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THIS DAY IN CIVIL WAR HISTORY: Talk on Jubal Early, Thursday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m. The Bull Run Civil War Round Table will hear Scott Patchan speak on "Shenandoah Summer: Gen. Jubal Early's Valley Campaign of 1864" at Centreville Regional Library, 14200 St. Germain Drive. The free meeting is open to the public. 703/675-0702.

September 8, 2007 12:35 am

DOES YOUR HOUSE have an attic? If so, go up there right now and look for old trunks of letters. Do the same if you have a cellar. Even better, search your grandmother's attic or cellar. Through diligent sleuthing, Jason Emerson, a Spotsylvania County historian, found the right trunk in the right attic and has now shed light on one of the most debated issues in American history: Mary Todd Lincoln's insanity-- or lack thereof.

But first, a compliment. In my 50 years as a medical doctor I have read many well-meaning but atrociously wrong medical-psychiatric works by persons outside the profession. Although Emerson is no medical man, he has had the wisdom to read widely and consult with good people, including my colleague James S. Brust, and has produced a well-founded, cleverly conceived, deeply researched and smoothly written narrative.

Like any good reviewer of a mystery story, I will not give away the ending, but here are the issues. One camp of historians claims that Mary Todd Lincoln was the victim of Robert Lincoln, a cold, uncaring son, who had her put away in an insane asylum, behind bars, in a straitjacket, in order to get her money.

An equally vociferous group of scholars claims that Mary was not only a sly, cunning, duplicitous, money-mad, conniving and ungrateful mother, but a woman whose narcissistic per-sonality was deteriorating into a full-blown, hate-filled psychosis, with hallucinations, delusions and attempted suicide.

Emerson's contribution has been to find and analyze Mary's long-lost letters to Myra Bradwell, a legally trained fiery feminist, who may have used Mary for her own private purposes. These letters, beautifully put into context by the author, are a major contribution to understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln family, embedded as they were in the matrix of Victorian moral and philosophical beliefs.

The story of the Lincolns begins, of course, well before the president's assassination. Mary and Abraham had what many marriage counselors call an "engineer's marriage," in which the husband is logical, rational, emotionally restricted, reliable and bound by duty. He chooses a wife who will bring texture, sparkle and color into his life, a cheerleader type, an effervescent girl whose moods and flights of fancy he finds endearing. She values his steady reliability and his predictable income; he is her steady rock, her calm center, to which she can return after some (mis)adventure.

As some marriages do, this one carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. After a few years, she complains that he is dull, stodgy, predictable and undemonstrative. He, in turn, says that she is giddy, flighty, hysterical and irrational. She cries; he lists reasons why she should be happy. Does this formulation fit the Lincolns?

He kept his own counsel; he was self-contained. His peers noted that after Lincoln had told all, it seemed that he had revealed nothing.

Mary's traits were visible from childhood. She was content only when she was being admired, praised and/or lavishly dressed. She had a quick--but often cruel--wit. Her husband had a war to run, an unruly congress to placate, a divisive Cabinet, a hostile Democratic press and an ever-growing list of Union casualties. She wanted his undivided attention.

Mary lost to death nearly everyone she loved. Could these very real losses explain her groundless fears of poverty and her constant acquisition of clothes and furniture for which she had no use? Did these objects make up for her absent husband, buried children and vanished social position?

Her sudden widowhood was complicated by her five-year history of having insulted most of the politicians in Washington. Unlike Jackie Kennedy, whose own sudden widowhood elicited sympathy and compassion, Mary quickly exhausted her small store of public goodwill. The burden of an isolated, irritable, grieving woman, increasingly led astray by spiritualist counselors, and committed to one of the most extravagant displays of mourning seen that century, fell upon young Robert--just out of college, but now, by default, the man of the family.

Emerson explains at length the Victorian concepts of duty and honor, which guided Robert in accepting and fulfilling this challenge, with the implication that duty and honor are found less often today.

(Reader, be of good cheer. Duty and honor are not dead; I see them every day in my sons, one a U.S. Marine Corps officer, the other a veteran of the Gulf War.)

Biographers have made much of Mary's tendency to be "money mad," and her oft-voiced fear of poverty. In today's dollars, her husband's estate was valued in the millions, and her Congress-awarded pension was $90,000 a year. She frequently carried half a million dollars on her person. Her notion of poverty might make sense to Imelda Marcos, but to the rest of us it smacks of delusion.

A question thoroughly investigated by Emerson is: Was Mary "railroaded" into a mental hospital? I will not reveal his highly persuasive conclusion, but will mention my own quixotic search, done over 40 years as a psychiatrist, for persons unfairly confined against their will. I have long been that person now out of fashion, a "liberal," with some concern for injustice. My search, confessedly biased toward the underdog, yielded only one case in 40 years--Balthazar Apodaca, who was in continued confinement not at the behest of greedy relatives, but because of the cowardice of a judge running for re-election.

Emerson's findings may prove a disappointment to conspiracy enthusiasts, but I think the facts are on his side.

Another psychiatric issue, one not raised in the book itself, is a historic "what if." Imagine a history in which the spouses are reversed. Jefferson Davis, with his economic problems, quarreling generals and constant eye pain, would be mated with Mary Todd. Her tantrums and demands and her ability to alienate important people might have broken him. And Lincoln with Varina? Would her more sunny outlook have soothed his melancholic fretting, allowing him to be a better leader? So-called "alternative histories" are, of course, useless, but can be diverting mental excursions.

To sum up Emerson's book: It can be read as a mystery story, as a morality tale, as an exploration in psycho-history or as a tragic tale of mother set against son. Readers disenchanted with the legal profession may find in it a cautionary tale, showing the baleful results of self-appointed and narcissistic grandstanding by lawyers, all in the name of "justice."

Read with any of these approaches, the book is a quality production, a sound piece of historical detective work and a good read.