Anne's Book Report on Mary Todd Lincoln by Jean Baker

I read Mary Todd Lincoln, a Biography by Jean Baker on my summer vacation. It was very interesting. Mary Todd came from a rich Kentucky family. She lost her mother young, and her stepmother was a bitch. Mary was smart but nobody paid any attention to her because she was a girl and she was one of several (like 15) children. She met Abraham Lincoln the attorney while visiting her older sister in Illinois. He came from a poor family and was also very smart. He passed the bar and became an attorney without any formal schooling for cryin' out loud. He was tall. She was short. She liked to talk. He liked to read. She liked to write. She liked to socialize. He liked to think. They fell in love and got married.

Then Mary had a baby boy. They had another baby boy and it died. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln moved to Washington because Abraham became President of the United States. They had two more boys. Another died. There was a wicked big Civil War goin' on, and the public was pissed at Mary Todd because she renovated the shithouse that the White House was when they arrived. People thought she was strange because she liked to talk politics. She had a shopping problem. Days after the war ended, she and Abraham went to the theater and John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of the head. Asshole. She freaked. She didn't have any money; pensions, life insurance--none of that crap existed.

She went abroad with her second to youngest surviving son Tad and traveled around Europe. People thought that was weird; women didn't travel unaccompanied. Tad was named Tad because it's a nickname for Tadpole which is was a nickname that she and Abraham came up with because Thomas's (his real name) head was so huge in childbirth it ripped her cooch apart and she suffered complications for the rest of her life. They traveled back to the US, Tad's health failing. Then Tad died at 17 sitting upright in a chair he couldn't leave because he couldn't breathe. Then she really freaked. Then her oldest son Robert, a huge dick, got married and was embarrassed and annoyed by his mother so he put her in a mental home.

Mary Todd wasn't mental; she got hooked on seances and the supernatural because she was a bit bummed about losing her husband and three sons. Who wouldn't be a little bummed? But back then, a woman could be committed by her husband or family for that kind of crap. While she was in the sanitorium Robert took all her shit. Finally some friends were able to spring her, but she never forgave him. Then she died, falling off a chair in a crappy boardinghouse room whilst trying to hang a picture on the wall. Then Robert took her money.

The End.