I recently watched a History Channel documentary about Abraham Lincoln, entitled, aptly enough, Lincoln. Rather than studying just the facts of his presidency, it focused more on his mental state during his presidency, and the battle he fought with depression throughout his life. He had two nervous breakdowns in which he became suicidal. He lost his mother early in his life and had a difficult relationship with his father. He lost his first love before they were married. He lost both of his sons at an early age. He was married to a woman who is now believed to have been a manic depressive herself, a woman to whom he initially called off his engagement, for reasons unknown, but believed to be related to his love for another woman, his love for another man, or his syphilis. She was a detriment to his political status, an embarrasment to the White House. She threw tantrums on the streets of Springfield and Washington. She attacked her own husband. She threw lavish White House parties on the same days that thousands of American soldiers were dying on battlefields, as if she had no concept that the world outside of her world existed. She was also a very superstitious woman, who held seances in the White House, and asked her husband to attend. He did attend them to humor her. Stranger still, Lincoln, after the death of his son Willie, would actually remove the lid from his son’s coffin to gaze upon his face. He wrote poetry, including a poem about suicide. He also wrote a book about his religious questions, including his disbelief of the story of Christ. He had dreams of his son’s death, premonitions of his own death.
“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were distributed to the entire human family there would not be one happy face on the Earth.” – Abraham Lincoln
The overarching theme I came away with was that this was a man constantly torn and depressed, our Goth president, our Robert Smith or Morrissey of the White House. Who knew?
I saw the same show on PBS,,it’s earie that he was so depressed and was in charge of the country at the same time.
Great blog,,too btw!