James baker and her sun both claimed that without his reagan, there would be no president reagan without mrs. Reagan, there would be no president reagan. As ilize that for as long can remember, i have expressed that same view regarding mary lincoln. It was underscored this morning by sidney blumenthal. I have attended lots of events like this. And i have heard many presentations on mrs. Lincoln from fans from friends and foes. Love her or hate her, there is little doubt in my mind that Abraham Lincoln that abraham and mary love each other deeply and supported each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and in health. Was anrys support indispensable element of abrahams ambition. Our next speaker knows more about this relationship than just about anybody. It Stacy Mcdermid is the author of mary lincoln southern girl, nor the moment. This compact volume traces the complex and often tragic life of mary lincoln and for dose stages of mary lincoln and four stages. I encourage you to read the book. If you want to get an instant impression, let me draw your attention on her blog about the civil war and pop culture. She drew a portrait of mary lincoln and gave a strong thumbs up to sally fields for trail of the president s life in the movie lincoln. But her expertise extends far beyond mary. Her phd dissertation on juries in the antebellum midwest formed the basis of her 2012 book published by Ohio University press, the jury in lincolns america. Our colleague and friend rights mcdermotts careful study, based on extensive primary source research, sheds fresh light on the legal history the 19th century america. It should come as no surprise that she is comfortable with primary material. Since the early 1990s, starting as an intern and working her way to her current position as assistant director and associate editor, she has been an integral part of the papers of Abraham Lincoln project in illinois. This ambitious effort aims to identify, index, and make available digitally, all the works created by lincoln, as well as material received by him. I first became aware of her contributions when she was on the advisory board, dealing with successful first phase of the project, lincolns legal career. I would be derelict in my duty to the Lincoln Community if i didnt mention that the papers project was caught in the middle of a political budget dispute in the state of illinois. I draw your attention to the editorial in the New York Times last sunday on march 13, and if you were so moved, i so urge you to exercise your right to petition the government for redress of grievances. At this time, and without Public Service announcement behind me, it is my personal honor to invite stacy to take her place on this historic stage and i ask you all to give her a warm welcome. [applause] ms. Mcdermott it is such a pleasure to be here today. I was so nervous giving a talk at this hallowed building, and then i saw this, they did that, im from the midwest, thats perfect. [laughter] i feel right at home with this scenery. Lmed minors right away. Perhaps many of you dislike mary lincoln. Perhaps many of you believe that she is really not so bad, but she just suffers by comparison to her mythical godlike husband. Perhaps theyre even some of you who actually like mary lincoln, as i do. But i am absolutely certain that everyone assembled here today is aware of the fact that mary lincoln is not a popular historical figure. And mary lincolns legacy in this regard is going to be at the forefront of my presentation today. But i am not here to defend mary lincoln. To defend her shortcomings. I am not here to make apologies for her human faults and failings. I am not here to deny make mistakes. She sometimes acted badly. And she felt to be a perfect wife a perfect mother, and a , perfect first lady. Rather, my goal here today is to offer some reflections of my personal journey with mary lincoln, in writing my biography of her extraordinary life. To share my perceptions of how some of mary lincolns contemporaries, and some modern historians, have unfairly judged her. And to provide some illuminating Historical Context for her fascinating life. Hopefully, at the end of my presentation, youll understand a little bit of what a nice girl like me is doing in this sordid mary lincoln business. [laughter] and you will maybe understand mary lincoln a little better, too. Most important like him i hope that you will see mary lincolns humanity. When i first began working at the lincoln papers, i was taken aback, frankly, by the veteran like the venom that many lincoln scholars spewed at mary lincoln. As a new scholar at the time, was reading every i can get my hands on, trying to get up to speed. The mary haters were really just impossible to escape. They dominated the lincoln story of the 19th century, the lincoln historiography of the 20th century, and the symposia and historical conferences that i was attending in the 21st century. Constantly, they presented on the one hand, the kind and honest and good mr. Lincoln, and on the other hand, his hateful, deceitful, hellcat of a wife. This is a delicious dichotomy, i admit it. But it really doesnt do us much help in understanding Abraham Lincoln, his marriage, or his wife. They certainly dont help us understand mary. At the time, it appeared to me that jean baker, a phenomenal historian and really quite adept are for, she pinned a lively biography and a very balanced portrayal of mary lincoln in 1987. At that time, when i was studying lincoln and trying to understand all of this, she seemed to me to be the only one who was interpreting married interpreting mary with any historical nuance at all. Jean bakers mary lincoln was, to my mind, a real person with good qualities and bad qualities. With angels and with demons within her. But, it seemed like nobody was really listening to jean baker in interpreting lincoln or the lincoln marriage. Now, i had read all the biographies i could get my hands on on Abraham Lincoln. And i had read many of the biographies that had been written about mary. And it seems pretty clear to me that bakers for trail of Abraham Lincoln having chosen mary, she was the mother of his four boys, and she was the first lady who was by his side. Yet biographers didnt seem interested in any of the new in any of the nuances. I will admit, i had just finished a masters degree under tutelage of a feminist womens historian. I probably had my own feminist backup. But it seems pretty clear to me that there was a maledominated cadre that generally disliked mary, or cast her in a somewhat negative light. And a female cadre who mostly likes her, were even lecturer were admired her a great deal. I could not help and recognize i could not help but recognize this gender gap and i , spent a lot of years try to understand it. But if jean bakers book had been able to bridge that gap, i found it maybe wasnt possible. Was there really an answer to this historical aggravation of mine . And if there was an answer, how might it change the lincoln story . But, i was an editor of lincolns papers, and i have mostly preferred my view of the lincoln story from atop the voluminous pile of documentary evidence, not rolling around in the mucky areas of historical interpretation, at least where abraham and mary lincoln were concerned. Yet, in hindsight, i started to notice that i probably was a mary lincoln biographer was probably turning within me for a while. When my phd advisor at the university of illinois encouraged me to accept an opportunity to write a biography of mary, i probably was an easy target for him. Also, i pretty much do whatever he tells me. I maybe didnt have much choice. But as i started to think about , it, i realized that i had been thinking about mary for a long time. As i consider the possibility of taking on this project, wringing my hands about it all the while, i hearkened back to some of my old historical aggravations regarding the great mary divide. And i asked myself some very hard questions. Would i be just another female biographer of mary lincoln who liked her . Could i write a biography cable my graffiti that might be capable of changing peoples minds . But i write a biography that might shed new light on the lincoln marriage . Was i willing to tackle a bridge that i had previously believed incapable of the sturdy construction . Of course, i didnt know the answers to those questions. Im not sure i know them now. And i certainly couldnt predict the outcome of the project in my hands. And i admit, i was scared to death. But, the parameters of the biography intrigued me so much that i was actually more excited than in fear. The editors were calling for a very short, readable biographical treatment with a chapter of lightly annotated documents at the end. I love the idea of writing a short, engaging narrative that would be accessible to general readers, and i was thrilled with the prospect of writing a sweeping biography of a really interesting person, in a very short little volume. Of course, choosing documents for the end of the volume, i was terribly excited about that. So once i signed the contract, miners were still there. And i worked really hard to think about a fresh way of approaching this project that made sense and a brief biography , but also with the an approach that would allow me to explore the really rich Historical Context of mary lincolns life. And i desired to have an approach that might be useful to future biographers of her famous husband, Abraham Lincoln. I set the need for writing my approach to the book aside and began my research. At the very beginning, i purchased a well loved, very battered volume in a used bookstore of mary lincoln edited letters, which were published in 1972 by justin and linda turner. I sat down and really comfortable places in my house, drank some wine, and read very slowly, every single word of the more than 600 letters that were in that volume and about 200 or so more that have been discovered since that volume was published in 1972. Much of that time, read those letters out loud to my dog. Who didnt seem to mind. I took no notes, which is something i have never done before as a scholar. I took absolutely no notes. I just read all those letters aloud. I let marys like unfold through the letters and i started with an absolute blank slate. I was completely committed to that. No negative, no positive opinions. I concentrated hard on marys voice, i really try to get i really tried to get inside her head. Even though couple of my friends warned me about the dangers of getting inside a crazy ladys head. [laughter] but, im kind of a crazy lady, too and i didnt think it was , really all that crazy inside of mary lincolns head, after all. I spent about three months just reading those letters. All the while, i was thinking about how personal and historical branches worshiping ife. S l about how mary viewed those experiences, and about how mary understood her familial, social, and public relationships. And about how mary was to defining the world around her. The more i read, the more realized not only did the mary butrs not understand mary, i have but i had not really understood mary either. Where they had dismissed her as crazy and meanspirited and defined her as a detriment to lincolns public persona or to his personal happiness, i had assumed a feminist posturing defending her that also failed to adequately capture who she was as a person, what her life was like. Reading marys letters not only opened up our reallife to me, but it also opened up my eyes to my own historical biases. The letters of mary lincolns widowhood, a portion of her life that i think is maybe the most understood, ended up being the most poignant for me. In my rediscovery of this woman i thought i had known. This is the point in her chronology, finally, where i began to accept her for all of her complexities, and for all of her faults. When i hit the letters that mary wrote between 1868 in 1871, during her time in europe with her son, thad, i very clearly saw an intelligent, sensitive woman with a whole lot of what we would today call baggage. And she was navigating fairly well through life that was both a blessing and a curse. I saw a woman who had a great deal of strength, but it was very fragile at the same time. I saw a woman with a great capacity to love and to learn and to give, but who struggled every single day to keep the past and her demons that they. Demons at bay. I realized then that i wanted to write a biography of a 19th century woman who was doing the best she could. And i wanted to tell human stories about this very real person, from her perspective, with as much as her heart, her intellect, and her soul as i could possibly glean from the words she had written. By the time i sent to writing, it became a personal imperative to me to allow mary lincoln to tell as much of her story as was possible. That was my approach. Too long had historians appropriated and misappropriated her life, and her history to their own end. Or to tell the story of her husbands life. My approach to this biography was to rely very heavily on marys own words and reflections, correcting errors and filling in gaps in providing Historical Context where the in me deemed it necessary. In the end, i think i met the demands of my editors by writing a readable, accessible, very short biography of mary with a few fresh perspectives on her life. But i also think, i have written an biography that illustrates chemically quite well, the richly human qualities of historical experience through the eyes of a woman who, like all of us, was flawed. Mary lincoln was the wife of Abraham Lincoln. And that was an extraordinarily important, personal, and historical fact of her life. But mary lincoln was also a daughter, a student, a sister, a mother, a friend, and ultimately, widow. She was a 19th century woman, doing the best she could. Sometimes, her efforts exceeded even her own expectations. Sometimes, they were just good enough. Other times, they were devastatingly insufficient. Her story really is a human story. And i hope my biography adequately captures mary lincolns humanity. Mostly, though, in the end, i just hope that i have written a life that mary lincoln herself might recognize. Now, what i would like to do is to share 10 fax top 10 list 10 facts, 10 mary lincoln facts, that i would like all of you to take out of the room today. These 10 facts are, i think, imperative to understanding mary better, to understanding her marriage to Abraham Lincoln and her historical legacy. In going through the list, i will correct a few popular misconceptions, share a couple of my pet peeves, always fun, and read a few brief selections from marys correspondence. Because how can we allow mary to have some say in all of this if we do not hear something of her own voice . So fact number one. , there was no such person named Mary Todd Lincoln. Until her sister anne was born, she was marianne, and after that, she was just plain mary. When she arrived in illinois, she was miss todd, mary todd, or molly. When she married Abraham Lincoln on november 4, 1842, she became mary lincoln. She called herself mary lincoln mrs. Lincoln, mrs. Abraham , lincoln. She signed all of her correspondence mary lincoln, mrs. Lincoln, mrs. Abraham lincoln, or ml. As was typical of 19 century women, she took the lincoln name, and she never gave it another thought. She was mary lincoln until she died. I suppose that feminist historians started this Mary Todd Lincoln thing in an effort, i guess, to rescue her from domestic obscurity, or something. But it is historically inaccurate, and it drives me bananas every time i hear it. So please, just call her mary lincoln, or mrs. Lincoln. Thats what she would have wanted. And you and i will get along so much better if you do. [laughter] fact number two, the lincoln marriage was a companionable one. Mary todd and Abraham Lincoln recorded in the parlor of marys sisters house in springfield, in the context of an emerging new ideal in 19 century marriage companionship. Mary and abraham were looking to a spouse that was share spouse that was Share Interests with them and have similar perspectives as they did. Both mary and abraham loved poetry, they loved reading and books. They love to children and beloved partisan politics. And they had a very large circle of political friends in common. They were both smart, quick witted, and absolutely obsessed with whig politics and the bow of their party. The 1840 president ial contest, provided a significant romantic backdrop for the couple, and other couples in springville as well. And they were likely in love and talking about marriage by december of 1840. Unlike their parents, mary and abraham saw marriage as something beyond an economic union. They aspired to find love and friendship as well. Marital expectations were greatly heightened for the generation of americans. And there was much more handwringing as a result. This is a very important context in which they suffered their famous lovers break up in january 1841. But, it was also their shared interest their enthusiasm for , politics that reunited the the summer of 1842. Like most marriages, the lincoln marriage had its ups and downs. But throughout their more than 22 years together, they enjoyed each others company, it is absolutely clear. They shared a great love of their boys, and they continue to bond over literature, poetry, the theater, and politics. There can be no doubt here that Abraham Lincoln chose mary lincoln because he loved her and enjoyed her company. He chose her because he believed she was an appropriate companionable mate. I think she was just that. Fact number 3 lincoln did not travel the circuit as a lawyer to get away from mary. [laughter] stacy lincoln started writing the circuit as soon as he began his law career in 1937. In 1837. He was traveling the circuit when he married in november of 1842. At that time, it was common for lawyers and judges to travel legal circuits. It offered a perfect way for young attorney especially to learn the law, build a client base, establish a reputation, and make a pretty good living. Not only was it a good career move for lincoln the lawyer, it also offered multiple venues in which to practice politics. And he utterly enjoyed it fraternity of the traveling bar. Lincoln was not the only lawyer, nor was he the only professional in this era who lived an itinerant professional lifestyle. During this era, doctors, teachers, businessmen others , covered large geographic areas and spent time away from their homes an