The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow, as Revealed by Her Own LettersMyra HelmerPritchard. Edited and Annotated by JasonEmerson. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011.

Abstract

The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow, as Revealed by Her Own Letters Myra Helmer Pritchard. Edited and Annotated by Jason Emerson. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011. Scholarly interest in Abraham Lincoln never seems to wane, and this extends to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Jason Emerson, the author of The Madness of Mary Todd Lincoln and Lincoln the Inventor, adds another thin volume to Lincoln studies, The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow, as Revealed by Her Own Letters. The book contains the approximately two dozen letters written by Mary Todd Lincoln and her friend Myra Bradwell to one another from 1875 to 1878, including the period when Mary Todd Lincoln was committed to an insane asylum in Batavia, Illinois, at the request of her oldest son Robert and following a jury's finding her insane. Bradwell and her husband, Judge James B. Bradwell, dear friends of Mary Todd Lincoln, believed her to be sane and worked to free her, much to the dismay of Robert Lincoln. Myra Bradwell's letters were passed down through the family to her granddaughter, Myra Helmer Pritchard, who compiled them into a book at the request of her mother, who wished to restore the reputation of Mary Todd Lincoln. In 2005, Jason Emerson discovered the letters and Pritchard's unpublished manuscript and added to them his own editorial introduction, annotations, and commentary, noting instances in which Pritchard made statements that conflict with historical record. The Bradwells were prominent in Chicago law. Myra Bradwell was one of the first women in America to apply for admission to the bar and later founded the Chicago Legal News, serving as editor from 1868 until her death in 1894. Her husband, who was Mary Todd Lincoln's lawyer, arrived in Chicago in 1834 and served as director of the News until shortly before his death in 1907. Robert Lincoln, too, was a lawyer, and none too enthusiastic about the Bradwells' intervention in his mother's affairs. The Bradwells' granddaughter, Myra Helmer Pritchard, compiled and annotated the letters between 1926 and 1927 and, at the insistence of her mother, Bessie Bradwell Helmer, agreed not to publish them until after the deaths of her mother and Robert Lincoln. Pritchard clearly had an agenda: to gain public for Mary Todd Lincoln. She writes that [President] Lincoln's fame, his place in the hearts of his fellow men, is secure, above reproach, but Mary Todd Lincoln has scarcely been heard at all, as yet. When her sorrow was the deepest, people hurt her most; when her hopes were at lowest ebb, they gave her the least sympathy (6). …