Chapter 82: Aftermath

Eleven years after the burial an attempt to steal Lincoln’s casket from the crypt for ransom is foiled by the Secret Service. This however sets off a bizarre series of “safety measures” whereby the casket is moved seventeen times to various secret locations and actually opened on five occasions to identify the remains. It is not until 1901 that the body is disinterred and placed in the final Lincoln Memorial.

Mary Lincoln remains a tortured soul during the final seventeen years of her life.

While she inherits $36,991 in November 1867, she is held accountable to reimburse the Treasury for exceeding the budget for redecorating the White House. To escape the financial and emotional turmoil, she sails to Germany with son Tad on October 1, 1868. Her travels include Frankfort, Nice, and her favored stops in Edinburgh and Glasgow. She stays in Europe until May 11, 1871, when she returns home and takes up residence in Chicago – where tragedy strikes again on July 15, 1871 with Tad dying of tuberculosis at age eighteen. As before she cannot bring herself to attend the funeral.

Mary’s mental state continues to erode, and in May 1875 Robert’s concern that she will harm hrself leads to a Chicago court trial where she is declared insane, an event that alienates mother and son. She spends four months in the Bellevue Place asylum in Batavia, Illinois, before being released and heading back to Springfield to live with her sister Elizabeth. In 1876 she again flees to Europe and stays four years until 1880. She dies on July 6, 1882 in Springfield at sixty-three and is buried alongside Abe.

Meanwhile Robert becomes the one son who grows to maturity and makes his mark in Washington. He attends Harvard and is awarded an honorary LLD degree after spending a few month as an officer on U.S. Grant’s staff. He graduates from Northwestern University and passes the bar in 1866. He engages in Republican politics in Chicago for five years before President Garfield names him Secretary of War in 1881. Robert continues in that post under Chester Arthur until 1884. President Benjamin Harrison appoints him Minister to Great Britain from 1889-93. His later years include general consul and then president of the Pullman Palace Car Company and a devotion to astronomy. He dies at eighty-two in Vermont, leaving behind his widow and three children.