The Lincolns in the White House: Four Years That Shattered a Family - Hardcover

Packard, Jerrold M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312313020 ISBN 13: 9780312313029

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2005

Synopsis

From the day of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, a nation divided by savage conflict confronted the new president. But what many don't know was that within the White House's walls, the Lincoln's family would soon find itself suffering turmoil mirroring that of the nation he led.

Savagely criticized for her extravagance by the American public and widely distrusted because of her southern roots, first lady Mary Lincoln's increasing instability would deeply strain her marriage and eventually end in her mental collapse. The couple was devastated when eleven-year-old Willie died in the White House of typhoid fever. Tad, the youngest son, remained the family joy despite his physical impairments. Though their son Robert's success at Harvard made his parents proud, his relationship with them was troubled and would result in a painful estrangement, one which would eventually permanently separate him from his mother. The president's assassination brutally crushed Mary's always-fragile spirits. After leaving the White House and following Tad's early death, the former first lady retreated into increasing eccentricity and seclusion until her death in 1882. A moving and poignant portrait of the family life of America's greatest president.

About this title

About the Author:

Jerrold Packard is the author of the best-selling Victoria's Daughters, and most recently American Nightmare. Mr. Packard lives in Vermont.

From Booklist:

Civil War readers are no doubt familiar with the Lincoln family's tensions and personalities, and some of them will want the full soaking in details that Packard presents. Knowledgeable about the sources, such as a memoir written by Mary Lincoln's seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley, Packard synthesizes them and salts the account with his hypotheses, such as the clinical description of Mary Lincoln's volatility or Abraham Lincoln's supposed homosexuality. The less-speculative areas of the Lincoln family saga are sufficiently interesting to engage readers, and the author capably recounts them. Perhaps Packard's most effective device is incorporating the physical appearance of the White House's rooms and grounds into the individual dramas that unfolded within them. The executive mansion needed work, which factored into Mary Lincoln's spending sprees, and its unhealthiness may have contributed to the family's illnesses, fatal in the case of son Willie. Registering external events as they intruded on the Lincoln household's affairs, Packard succeeds in this realistic and sympathetic rendering of the family's private emotional life. Gilbert Taylor
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About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312313020
• ISBN 13: 9780312313029
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304