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Her youngest son, Tad, died in 1871 four years later, Robert Lincoln had his mother committed to a private sanatorium in Batavia, Illinois. Lincoln lost her young son Willie to typhoid fever in 1862 (another son, Edward, had died in 1850) and her husband to an assassin’s bullet in 1865. Things got progressively worse after Mrs. Abraham Lincoln’s assistant private secretary, John Hay, famously dubbed her “the hellcat.” Gossip swirled about her stormy moods she was even said to hit her husband, or to insult him in front of visitors. Lincoln was often pale, and frequently complained of headaches or other ailments. No previous first lady (the term was not even in wide use by 1860, when Lincolns entered the White House) had been the object of such public fascination, or controversy. The fact that she was Southern, during the Civil War, was another big strike against her. Lincoln the scorn of the press and much of Washington society, which saw her as spoiled and narcissistic. But extravagant shopping sprees in New York to furnish the executive mansion soon earned Mrs. As first lady, she was initially praised as a gracious hostess and sparkling conversationalist. As a young woman, the well-educated and ambitious Kentucky belle used her charm to help propel her husband to the White House. Mary Todd Lincoln has always been a puzzling, polarizing figure.
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