![]() She blocked his acceptance of the governorship of Oregon, which might have ended his national political advancement.Ībraham had a Republican platform for the nation Mary Todd had a corresponding agenda for herself and the presidential mansion. Mary reared her sons under conditions much harsher than any she had ever experienced in her upbringing and still refined her spouse's outward appearance and encouraged his political ventures with one exception. After a broken engagement, they finally married on November 4, 1842, and four sons were born over the next decade (Robert Todd, 1843 Edward Baker, 1846 William Wallace, 1850 and Thomas “Tad,” 1853). Yet their mutual Kentucky origins, Whig partisanship, appreciation of literature, and, most important, their love and ambition for a political life brought them together. From a social standpoint, she married down to a man nearly a decade older, more than a foot taller, and lacking social status and graces. Superficially, the match between Lincoln and Mary Todd seemed incongruous. Her older sister married a lawyer who was an aspiring Illinois politician, the circumstance that brought the 21-year-old Mary Todd to the state where her first cousin was lawyer partner to Abraham Lincoln. She learned to act in school, loved the opera, and was fluent in French. She was unusually well educated for a female of her era. Mary Todd was a Southern belle from one of the most eminent families in Lexington, Kentucky, “the Athens of the West.” Henry Clay was a family friend and Mary Todd's maternal uncles were U.S. ![]() These first ladies blurred the traditional lines between social and political affairs for presidential spouses. ![]() Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of America's greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, was the most active political spouse between Dolley Madison (her distant relative by marriage) and Eleanor Roosevelt. ![]()
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