Robert Todd Lincoln

Robert Todd Lincoln was born in Springfield, Illinois, on August 1, 1843, to Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln. He had three younger brothers, Edward, William, and Tad. By the time Lincoln was born, his father had become a well-known member of the Whig political party and had previously served as a member of the Illinois state legislature for four terms. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Robert Smith Todd.[1]

When his father became president of the United States on the eve of the American Civil War, Lincoln was the only one of the president's three children to be largely on his own.[2] He took the Harvard College entrance examination in 1859, but failed fifteen out of the sixteen subjects.[3] He was then enrolled at Phillips Exeter Academy to further prepare for attending college, and he graduated in 1860.[4] Admitted to Harvard College, he graduated in 1864, and was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and the Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter).[5] Welsh author Jan Morris wrote that Robert Lincoln "having failed fifteen out of sixteen subjects in the Harvard entrance examination, got in at last and emerged an unsympathetic bore."[6]

After graduating from Harvard, Lincoln enrolled at Harvard Law School.[7] When he initially expressed interest in the law school to his father, President Lincoln made reference to his own pleasant, but informal legal training by stating "If you do, you should learn more than I ever did, but you will never have so good a time."[8] Robert Lincoln attended Harvard Law School from September 1864 to January 1865, and left in order to join the Union Army.[9] In 1893, Harvard awarded Lincoln the honorary degree of LL.D.[10]

Much to the embarrassment of the president, Mary Todd Lincoln prevented Robert Lincoln from joining the Army until shortly before the war's conclusion.[11] "We have lost one son, and his loss is as much as I can bear, without being called upon to make another sacrifice," Mary Todd Lincoln insisted to President Lincoln. President Lincoln argued "our son is not more dear to us than the sons of other people are to their mothers." However, Mary Todd Lincoln persisted by stating that she could not "bear to have Robert exposed to danger." In January 1865, the First Lady yielded and President Lincoln wrote Ulysses S. Grant, asking if Robert could be placed on his staff.[12][13]

Robert Todd Lincoln, circa 1860–1870

On February 11, 1865, he was commissioned as an assistant adjutant with the rank of captain and served in the last weeks of the American Civil War as part of General Ulysses S. Grant's immediate staff, a position which sharply reduced the likelihood that he would be involved in actual combat. He was present at Appomattox when Lee surrendered.[11] He resigned his commission on June 12, 1865, and returned to civilian life.[14]

Lincoln had a distant relationship with his father, in part because, during his formative years, Abraham Lincoln spent months on the judicial circuit. Their relationship was similar to the one Abraham Lincoln had with his own father.[15] Lincoln recalled, "During my childhood and early youth he was almost constantly away from home, attending court or making political speeches."[16] Robert would later say his most vivid image of his father was of packing saddlebags to prepare for his travels through Illinois.[17] Abraham Lincoln was proud of Robert and thought him bright, but also something of a competitor. An acquaintance purportedly said, "he guessed Bob would not do better than he had."[18] The two lacked the strong bond Lincoln had with his other sons Willie and Tad, but Robert deeply admired his father and wept openly at his deathbed.[19]

On the night of his father's death, Robert had turned down an invitation to accompany his parents to Ford's Theatre, citing fatigue after spending much of his recent time in a covered wagon at the battlefront.[20][21][22]

On April 25, 1865, Robert Lincoln wrote President Andrew Johnson requesting that he and his family be allowed to stay for two and a half weeks because his mother had told him that "she can not possibly be ready to leave here." Lincoln also acknowledged that he was aware of the "great inconvenience" that Johnson had since becoming president of the United States only a short time earlier.[23] Following his father's assassination, in April 1865 Robert moved with his mother and his brother Tad to Chicago.[24] He attended classes at the Old University of Chicago law school (now the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law) and studied law at the Chicago firm of Scammon, McCagg & Fuller.[25] He was admitted to the bar on February 25, 1867.[26] On January 1, 1866, Lincoln moved out of the apartment he shared with his mother and brother. He rented his own rooms in downtown Chicago to "begin to live with some degree of comfort" which he had not known when living with his family.[27] Lincoln was licensed as an attorney in Chicago on February 22, 1867. He was certified to practice law four days later on February 26, 1867.[28]

On September 24, 1868, Lincoln married the former Mary Eunice Harlan (September 25, 1846 – March 31, 1937), daughter of Senator James Harlan and Ann Eliza Peck of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. They had two daughters and one son.[29]

• Mary "Mamie" Lincoln (October 15, 1869 – November 21, 1938)
• Abraham Lincoln II (nicknamed "Jack") (August 14, 1873 – March 5, 1890)[30]
• Jessie Harlan Lincoln (November 6, 1875 – January 4, 1948)

In an era before air conditioning, Robert, Mary, and the children would often leave their hot city life behind for the cooler climate of Mt. Pleasant. During the 1880s the family would summer at the Harlan home. The Harlan-Lincoln home, built in 1876, still stands today. Donated by Mary Harlan Lincoln to Iowa Wesleyan College in 1907, it now serves as a museum containing a collection of artifacts from the Lincoln family and from Abraham Lincoln's presidency.[31]

Robert Lincoln's home in Washington, D.C. from 1918 until his death in 1926

Robert Todd Lincoln's mansion Hildene in Manchester, Vermont

Robert Lincoln was coincidentally either present or nearby when three presidential assassinations occurred.[47]

• Lincoln was not present at his father's assassination.[48] He was at the White House,[49] and rushed to be with his parents.[50] The president was moved to the Petersen House after the shooting, where Robert attended his father's deathbed.[51]
• At President James A. Garfield's invitation, Lincoln was at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.C., when the president was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, and was an eyewitness to the event. Lincoln was serving as Garfield's Secretary of War at the time.
• At President William McKinley's invitation, Lincoln was at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where the president was shot by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, though he was not an eyewitness to the event; he was just outside the building where the shooting occurred.[52]

Lincoln himself recognized these coincidences. He is said to have refused a later presidential invitation with the comment, "No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present."[53]

Robert Lincoln was once saved from possible serious injury or death by Edwin Booth, whose brother, John Wilkes Booth, was the assassin of Robert's father. The incident took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. The exact date of the incident is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1863 or early 1864, before John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln (April 14, 1865).

Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine:

The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name.

Months later, while serving as an officer on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant, Robert Lincoln recalled the incident to his fellow officer, Colonel Adam Badeau, who happened to be a friend of Edwin Booth. Badeau sent a letter to Booth, complimenting the actor for his heroism. Before receiving the letter, Booth had been unaware that the man whose life he had saved on the train platform had been the president's son. The incident was said to have been of some comfort to Edwin Booth following his brother's assassination of the president.[54][55] President Ulysses S. Grant also sent Booth a letter of gratitude for his action.

From 1884 to 1912, Lincoln's name was mentioned in varying degrees of seriousness as a candidate for the Republican presidential or vice-presidential nomination. At every turn, he adamantly disavowed any interest in running and stated he would not accept either position if nominated.[56]

Lincoln's sarcophagus at Arlington National Cemetery

Robert Todd Lincoln died in his sleep at Hildene, his Vermont home, on July 26, 1926, a week before his 83rd birthday. The cause of death was given by his physician as a "cerebral hemorrhage induced by arteriosclerosis".[57][58]

He was later interred in Arlington National Cemetery[59] in a sarcophagus designed by the sculptor James Earle Fraser. He is buried with his wife, Mary, and their son, Abraham II ("Jack"), who had died in London, England, of sepsis[39] in 1890 at the age of 16. Weeks after Jack's death, Robert wrote to his cousin Charles Edwards, "We had a long & most anxious struggle and at times had hopes of saving our boy. It would have been done if it had depended only on his own marvelous pluck & patience now that the end has come, there is a great blank in our future lives & an affliction not to be measured."[39]

According to historian Michael Burlingame, historians typically consider Robert Todd Lincoln, "a particularly unfortunate even tragic figure." Like so many sons of famous fathers, he lacks a strong sense of identity. He once complained, "No one wanted me for Secretary of War... For minister to England... For president of the Pullman Company; they wanted Abraham Lincoln's son."[60] Nevertheless, he accepted the appointments and was very well-paid, becoming a millionaire lawyer and businessman, fond of the pleasures of the wealthy conservative Victorian gentleman of his social circle. He had little in common with his father personally or politically – he was not humorous or unpretentious, but rather cold, stuffy and aloof.[61]

Lincoln was the last surviving member of both the Garfield and Arthur Cabinets. The Lincoln Sea, a body of water in the Arctic Ocean between Canada and Greenland, was named after then Secretary of War Lincoln on Adolphus Greely's 1881–1884 Arctic expedition.[62]

Of Robert's children, Jessie Harlan Lincoln Beckwith (1875–1948) had two children, Mary Lincoln Beckwith ("Peggy" 1898–1975) and Robert ("Bud") Todd Lincoln Beckwith (1904–1985), neither of whom had children of their own. Robert's other daughter, Mary Todd Lincoln ("Mamie") (1869–1938) married Charles Bradford Isham in 1891. They had one son, Lincoln Isham (1892–1971),[63] who married Leahalma Correa in 1919,[64] but died without children.[65]

The last person known to be of direct Lincoln lineage, Robert's grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, died in 1985.[66]

On film and television, Robert Todd Lincoln has been portrayed by:

• Edwin Mills in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
• James Carroll Jordan in Lincoln (1974)
• Michael Cristofer in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1976)
• Gregory Cooke in Lincoln (1988)
• Kieran Mulroney in Tad (1995)
• Wil Wheaton in The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1998)
• Joseph Gordon Levitt in Lincoln (2012)
• Brett Dalton in Killing Lincoln (2013)
• Neal Bledsoe in Timeless (2016)

• List of people on the cover of Time Magazine: 1920s – March 8, 1926
• Abraham Lincoln's patent
• Lincoln family tree

• Burlingame, Michael (2009). Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Charnwood, Lord (2009). Abraham Lincoln. Cosimo Classics. ISBN 978-1605207254.
• Cooper, Dan. "President Lincoln of the Pullman Company," Financial History (Fall 2013), Issue 108, pp 10–39.
• Emerson, Jason (2012). Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln. Southern Illinois University Press.
• Emerson, Jason. Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), a standard scholarly study.
• Goff, John S. Robert Todd Lincoln: a man in his own right (University of Oklahoma Press, 1968) a standard scholarly biography online free to borrow
• Graf, Leroy P. (1986). The Papers of Andrew Johnson, Volume 7: 1864–1865. Univ Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-0870494888.
• Hickey, James T. "His Father's Son: Letters from the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Illinois State Historical Library," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1980) 73#3: 215–234.
• Morris, Jan (2001). Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306810329.
• Roberts, Jeremy (2004). Abraham Lincoln. Presidential Leaders. Lerner Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0822508175.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert Todd Lincoln.

• Robert Todd Lincoln
• Photographs of Robert Todd Lincoln
• Original Letters and Manuscripts: Robert Todd Lincoln Shapell Manuscript Foundation
• Robert Todd Lincoln Biography
• Hildene
• Image of Robert Lincoln from "1888 Presidential Possibilities" card set t207.com
• Robert Todd Lincoln's Biography in Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army a publication of the United States Army Center of Military History
• Robert Todd Lincoln Attends Dedication of His Father's Memorial (1922)
•  "Lincoln, Robert Todd" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
•  "Lincoln, Robert Todd" . The New Students Reference Work . 1914.