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Little known account of Lincoln in-laws who fought for the South

Associated Press

November 2, 2007 5:49 PM
The Civil War was not only the bloodiest era and the greatest political crisis in American history up to then, but for Abraham Lincoln, it was a painful family quarrel as well.

"House of Abraham" by Stephen Berry, a professor of history at the University of Georgia tells in vivid detail the rarely told story of how the Todds, his wife's family, became Lincoln's own family and reflected the miseries of the conflict.

Mrs. Lincoln's favorite sister married an officer who rose to be a Confederate general, after refusing Lincoln's offer of a post in the Union army. When he was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, 27-year-old Emilie called her sister and was taken into the White House with her three young children.

A Union general complained about the situation, after a visit that saw a sharp exchange between Emilie and a senator who had come with him. Lincoln, the man who brought humor into American politics, first tried to make a joke of it. The general, who had lost a leg at Gettysburg, got mad.

Lincoln's little son Tad and Emilie's daughter Katie had a disagreement over who was president — Lincoln or Jefferson Davis, the head of the Confederacy. Lincoln, amused, settled it with one child sitting on either knee.

Affection later soured when Lincoln refused Emilie a permit to cross the line between territory held by the Union and the Confederacy. She needed the pass to protect some highly prized cotton she owned, the only way she could see to provide for herself and her children. But granting the permit to the widow of a Confederate general who had been a White House guest would have damaged Lincoln's bid for re-election.

He feared he might lose, with the war still on, to a popular general who would make peace with an independent Confederacy. To Lincoln, that result would have meant the war had been in vain.

Emilie, though, was not thinking of that.

"I also would remind you that your Minnie bullets have made us what we are," she wrote him bitterly. The Minnie bullet, a cone-shaped invention that replaced old-style round musket balls, enabled rifles to be fired much more rapidly and caused havoc among Confederate troops.

Lincoln had little family of his own. His mother died when he was 9. He took considerable trouble to visit his affectionate stepmother but he was never close to his father, who had never seen any sense in young Abe's taste for book learning. A sister died young.

A wealthy and influential slaveholder in Kentucky, Robert Smith Todd fathered 14 children by two successive wives. Lincoln, in his early 30s a self-made lawyer but already a veteran member of the Illinois legislature, knew he was moving up when he reluctantly married Mary Ann, Todd's fourth daughter.

She was nine years younger, had pretty eyes and soft brown hair but also a tendency to fat, a sharp tongue and an ominous love for pomp and power. The book sees no doubt about her corruption as first lady.

"Twenty thousand dollars bought a port collectorship," Barry writes. "Diamonds bought a naval agency. To her way of thinking, Lincoln could afford to take the high road only because she was willing to take the low, which was, after all, where a lot of politics was conducted."

The Todds numbered both Northern and Southern sympathizers with the Southerners predominating. Capt. David Todd was relieved of his post in charge of Union prisoners in Richmond after scandals over abuse. Aleck Todd, youngest of the brothers, was killed by friendly fire from Confederate troops outside Baton Rouge, La. Samuel Todd died in the Confederate ranks at the Battle of Shiloh.
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