down to work. But Mrs. Lincoln came up with a very different bird. She went from room to room. She found the furniture broken down the wallpaper peeling the carpeting worn the draperies torn the 11 basement rooms filthy and rat infested the whole place had the look of a rundown third rate hotel. Both of Lincoln's discovered immediately that the executive mansion was not just a how it was a public building. Indeed except for the small family dining room off to the left over there now all the rooms on this first floor

were open to all citizens at all hours of the day and indeed during most hours of the night. And anybody who wanted to be just wandered in. No permission required. There was a single elderly doorkeeper who was supposed to prevent vandalism but souvenir hunters wandered around and they were able to steal yard long swatches of drapes and carpet and to cut out the delicate medallions from the lace curtains. The Lincolns found that on the second floor to half the rooms nearly half the rooms were also public. They were devoted to the business of the chief executive. Here was the offices of the president secretaries the Cabinet Room and The Office of the president himself of which President Bush has so generously just showed it. Mr Downer and myself except for the solid black walnut table in the Cabinet Room the furnishings of this wing of the White House on the second floor were nondescript. The floor was covered with a kind of cloth which made it easy to clean

up after a spill of overrunning spittoon. From early morning until dusk these rooms were thronged with Senators Congressman applicants for government job candidates for military opponent foreign dignitaries and plain citizens who either had to ask who just wanted to see their president. Some brought notes and cards of introduction. Most simply presented themselves and waited for their turn. In the early months of Lincoln's first administration the line was so often that it extended out of his second floor office out into the corridor down the stairway all the way down to the first floor through the corridor here and out the North Portico with an at job applicant on each step just like birds on a telegraph line. Lincoln found himself in effect a prisoner in his own office. Every time he stepped out in the corridor to go to the family quarters in the West Wing of us here he was besieged by complaints and petitions.

Finally in order to gain a little privacy he ordered the only structural addition made to the White House during his administration. A partition built through the cabinet room which allowed him in effect to retreat unobserved from his office into the family quarters those family quarters which initially seemed so palatial proved to be remarkably constricted. There were in fact only six or seven rooms upstairs where the Lincoln could enjoy any privacy at all. And paradoxically there was no third floor at this time. Maybe the upstairs room the family sitting room and library Lincoln often read the two adjoining rooms on the south side where the bedrooms are president and this is Lincoln. Simply can slept badly and often had to be wait in the middle of the night to receive military dispatches. They use separate the connecting rooms across the wide corridor was the infrequently room of their oldest son Robert Todd Lincoln Robert Todd

Lincoln was a student at Harvard College and like any true Harvard man he was not going to let on that he was impressed by his father being president or by the White House or anything. You know. He rarely came to the White House except on vacation and usually his room was a guest room. Also on the north side were the rooms of the two youngest American boys Willie and Thomas always called Ted who was eight. Though to our dogs the executive mansion during the Civil War was necessarily not a happy place. How could the White House be a happy place when war is going on. But these two young Lincoln boys found in LIS opportunities for adventure and mischief. Now adults saw the troops stationed on the south grounds of the White House as an ominous reminder of danger but Willian Ted the members of this but Pennsylvania regiment were playmate who were always around for reduce our

gain. It's full of the martial spirit Willie and Ted took great pleasure in drilling all the neighborhood boys they could round up and showing something of their father's characteristics. They did the drilling. They were the leaders. With two special friends who just matched in age Byrd and Holly Taft children of a federal judge who lived nearby. They come in to the roof of the mansion where they have fought. And here with small logs painted to look like cannon they fired away Religulous lair invisible Confederate across the river there. It is true patriotic Willie published a poem in the Washington National Republican about the heroic death of a friend who had fallen in a minor engagement the president was so pleased with it. And who wouldn't be pleased at a point by a 10 year old son so pleased with it he carried the poem a clipping of it around in his wallet at all times. Ted on the other hand he was a little less clear about what was going on.

Once he created quite a sensation when President Lincoln solemnly reviewing troops out on Pennsylvania Avenue as the union troops marched by. Suddenly they all broke into laughter. Behind him Ted it's an unmoving waving a Confederate flag. Children in the White House were something new for Americans they never been little children in the White House before. And citizens begin showering them with presents the most valued of these were the pets. Somebody gave Willie a beautiful little pony to which he was devoted. He rode nearly every day and being a good hearted boy. He also allowed Ted arrived. Even the little boy was so small that his leg stuck out stuck out on both sides of the set. Especially cherish what small groups that somebody presented them. They were called name CO and nanny and they frisk on the White House grounds and when they had an opportunity wrought havoc in the White House gardens they were not entirely outside animals like the public at large they had the run of the

White House. On one occasion Ted harneys name go up to a chair which served as a slid and she burst in with him yelling after our meeting to the East Room where this is like and was having a reception. Well you can imagine the devastation of crinolines as a goat a chair in a screaming little boy keep creeping into the East Room and of course zipped right out again and he says a lot about Mrs. Lincoln that you never want to rebuke the child. On another occasion Mrs. Lincoln and Teddy who were away from Washington greatly distressed when they heard that nanny goat was lost and the president of the United States and this was about the time of the Battle of Gettysburg interrupted his vital work to telegraph them that their gold had been found peacefully chewing her could crawled up on the bit in the White House guest room. But they were all for quiet times when they can read to the boys. He would let

Ted not on one arm of his big chair and Holly on another and William bird perched precariously at his shoulders. But during the first year in office Lincoln had all too little time for his son for he was busy learning his job in such a difficult job it is to the Department of State for example sent over a detailed memorandum of the clothing that an American president was expected to weigh. Obediently Lincoln followed directions though with his ungainly and his immense height his coat always seem to end his crop that was always askew. His huge hands enlarged by years of ploughing and splitting riyals were never comfortable in those white gloves that the State Department prescribe for want holding up his hand at a new pair of these. He held them out and said look they look like Candice to him. In the first days of this administration Lincoln thought to be orderly and businesslike.

For instance he began by trying to scan and digest all the morning papers that reach the White House. Finding that too time consuming he directed his secretary to prepare the digest and then presently he learned nothing from there. He discontinued it too. Though occasionally he glanced at the telegraphic dispatches in one or two papers. He read none of them regularly and never looked at their editorial. There was he concluded nothing that the newspaper men could tell him that he did not already know. After the early days of his administration much of the oil and correspondence that Lincoln rist received got no closer attention then than did the newspapers to assist the chief executive and the Congress bent over backward and provided him Mr. President with a staff. It consisted of one secretary. He appointed to this position at the German-American John G nickel a young energetic and very efficient man but

not even Nicolay could handle all the work. So the president was in effect allowed to borrow two more clerks from other departments and these three then wore the White House staff during the Lincoln years. A principal duty of these three young men wished to screen the president may go some two or three hundred letters a day game in scores of these were requests for information or applications for jobs these could be routinely referred to departments and nothing more was done about them. Dozens of other lot it is. They threw into the waste basket crank letters threatening letters letters containing messages from supernatural powers soliciting the president's endorsement of commercial schemes. Every now and then though they would rescue one of these to show to the Lincoln killing going to a museum one of his favorites was of a letter from the man who invented a new gun. It rifle it was a double barreled rifle which had the remarkable trait that one of the barrels poked off into the left and the other off to the right. He wrote requesting Lincoln's mission to enlist our regiment

of cross-eyed man. Man these rifles and with him he was sure they could sweep both sides of the Potomac at the same time. Most went in the wastebasket as you can imagine. The rest had to be seen by the president and answered by him. To many of these he replied in his own handwriting even taking the time to make a careful handwritten copy of his response or the fact that the file of the letters and their answers was stored away in a primitive filing system in the president's office upstairs namely a battered upright mahogany desk with pigeon hole over it. They were arranged alphabetically and Lincoln took a certain perverse pride at the juxtaposition that the alphabetical arrangement sometimes made as for instance the same pigeonhole contain the letters from Thurlow weed. The Republican boss of New York State but also the letters from Fernando wood the Democratic boss of New York City who had threatened to take his city

out of the union pointing to them all in one pigeonhole Lincoln would chuckle. They are pair. We can work long hours at his desk. Much of his time was taken in receiving the hundreds of candidate applicants petitioners supplements and visitors. Most of these he handed handled very expeditiously quickly scanning the letters of recommendation they brought. Writing notes on the back of them and signing on to proper authorities. When there were more delicate matters our subject said he did not want to discuss it at length controversial matters. He had a wonderful facility of saying This reminded him of one of his celebrated little stories and he would begin telling it gradually rising from his desk taking his guest by the elbow telling the story as he walked into the door coming to the punchline just at the door as the visitor left. Puzzled as to what exactly had been said and why had it been set it off. Wherever possible he avoided flatly rejecting an application for

help before going to tell one of his little stories to suggest the only reasonable is of the request. For instance when an officer accused of embezzling $40 of government funds appeared before Lincoln to protest that really he should not be punished because he had stolen only 30 dollars. Lincoln said he was reminded of an Indiana man who guided in a quarrel with his neighbor's dog because he charged that she had behaved immorally and had three illegitimate children. Now said the girl's father in Reads that's a lie and I can prove it. Plus she has only two. The bank got the message. Lincoln's friend worried that he was going to find his office so much of the time they urged him to get out and take fresh air and exercise. But the president insisted on seeing everybody who wanted to see him. They don't want much and they get very little he says. I know how I would feel in their place. Remarkably during Lincoln's

first 12 months in office this is dramatic lack of system seemed to work. Stories of his patients his humanity his accessibility to even the humblest petition are spread throughout the north. Millions began to refer to him as Father Abraham for the first time in American history. Common people in the United States began to think that the occupant of the White House was their representative. In appreciation they showered him with gifts. A fork in a crate of Bartlett pears New-England salmon and on and on with a special appropriateness. A man from John's burg New York sent Lincoln a live American Eagle the bird of our land that he had caught. He got it in a trapper last and it cost him one foot but the New Yorker continued. He is yet an eagle and perhaps no more crippled than the nation whose banner he represents his wings are sound and they will extend to seven feet. Important common people rallied behind Abraham Lincoln because most Americans

support their government in time of war. In part also it was because by the beginning of 1862 it seemed that the Lincoln government was master of the situation in the West General Grant had captured force Henry and Donaldson had pushed through and taken most of Tennessee and the Confederate West was in ruin and variegated pushed up the Mississippi and captured New Orleans Union and dubious operation had established bases on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and on Cape Hatteras and in the east. General George McClellan had organized and drilled the most commanding the most powerful and the most effective army that the American continent had ever seen. By early 1862 then it's no surprise that Lincoln's mail was filled with letters like that from retired General Winfield Scott rejoicing in the inevitable and early suppression of this great American rebellion. Ed you Bill in Kentucky and reported that President Lincoln has the grandest opportunity of immortalizing himself in history as the Restore of his

country. The second George Washington. While your politicians saw the handwriting on the wall to Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania wrote the president of the growing believe that you will have to be your own successor while the White House is in my judgment said Cameron coyly. Well it is the last place to find Happy days. I think you would have to make up your mind to endure. Meanwhile during the same 12 months Mrs Lincoln was achieving some victories of her own. It is she became the most conspicuous occupant of the White House since Dolly Madison brought up to express an active interest in public affairs deeply involved in a husband's political career. Mary Lincoln had no intention of fading into the background in Washington. She intended to become. And she became the first lady of the land. And that term was coined to describe this is Lincoln. Mary Lincoln made it her main purpose. Our main project to refurbish the White House Congress had appropriated

$20000 for the rehabilitation of the executive mansion. Over the four years of her husband's term of office this was to her an immense amount of money. And indeed it was a sizable amount worth or I would say at least 10 times that much in present day purchasing power. It was more than four times the amount that the Lincoln total Pammy income had read in the year before 1860 to Mary it seemed an infinite treasure. She could hardly wait to get on the train to go to New York and Philadelphia to order a furnishing suitable for the mansion of the president of the United States and his first lady virgins welcomed her with open arms showing her the best and the most expensive carpeting material for upholstery and drapes furniture in China and she bought everything. Much of an effort went into refurbishing the family rooms upstairs and to making the Living Waters homely and comfortable. She took special pains in the games with the big guest bedroom we papering it was light purple

wall people figure with gold roses. And for this room she ordered the ore neatly Kaw of seven foot rows would be there it is always referred to and the present little Bushes showed it to us as the Lincoln did though in fact of course the president probably never slept on it. It was framed in the most elegant of canopy is made of purple still trimmed with gold lace gathered at the headboard with a gold coronet. But most are very Lincoln's purchases for the public rooms these rooms downstairs receipted bills in the National Archive show that she purchased chair sofas hassocks fabrics of damask brocade the toilet and plush French satin Delaine wallpaper imported from France are full set of Havilland China in Sulphur Reno and gold with the American coat of arms in the center of each plate for the Rib Room. She ordered 117 yards of crimson Wilton carpet for the East Room and imported Brussels velvet carpet.

Peel green in color. Ingenious a woman as a single piece which wanted to in effect look as if the ocean in gleaming and transparent waves were tossing roses at your feet. Now Mary seems that in her few short weeks of shopping she was exceeding our budget for four years. But the merchants told her there was nothing to worry about. After all she's purchasing on credit and the build wouldn't come due from mot anyway she could not control herself. A passion for shopping was already beginning to turn into a disease. Returning to Washington she personally oversaw the scrubbing pestering of the entire White House so that for the first time in years the executive mansion was partly clean and his her new furnishings began to arrive. The whole place began to take on a look of elegance. Now to modernize Mary Lincoln's upon this barbed ornate lazy heavy tasseled drapes or plush overstuffed furniture seemed at best and it

worst vulgar. But this was the heyday of the Victorian age when less certainly not more. Even critical of observers praised her accomplishments but then inevitably the bills begin coming in. In December 1861 she discovered she had exceeded the congressional appropriation by sixty seven hundred dollars. Desperately she sought to conceal her extravagance from a husband arguing. Alas quite correctly that such overruns are common in government. No doubt the deficit could be overcome with just a little but budget juggling. Finally she was obliged to ask the commissioner of public buildings who kept the White House account to get the president to support a supplementary congressional appropriation. Lincoln was furious. He would never he said endorse such a deficiency appropriation. It would stink in the nostrils of the American people to have it said that the president of the United States had approved a bill overrunning an appropriation for twenty thousand

dollars for four buildings for this damned old house. When our soldiers don't even have blankets in the field rather than ask Congress for more money he said he would pay for it out of his own pocket of intially though he was obliged to come down off his high horse and come with quietly past the deficiency appropriation to cover Mary's extended two years. Then breathing a sigh of relief without obstacle overcome Mrs. Lincoln was ready to celebrate hope of success which was equal she thought to her husband. And on February 5 1862 she held a reception with a mission limited to 500 invited guest carriages began to arrive in the North Portico at about 9 o'clock with over decorated diplomats generals in bright uniforms members of the cabinet Supreme Court and selected congressmen and senators. In the East Room they were greeted by the president who was wearing a new black swallowtail coat that looked as if it needed pressing. And the first lady whose loamy white

dress decorated with hundreds of small black flour was exposed a remarkably low they call a tart in the background the Marine Band played its repertoire including a sprightly new piece than they reeling can polka and in midnight the doors to the dining room were opened to expose a magnificent before a concocted by my yards of New York which displayed sugary models of the ship of state Fort Sumpter Fort Pickens flanked by mounds of Turkey dog ham Terrapin. This is done no were served at all three and many guests stayed on until daybreak altogether concluded the Washington Star. The reception was the most a perving of its kind ever seen in this city. That February 1862 party marked a turning point in the Lincoln's life in the White House even while the visitors downstairs were celebrating Mary Lincoln success in Reaper busy in the executive mansion and her husband's prospective success over the Confederacy. Upstairs two strolling convoys were

desperately ill billiards fever. It was call probably typhoid fever from pollution of the White House water system. Deeply anxious. Their parents had considered cancelling the grand reception but the family doctor assured them that the boys were in no immediate danger. Even so several times during the party both the president and his wife slipped quietly upstairs to their son's bedside. During the next two week Ted continued to improve though he was still very ill. But Willie grew worse and worse. On Thursday February 20 he die. Both parents were prostrated with Greek. They can love this little boy are bright intelligent little boy probably more than any of his other children and he found it difficult to accept his loss. For several consecutive Thursdays the memory of Willie's death was so oppressive that in silent solitary grief he shut himself up in the guest room where the little boy had died. There we had to go through the motions of continuing the business of the presidency his heart was not in it. Only slowly did he come to

identify the loss of Willie with that of so many other young Americans who were dying from disease and battle and his private greed became the source of an even greater resolution to preserve the Union. But his wife could not so subliminal her grieve having earlier lost her favorite son Eddie in the spring for your Mary Lincoln could not deal with his second loss. And for three weeks she took to her bed in grief so desolated that she could not attend the funeral. Now look after Ted who was slowly beginning to recover. For many months the mere mention of Willie's name was enough to send Mary Lincoln into parrots ism's a weeping. It was necessary for Lincoln to employ a resident nurse to look after us. Never again did Mary Lincoln into the guest room where the little boy had died. You know the green room downstairs where his body had been embalmed. When finally able to emerge from a room Mary Lincoln went into such profound mourning dress that she was almost invisible under

layers of black creep and the yield in these circumstances of course also shall light at the White House East and the executive mansion was heavily draped in black grieving over the death of our son. Mary Lincoln gave a little further thought to the mansion that she's been so much time in refurbishing. And in the months following Willie's death while the public rooms were largely unintended and on occupied an enormous amount of vandalism occurred and the press with characteristic partisanship blame that on Mrs. Lincoln and said she was stealing from the White House. So it's material concerned were her of little interest to me really going by this time who was convinced in some obscure way that her extravagant purchases and her ostentatious display had caused her son's death. Bitterly blaming herself she sought out to reach out to reach out to Willie beyond the grave. Presently she became victims of victim of spiritualist who claimed they could put her in touch with the darling lost

boy. Often she went to mediums darkened quarters in Georgetown. But it on at least eight occasions seances where hill right here in the White House the president himself attended one not out of any belief in spiritualism but divine who was preying on his wife's mental instability. There was a matter of fact it would have been hard to blame Abraham Lincoln if he too had looked for supernatural help from any quarter at this time of need 1862 it was clear that the anticipated Union victory in the Civil War was not coming about in the western theater after the bloody battle of Shiloh Union Army stall in the east the Army of the Potomac got within sight of Richmond and then because of the ineptitude of its commander McClellan it retreated in defeat. With his grand strategy crumbling Lincoln desperately sought a new commander who could bring quick victory and in a game of military musical chairs. John Paul was appointed to high

command and the result was the second Battle of Bull Run. Then the fall of Ambrose Burns who led to the fiasco in Fredericksburg and boasting who brought about the rout at Chancellorsville. With these military defeats came political robots invoking military necessity. Lincoln in the fall of 62 issued his emancipation proclamation. It probably did not of itself free a single slave but it almost certainly did result in the defeat of his party in the congressional elections that fall. So mistrusted was Lincoln that in December 1862 a caucus of the leaders of his own party in the Senate urged him to fire his secretary of state reconstruct his whole cabinet and put somebody else in charge. In this time of trouble the president applied himself to the duties of his office with a grim intensity that helped distract his attention from his personal woe rising very early after a generally sleepless night. Lincoln when it

wants to his desk where you work for an hour or so before breakfast which consisted of a cup of coffee and an aide. He returned to the office then to sign papers and examined commissions for another hour or so until 10 o'clock when the doors were open to the public for petitioners. At one o'clock unless he forgot about it he took a brief break for lunch with Mary and Ted and occasionally a close personal family friend. Extreme use has always been customarily had an apple and a glass of milk for lunch. Then he went back to the office where he remained for the rest of the afternoon. Unless somebody could persuade him to go for horseback a carriage ride. Having no interest in food he ate a Spartan with no alcohol and unless there was some ceremony or reception he won again went back to his desk after supper. The lead at night he would often walk through the White House grounds to the War Department to read the latest telegraphic dispatches from the armies. Only then if there was no major fight under way did he

feel he could relax for a few minutes with his family. I consider myself fortunate Mary Lincoln wrote at this time. If at eleven o'clock I once more find myself in my pleasant room and very especially if my weary and tired husband is there waiting to receive me. Inevitably with such a schedule president and this is now you can begin to drift apart for some time the Lincoln says let in separate bedrooms as I mention now after the death of Willie Ted who was subject to nightmares and couldn't sleep at all. He was so desperately lonely. He was allowed regularly to sleep in his father's bed Mary Lincoln was totally absorbed in her own affairs and in her grief. Lincoln was of course aware of his wife's unstable condition but nobody knew how to treat mental illness in those days. In any case he was desperately exhausted. Always the end he lost so much weight as down to look positively cadaverous the worn out.

Fortunately he was able to maintain his sense of humor about his appearance. When somebody told him Mr. President you look terrible you look is thin as a shed. He responded in what is undoubtedly the worst point he ever made. You should say I look even worse. I look thin as a shed. It is terrible in great black circles is chronically weary. He was never able to get any rest as he expressed it a little relaxation he allowed himself seemed never to reach the tired spot. Coming to regard the White House as a prison both the Lincolns welcomed the opportunity just to escape during the summer months to a cottage on the grounds of the soldier's home three miles to the north of Washington. But of course presidential duties continued and Lincoln had to ride back and forth to his office every day. Nor did Barry Lincoln's anxiety is a big she was often in a state of near hysteria concerning how far has been safety and with justice and on

one occasion would be assassin or maybe an overzealous soldier did actually puncture the president's head with a bullet. She was also worried because her older son Robert and Dan are about to graduate from Harvard wanted to enlist in the Union Army. He had the tacit approval of his father but she obdurately opposed it. She had she said already sacrifice one son to the union. She could not spare another. A year after Willie's death hit Mary Lincoln emerged from full mourning. And in this round of White House receptions and soirees began again. Hardly a week passed without one or two state dinners at the White House for the diplomatic corps for visiting foreign dignitaries for congressman and so on. And then in addition every week there were two evening reception one on Tuesday and one on Saturday. A reception a contemporary journalist explain consists in throwing open the presidential mansion to everyone high or low gentle and

gentle washed or unwashed who chooses to go and the net result is always a promiscuous horrible jam. At 8 o'clock the doors were opened and people were admitted to the north portico. They crossed the broad corridor to the Red Room and then Nicolay introduced them to the president who shook each guest's hand even though by the in the one of the evening after shaking hands with thousands of people he often had blisters between his figure. They were then presented to Mrs. Lincoln. She was saved from having to shake a hand because of a hoop skirt. It would be impossible for anybody to get closer than three feet so you couldn't shake hands with her. They wouldn't shepherded through the green room into the great East Room where they stood about and taught no drink and no food or served at 10 o'clock the president when this is Lincoln on his arm interred made a circuit of the room. The Marine Band played Hill Columbia and the party was over

these social affairs dreary is more exhausting to the tired president and his distraught wife. And they probably did very little to increase his approval rating at all bored and depressed. The president was not at his best on these occasions and often it was clear his mind in his heart when I did. After one of them Richard Henry Dana Jr. reported in a characteristic tone of New England superiority their unity indeed one of these receptions and that Mrs Lincoln looks like the housekeeper of the establishment and a notable prying and not good tempered housekeeper either. While he said it looks like a man who brought in something to sell. Where are these criticisms. Both the Lincolns believe that these social functions were necessary to maintain morale in time of war. Anyway the president claimed that he learned something from the thousands of visitors who shook his hand. They gave him a public opinion bath that was better than any reading of newspapers. By this time though Mary Lincoln's performance of these occasions was more or less perfunctory. Her attention

to social affairs began to dwindle. She began to do a great deal of fairly traveling usually accompanied by Ted. There were trips to New York to Long Branch New Jersey to Boston when Robert was there to the White Mountains and everywhere he went she gratify her passion for shopping. Once directed toward refitting the White House was it was now indorsed into an outfit or person she could not check. Her desire to purchase. She needed she had to have a fifteen hundred dollar cash show all that $15000 in present day purchasing power she needed you dress it she needed specially made had she needed diamond she needed pro she needed gloves. Indeed it is said that she bought 400 pairs of gloves in a three month period. Her passion for material possessions had now become boundless. When the Lincoln family. Just three people. The link in them they moved out to the soldiers home for the summer of 1863 Mary Lincoln required a train of nineteen wagons to

carry out her clothes and suppliers. She was out by this point entirely rational poor lady. There was a kind of logic though a circular logic to be sure. Behind her obsessive concern for clothing she knew she was accumulating huge debts but I must dress it cautiously material she explained to our friend the people scrutinize every article I wear with critical curiosity of a failure to dress in proper style would cause people to vote against her husband and result in his defeat in the next presidential election of 1864. Now he's afflicted she where on I can keep him in ignorance of my affairs. But if he is defeated in the build will come and be sent to him. In other words merely going head to continue buying more in order to keep ours men from knowing what she had already bought. Proud of his wife handsome appearing to be certain Lincoln never thought of our dresses being a factor in his reelection. Much more important in his mind it was the continued failure of the Union Army. After 1863

successes it Vicksburg in Gettysburg. There were no further advances the following year grant Brody used to be commander in chief led a series of direct assaults on the Confederates and got again within sight of Richmond about as close as McClellan had done before. Two years earlier and nothing happens in war we reduce among citizens desertion among soldiers were rampant and in 1864 the Democrats nominated George McClellan for president on a peace platform. So dispiriting was the artwork that Lincoln glumly predicted his own defeat. And then the tiger General Sherman's capture of Atlanta came just in time to cheer union supporters and Lincoln was re-elected though by a very narrow majority. Shortly afterward as Sherman cut a swath of devastation through Georgia and Grant gained a stranglehold on Richmond it became clear that the Confederacy was doomed and night after night the White House was alumina needed to celebrate Union

victories and crowd gathered on the North Lawn to serenade the president who came out of the small room on the second floor looking out over the North Lawn to give a few words about the meaning of the victory that union armies were succeeding or achieving. Life in the White House during these final weeks of the conflict achieve the tranquility that the Lincolns have not known in their four years of occupancy. With all decisions me with the armies admirably commanded the president no longer head if you will personally responsible for every action or to sit up nights waiting in the telegraph room with the War Department for news of the latest disaster. As the end of the war approached both Lincolns felt they were awakening for hope from what may recall this hideous night there through which they had been living. It is from this period that we have the loveliest of the portraits of Lincoln and including the president's own favorite portrayed the peacemaker. Upstairs there is your face that is said

and serene and that is superb Lee conference. He has come through. He has achieved victory. On Friday April 14 1865. President Lincoln seemed particularly happy. There has been very remark you're almost startled by her cheerfulness that afternoon they took a carriage ride and the president cheerful even play for the talk of happier times ahead of them. Mary he said I consider this day. The war has come to a close. We must both be more cheerful in the future. Between the war and the loss of our darling Willie we have both been very miserable. By the time they return to the White House Mary was beginning to have one of her headaches and she thought of staying at home for the evening. But Lincoln's mind was fixed on having some relaxation. Anyway he had already given his word that he would appear and the president then shoebox at the popular Ford Theater. So Mary got up and put on a pretty Barney and a small patterned blue dress. Lincoln got

really in a characteristic men's fashion by brushing his hair with his hand in picking up his silk hat. They went to the north door the poor north or the White House and that did for the last time together. He was at once a hard and gentle person man of grief and yet if you. Or he knew if he told Secretary of State Seward. That if he did not tell stories he felt his heart would break. This has been the first in a series of lectures on the presidency. In an interview with WXXI is Bill Pierce President Bush comments on the inspiration for the lecture series and the need for the endeavor to continue in the future. Mr. President what prompted you to initiate this presidential lecture series on the

presidency. Well I think it's a combination of things one living in this house. You just can't help but feel that you like you know a little bit more about. The people that have lived here before you the 40 other presidents not all of them in this house I guess. And secondly I think there's a lot of interest in the presidency itself. I get that just from riding in our car in areas that you wouldn't expect to find enthusiasm in its for the presidency. It's the institution of the presidency so we felt that this series in a small way might. Just lift the enjoyment level for a lot of people in this country. Who are some of the other presidents that you will have in this lecture series. I want to have two more in calendar 1990. We want to be clear that nobody thinks is just rip you know just Republican presidents. So we're talking about ender Jackson perhaps being the next one. I'm fascinated with

Teddy Roosevelt. So it could be Jackson and Roosevelt. Eisenhower's 100th birthdays in the fall so it might be any two of those three but I'm inclined to feel at this juncture that will be Jackson and then Roosevelt maybe with an hour to follow sometime. Lewdly. Xerox is proud to underwrite the public television presentation of the White House

lectures Abraham Lincoln. Yes.