Note from Stephen Puleo: I’ve been thrilled by the wonderful reader reactions to The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner’s Fight for a More Perfect Union, many of whom have written to let me know how much they enjoyed the book. But as with any work of history, some revealing stories had to be dropped for space and narrative reasons. And with Charles Sumner’s involvement in so many issues, the “some” becomes “many” – vignettes that shed light on this accomplished and complex man. Periodically, I’ll feature a “dropped story” in this blog space.
Dropped Story 1: A Widow’s Pension
Charles Sumner’s moral courage and authenticity on the great issues of slavery and equal rights helped him exert influence on many other matters – one of them was securing a Congressional pension for financially destitute former First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln.
One thought kept recurring as I researched and wrote The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner’s Fight for a More Perfect Union: Americans today who crave, above all else, moral courage, perseverance, and authenticity in their leaders would have enjoyed watching Charles Sumner work in the mid-nineteenth century.
His was a lone voice early in his career, but as time went on his fellow lawmakers saw Sumner’s strength and integrity on the issues of slavery and equal rights – tested often by the white-hot fire of North-South sectionalism, secession, a ghastly war, and Reconstruction – as virtues worthy of admiration and even emulation. This respect enabled the Massachusetts senator to bank a wealth of political capital that enhanced his influence and gravitas later in his career, which enabled him to take the lead on several other critical matters that came before Congress and the country.
In the summer of 1870, Sumner took the lead on one of these. He pushed Congress to honor the memory of the President who led America through the war against slavery by coming to the aid of his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, in her time of dire need.
In 1869, Sumner became aware of Mrs. Lincoln’s sorry condition. She was destitute and living alone in Germany in a “small cheerless desolate looking room,” according to a friend, Sally B. Orme, who had visited Mary Lincoln in Baden-Baden. Orme wrote to Sumner pleading for help on behalf of the former first lady. “Is this not dreadful – that the wife of Abraham Lincoln should be so situated?”
Mary Lincoln, already in a fragile state after the assassination of her husband, never stopped mourning after she left Washington (she would dress in black up until her death in 1882, a full seventeen years after President Lincoln’s murder). She became further agitated when she was held personally liable for the debts she and President Lincoln had incurred for improvements to the White House. Accompanied by her son, Tad, she fled to Germany in 1868 for her health and to escape her many creditors.
In February 1870, almost penniless and both mentally and physically ill, Mary Lincoln wrote an agonizing letter – on black-bordered mourning stationery – from Frankfurt-on-the-Main complaining of an inflammation of the spine, brought on, according to her doctor, “by great mental suffering.” Her destitution was debilitating. “I suffer greatly often,” she wrote. “With my small means, I can only lodge in second-class boarding houses – the horror and humiliation of the situation to me, surpasses anything you can imagine.”
She appealed to Sumner, and the senator knew the road to assisting his old friend (whom he had not seen after she left Washington) would not be an easy one.
Her status as grieving widow and former first lady notwithstanding, Mary Todd Lincoln was unpopular among members of the Senate and the public at large.
Since 1865, Mary Todd Lincoln had smoldered with a visceral anger over her belief that her financial destitution was hastened by an ungrateful Congress and public, who refused to provide her with sufficient remuneration to compensate her for the shattering loss of her husband while in service to his country. Along the way, she had publicly insulted congressmen, senators, former cabinet members, military men, other government officials, and even members of the general public, many of whom had long memories and were reluctant to rally to her defense now.
Toward the end of 1865, Mrs. Lincoln had lobbied Congress for President Lincoln’s remaining salary for his entire four-year term. But Congress instead followed the precedent set when William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor died in office – Mrs. Lincoln received only the remainder of one year’s salary, about $22,000. Bitter with disappointment, Mary Lincoln cried foul, insulted that her husband, the great martyr, was placed on equal footing with two uninspiring presidents who had died of illness after much shorter periods in office. The decision by Congress victimized her again, she declared, just as her husband’s assassination had done.
Matters deteriorated from there.
In the years following the salary controversy, Mary Lincoln engaged in a two-pronged effort to engender sympathy for her cause – a constant barrage of public statements indicating her unprecedented level of suffering (although thousands of American women had become widows during the Civil War, many of whom were in far worse financial straits); and aggressive and often caustic letter-writing campaigns to friends asking them to approach specific – and presumably sympathetic – members of Congress on her behalf. But many Congressmen had little patience for her sharp tongue, her well-known financial extravagances, her public whining, or what some felt was her deceitful reputation.
Meanwhile, Mary Lincoln’s public behavior became increasingly bizarre. She tried to raise funds by selling her used clothing and other personal items in New York under an assumed name; when discovered, many officials and citizens felt that “begging” was beneath a former First Lady. Then she took part in an ill-advised bribery plot against prominent Republican politicians, hatched by unscrupulous con men who urged her to write letters describing her poor financial conditions. The con men planned to show the letters to the politicians and threaten to reveal them to the public and embarrass them for failing to assist Mrs. Lincoln. The scheme backfired. Not a single politician contributed to Mary Lincoln’s cause; instead, the letters became public and Republicans vilified her in the press.
Finally, she approached Sumner, and composed her own official petition to Congress, seeking a pension, reminding them that her husband’s “life was sacrificed to his country’s service.” She also asked friends to lobby on her behalf, including Boston “spiritualist” Obediah Wheelock, who penned a twenty-nine-page letter to Sumner urging him to reward Mrs. Lincoln with a pension to honor President Lincoln’s service to the Union.
At several turns in the process, House and Senate members tried to kill Mary Lincoln’s pension request. But Sumner was relentless in his efforts to keep it alive. He cajoled House members until the bill passed there, and simply would not let it die in the Senate.
On July 14, 1870, the bill to provide Mrs. Lincoln a pension of $3,000 annually came to the Senate floor.
Those who opposed the pension did so for a variety of reasons: they felt Mrs. Lincoln’s time spent abroad and unaccompanied was scandalous and disloyal to the United States; that taxpayers already had expended thousands on a lavish funeral tribute to President Lincoln; they objected to Mrs. Lincoln’s subterfuge letter-writing campaign; they remembered and were furious about her blackmail attempt; they thought awarding her a pension was an improper use of taxpayer money and were fearful of the precedent it would set.
Almost no one who favored the pension bill, even Sumner, spoke glowingly on behalf of Mary Lincoln. Supporters either focused on the ultimate sacrifice President Lincoln had made for the nation, or the distasteful image of a broken, destitute, suffering former First Lady, which reflected poorly on the country. Sumner could not “forget that she is the widow of our President” and made it clear that, his friendship with Mary Lincoln notwithstanding, his support rested largely on his gratitude for Abraham Lincoln’s heroic leadership and sacrifice.
When the final roll was called late on July 14, the Senate, one day before adjournment and without enthusiasm, passed the bill 28-20 approving Mary Todd Lincoln’s pension. All “yea” votes, including Sumner’s, were Republicans, most of whom acknowledged Sumner’s influence on their votes; twelve Republicans and eight Democrats voted against the bill.
The $3,000 pension doubled Mrs. Lincoln’s income and was the largest individual annuity ever granted to an American citizen.
She had hoped for $6,000 annually, but the normally combative Mary Lincoln realized she had escaped total indignity and ongoing poverty by only a few votes. “The sum will greatly assist me and not a murmuring word shall be heard from me as to the amount,” she wrote. “I feel assured that if a larger sum had been insisted upon, it would have fallen through altogether.”
She wrote to Sumner thanking him, and in a second letter, closed with: “Words are inadequate to express my thanks for all your goodness to me.”