The first full-length portrait of the marriage of Abraham and Mary
Todd Lincoln in more than fifty years, The Lincolns is a
fascinating new work of American history by Daniel Mark Epstein, an
award-winning biographer and poet known for his passionate
understanding of the Civil War period.
Although the private lives of political couples have in our era
become front-page news, the true story of this extraordinary and
tragic first family has never been fully told. The Lincolns
eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information that makes
husband and wife, president and first lady, come alive in all their
proud accomplishments and earthy humanity.
Epstein gives a fresh close-up view of the couple's life in
Springfield, Illinois (of their twenty-two years of marriage, all
but six were spent there). We witness the troubled courtship of an
aristocratic and bewitching Southern belle and a struggling young
lawyer who concealed his great ambition with self-deprecating
humor; the excitement and confusion of the newlyweds as they begin
their marriage in a small room above a tavern, and the early signs
of Mary's instability and Lincoln's moodiness; their joyful
creation of a home on the edge of town as Lincoln builds his law
practice and makes his first forays into politics. We discover
their consuming ambition as Lincoln achieves celebrity status
during his famed debates with Stephen A. Douglas, which lead to
Lincoln's election to the presidency.
The Lincolns' ascent to the White House brought both dazzling power
and the slow, secret unraveling of the couple's unique bond. The
Lincolns dramatizes certain well-known events with stunning new
immediacy: Mary's shopping sprees, herdefrauding of the public
treasury to increase her budget, and her jealousy, which made
enemies for her and problems for the president. Yet she was also a
brilliant hostess who transformed the shabby White House into a
social center crucial to the Union's success. After the death of
their little boy, not a year after Lincoln took office, Mary turned
for solace to spirit mediums, but her grief drove her to the edge
of madness. In the end, there was little left of the Lincolns'
relationship save their enduring devotion to each other and to
their surviving children.
Written with enormous sweep and striking imagery, The Lincolns is
an unforgettable epic set at the center of a crucial American
administration. It is also a heartbreaking story of how time and
adversity can change people, and of how power corrupts not only
morals but affections. Daniel Mark Epstein's The Lincolns makes two
immortal American figures seem as real and human as the rest of us.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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