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The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast

Mary Todd Lincoln (Part 2)

The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast

The History Chicks | QCODE

Society & Culture, Documentary, History

4.68K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2016

⏱️ 79 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In our last episode we talked about Mary's childhood, education and life as the wife of Abraham Lincoln. She was described as, "amiable, accomplished, gracious and a sparkling talker," by members of the Republican Party before she got to Washington...so what happened afterward that left her without this glowing impression? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

0:07.0

Welcome to the show! Today we are going to give you the second part of our coverage of Mary Todd Lincoln.

0:15.0

We highly recommend that you go back and listen to part one, but here is a tiny, teeny little recap,

0:20.0

comically short, that, well, I'll get you in the picture if you don't have time to go back right now.

0:26.0

Mary was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She was the daughter of a rich man, who married an up and coming politician,

0:33.0

based on I think nothing more than seeing his potential, and somehow together they formed him into a presidential candidate

0:41.0

a long shot who won the White House. And now Mary Lincoln and her husband Abraham are on their way.

0:49.0

And so we begin. Perfect recap. Now Mary had always craved attention her entire life, and as first lady, she was about to get it,

0:57.0

but a lot of it wasn't actually good. For instance, one of the first bits of attention she got was death threats,

1:03.0

including ones that were addressed to her. Letters were coming for them from southerners who were completely ticked off

1:10.0

that an anti-slavery president had been elected. And since Abraham Lincoln had been elected,

1:17.0

South Carolina had seceded from the union in protest of the Republican Party's platform that slavery is wrong as an institution.

1:26.0

So to them, Abraham Lincoln's win was just nothing more than a slap in the face to their way of life.

1:31.0

I should point out here that for those of you who are confused that the Republicans were the ones that were anti-slavery,

1:39.0

you should know, and I'll provide you a link to the explanation that at some point between Abraham Lincoln and say,

1:46.0

FDR, the Republican and Democratic parties switched their platforms nearly completely.

1:53.0

So we'll provide you a link to how exactly that happened. It's much too convoluted to explain here.

1:58.0

Early in February, before the inauguration, South Carolina, of course, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana formed the Confederacy.

2:08.0

This is not a good beginning for any president. It's a little bit stressful, shall we say?

2:13.0

It's a lot of it stressful. Within a month, Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederate States of America,

2:21.0

and then Abraham Lincoln was elected president of all the rest.

2:25.0

What confusion it must have been at the time.

...

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