Transcript

10.9.26 · History Hour

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome. This is Radio Eye's History Show and
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Speaker 1: I'm your host and reader for today, Joseph Bolt. So
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Speaker 1: happy to be with you for this time and before
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Speaker 1: we begin today's program, we always need to remind you
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Speaker 1: that Radio Eye is listener driven. So that means you
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Speaker 1: out there and we welcome your comments and suggestions about
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Speaker 1: what we do And in particular, this history show, if
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Speaker 1: you have any history topics that you want covered, call
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Speaker 1: them in. And I'll do my best to research and
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Speaker 1: make a show out of it. But call us with
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Speaker 1: any of your questions, any of your comments. The number
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Speaker 1: is 859-422-6390. Radio Eye, as you know, is a reading
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Speaker 1: service intended for people who are blind or have other
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Speaker 1: disabilities and make it difficult to read printed material. I'll
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Speaker 1: cite the sources at the end of the reading. And
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Speaker 1: so let's get to going here. From her home on
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Speaker 1: West Short Street. young Mary would walk three minutes down
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Speaker 1: well-paved streets lined with mansions to her favorite shop, Monsieur
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Speaker 1: Maturang Zirong's exclusive French confectionery. She and her inseparable buddy,
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Speaker 1: Cousin Elizabeth, would take in the aromas of chocolate and
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Speaker 1: baking bread from a block away. To the baker's delight,
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Speaker 1: Mary would order precious sweets in the proprietor's native tongue.
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Speaker 1: Zirong was so taken with the vivacious girl that he
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Speaker 1: often slipped extra warm ginger cakes. into her basket. On
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Speaker 1: the way home, the girls would pass the shops of
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Speaker 1: cabinet makers, haberdashers, milliners, and the esteemed silversmith Asa Blanchard,
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Speaker 1: whose mint julep cups inspired replicas that are still sold
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Speaker 1: at auctions today. Mary Todd came of age in one
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Speaker 1: of the most developed settlements of the fledgling democracy. Dubbed
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Speaker 1: the Athens of the West, Lexington, by the early 1800s,
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Speaker 1: had evolved from a dangerous frontier town besieged by British
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Speaker 1: patriots allied with Native Americans. into a flourishing hub of commerce, academics,
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Speaker 1: and stately brick homes. When businessman Luke Usher built a
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Speaker 1: 400-seat theater in 1808, it was called, quote, the most
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Speaker 1: important theatrical event in the early West. By Mary's birth
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Speaker 1: in 1818, there were three weekly newspapers, a total thousand-book library,
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Speaker 1: multiple private schools, five churches, and a plentiful supply of taverns.
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Speaker 1: For a time, Mary was influenced by a connected citizenry
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Speaker 1: committed to growth and education. Visitors were charmed by the
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Speaker 1: town's sophistication. They marveled at the fine, wide roads and
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Speaker 1: emerald farmland. When Pennsylvania's poet Josiah Epsey visited Lexington, he declared,
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Speaker 1: that its main street had, quote, all the appearance of
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Speaker 1: Market Street in Philadelphia, end quote. Among the town's many
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Speaker 1: assets was its most famous and influential resident, Henry Clay,
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Speaker 1: a dominant force in American politics and a frequent visitor
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Speaker 1: to the Todd homestead. Growing up, Mary had ample opportunity
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Speaker 1: to watch Clay in action, to applaud his unparalleled skills
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Speaker 1: as an orator, to absorb his grand ideas on the
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Speaker 1: issues of the day, including the divisive question of slavery,
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Speaker 1: For many Americans, Clay was an icon, a force of nature,
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Speaker 1: whose meteoric career had taken him to the highest levels
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Speaker 1: of government. For Mary, he was a family friend and
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Speaker 1: an inspiration, right there in her father's parlor. In 1825,
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Speaker 1: Mary's mother, Eliza, died. giving birth to her seventh child.
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Speaker 1: Less than six months after Eliza's death, Robert Todd, Mary's father,
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Speaker 1: proposed to Betsy Humphreys from nearby Frankfurt. They were married
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Speaker 1: in November of 1826. Betsy turned out to be an
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Speaker 1: inept stepmother. The children despised her, and the feeling appears
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Speaker 1: to have been returned. But Mary's upbringing afforded her physical
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Speaker 1: comforts and enrichment, if not emotional sustenance. To her lasting benefit,
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Speaker 1: Robert and stepmother Betsy Todd were progressive thinkers when it
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Speaker 1: came to educating their daughters. Committed. to offering them long
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Speaker 1: and varied schooling. Robert himself had attended Transylvania University and
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Speaker 1: received an excellent education. In the day, it was uncommon
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Speaker 1: for women to receive an education. This was not a
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Speaker 1: popular point of view. In 19th century parochial society, it
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Speaker 1: was feared that well-learned women might not attract husbands and
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Speaker 1: if they did manage to marry they might not be compliant.
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Speaker 1: Mary took advantage of the family's support for prolonged schooling.
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Speaker 1: In 1832 at age 14 when most adolescent girls from
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Speaker 1: prosperous families were retiring from school Mary chose to board
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Speaker 1: at a small select school for girls just a mile
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Speaker 1: away from her home. Her decision to live at the
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Speaker 1: school during the week was as much about getting out
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Speaker 1: of her crowded household and away from her stepmother as
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Speaker 1: it was about education. She had recently said goodbye to
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Speaker 1: her favorite sister, Elizabeth, who fled the house through a
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Speaker 1: more traditional route. At 18, in 1832, Elizabeth had married
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Speaker 1: Ninian Edwards, a student at Transylvania, and the son of
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Speaker 1: arguably the most powerful man in Illinois at the time,
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Speaker 1: When Ninian completed his studies, the couple left Kentucky, eventually
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Speaker 1: landing at the Edwards homestead in Springfield, Illinois. So, every Monday,
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Speaker 1: Mary was driven to the rambling home of the school's
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Speaker 1: headmistress by the family coachman, Nelson. and then picked up
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Speaker 1: on Friday afternoons and brought home. Mary loved her time
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Speaker 1: at the school. There she found the family structure she craved.
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Speaker 1: Most critical to Mary's development, she found a strong female
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Speaker 1: role model in the headmistress. Charlotte LeClaire Mintel and her husband,
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Speaker 1: Valdemar Mintel, were sophisticated Parisians who had left their homeland
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Speaker 1: around the time of the French Revolution. They eventually migrated
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Speaker 1: to cosmopolitan Lexington, where they found their footing, offering lessons
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Speaker 1: in dance and French. Charlotte opened Mentels for young ladies
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Speaker 1: in 1820, converting space in their home, which was across
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Speaker 1: the road from Henry Clay's Ashland Estate. Room and board
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Speaker 1: was $ 120 a year for a, quote, truly useful education,
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Speaker 1: end quote. Charlotte Mintel would have a reverberating influence on
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Speaker 1: Mary for decades. The headmistress was nothing like the traditional
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Speaker 1: homemakers in Mary's circle. She was outspoken and irreverent and
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Speaker 1: contrary to the Kentucky bells. She conveyed a more authoritarian demeanor.
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Speaker 1: Although the Mintels struggled financially, they were embraced by the
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Speaker 1: town's upper class, who were ever eager to advance Lexington's
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Speaker 1: reputation as a cultural hub. But If Lexington's elite were
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Speaker 1: grateful for the Mintels, the affection wasn't always returned. Charlotte
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Speaker 1: despised slavery and thought Americans were hypocritical when they spoke
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Speaker 1: of liberty for all. She wrote to a friend that
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Speaker 1: Americans have, quote, crude vices and no attractive virtues, end quote.
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Speaker 1: Most important for Mary at Mintel's was she was allowed
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Speaker 1: to become the center of attention, the top pupil, filling
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Speaker 1: a large emotional void in her life. She craved the
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Speaker 1: spotlight at a young age, to be the best, dress
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Speaker 1: the flashiest, to dominate every room. She became a star actress,
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Speaker 1: frequently taking a lead role in school productions. Mary was
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Speaker 1: drawn to poetry and would memorize passages of her favorites.
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Speaker 1: A classmate would remember Mary as, quote, really the life
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Speaker 1: of the school, always having the highest marks, end quote.
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Speaker 1: Mary Todd would end up being one of the few
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Speaker 1: ladies in American history to have a more formal education
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Speaker 1: than the sitting president. Three decades later, She was able
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Speaker 1: to converse in French with Prince Jerome Napoleon, nephew of
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Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte I at the White House. But, along with
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Speaker 1: her hunger for knowledge, friends also remember a girl with
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Speaker 1: disconcerting volatility, marked by stark highs and lows, a trait
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Speaker 1: that would worsen as Mary got older and the stakes
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Speaker 1: grew larger. Quote, she was impulsive and made no attempt
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Speaker 1: to conceal her feelings, end quote, recalled her cousin. Mary's cousin,
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Speaker 1: Margaret Stewart, a companion since childhood, remembered Mary as, quote,
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Speaker 1: a very high-strung, nervous, impulsive, excitable person, end quote. A
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Speaker 1: longtime friend of Lincoln who met Mary in her early
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Speaker 1: 20s described her as a quote, a girl of much
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Speaker 1: vivacity in conversation, but prone to spells of mental depression,
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Speaker 1: end quote. If growing up in Lexington offered an abundance
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Speaker 1: of advantages to Mary, it also brought her face to
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Speaker 1: face with the nation's most troubling and contentious issue, that
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Speaker 1: of slavery. Throughout her childhood and up until the Civil War,
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Speaker 1: Mary's hometown of Lexington hosted one of the most notorious
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Speaker 1: slave markets. those same awestruck visitors who fawned over Lexington
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Speaker 1: in the early 1800s were also left shaken by the
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Speaker 1: public displays of cruelty they witnessed. One writer in 1817
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Speaker 1: described the area known as Cheapside as, quote, the scene
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Speaker 1: of a barbarous practice, for it is here that incorrigible
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Speaker 1: or delinquent Negroes are flogged unmercifully, end quote. Later, as
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Speaker 1: Traders blatantly ignored an 1833 law banning the importation of
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Speaker 1: enslaved people from other states to sell them. One legislator
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Speaker 1: called Kentucky the South's, quote, breeding pen, end quote. Lexington
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Speaker 1: was a regional center for the trading of enslaved Africans,
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Speaker 1: second to only New Orleans. Cheapside was the area of
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Speaker 1: Lexington next to the old courthouse and was named so
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Speaker 1: after the historic market in London, England. In one corner
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Speaker 1: of the auction block was a whipping post to dole
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Speaker 1: out punishment for any number of crimes, including being caught
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Speaker 1: outdoors after 7 p.m. if one was a slave. By
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Speaker 1: the outbreak of the Civil War, one in four Lexington
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Speaker 1: residents were enslaved. Mary's father owned a fluctuating number of
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Speaker 1: enslaved people during his lifetime, but most years there were
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Speaker 1: five in the household. The Tods romanticized their relationships with
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Speaker 1: their subjugated servants, telling warm stories about their closeness. They
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Speaker 1: saw themselves as benevolent owners, but no matter how well
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Speaker 1: the Tods treated their enslaved household, enslaved people, lived in
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Speaker 1: fear that they would be forcibly separated from their spouses
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Speaker 1: and children at any time. Mary's evolving views on slavery
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Speaker 1: were shaped by the totality of her experience, which were
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Speaker 1: her family's conflicted views, her own education, her emotional attachment
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Speaker 1: to the household, enslaved servants, her exposure to the brutality,
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Speaker 1: and Henry Clay's calibrated assessment of slavery as immoral but
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Speaker 1: difficult to dislodge. For Mary, confronting slavery's cruelty meant confronting
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Speaker 1: her upbringing. One night when Mary and her cousin, Elizabeth,
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Speaker 1: were in grade school, they heard a light tapping on
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Speaker 1: the back door. Mary asked Sally, the family's enslaved nanny,
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Speaker 1: who was knocking. Sally told the girls that She had
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Speaker 1: put a mark on the fence indicating that runaways can
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Speaker 1: get vittles right here. Mary came to learn that Sally
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Speaker 1: was part of a secret network of people, safe houses,
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Speaker 1: and marked routes to facilitate escapes to freedom. Anyone caught
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Speaker 1: aiding a fleeing slave faced prosecution, fines, and penalties under
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Speaker 1: Kentucky and federal law. Mary nonetheless offered to go to
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Speaker 1: the back door and give the man the food. Sally
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Speaker 1: cautioned her to stay out of sight so as not
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Speaker 1: to scare the runaway, and Mary kept the secret. Mary's grandmother,
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Parker, lived within sight of one of the South's
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Speaker 1: cruelest slave trading operations and jails, owned by William Pullum.
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Speaker 1: While visiting, Mary could look down on the jails from
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Speaker 1: the upper floor windows, and in 1832 Robert Todd had
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Speaker 1: moved the family away from the disapproving former mother-in-law in
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Speaker 1: the slave prison, settling his growing brood into a 14-room
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Speaker 1: grand brick mansion on West Main Street. But this new
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Speaker 1: location put them on the very thoroughfare where enslaved people
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Speaker 1: were marched to auction. quote, all connected by and supporting
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Speaker 1: a heavy iron chain, end quote, as one editorial writer
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Speaker 1: noted with indignation. As a child and even later, Mary
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Speaker 1: naively thought the people enslaved by her family were so
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Speaker 1: happy that they would choose the Todds over emancipation. Still,
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Speaker 1: Mary drew a clear line between owning enslaved people and
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Speaker 1: selling them. Quote, Selling human beings was all wrong, Mary
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Speaker 1: told her cousin. Mary absorbed at home Henry Clay's support
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Speaker 1: for freeing enslaved people into American resettlement colonies as an
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Speaker 1: alternative to emancipation. Mary echoed Clay's views with vigor. Her
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Speaker 1: father and later Lincoln embraced the same solution, believing freed
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Speaker 1: enslaved people and whites could not peacefully coexist in America.
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Speaker 1: Mary's father eventually turned his back on the anti-slavery movement.
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Speaker 1: In 1848, while running for the state senate, his opponent
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Speaker 1: accused him of supporting emancipation. I am a slave owner,
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Speaker 1: Robert Todd declared, and he won the race. Clay, at
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Speaker 1: his death in 1852, finally unburdened by political ramifications, emancipated
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Speaker 1: his enslaved people and provided for their educations in his will.
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Speaker 1: Mary's father made no provisions. Mary graduated from Mentels at
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Speaker 1: age 17, but that did not end her Lexington education.
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Speaker 1: If anything, she emerged better prepared to learn from the
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Speaker 1: gatherings her father regularly hosted at the Grand Todd Estate
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Speaker 1: on West Main. It was there that Mary's passion for
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Speaker 1: politics was born and nurtured. From an early age, Mary
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Speaker 1: came to understand that politicians were powerful people, and to
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Speaker 1: be cultivated. She watched as legislators, jurists, and governors stood
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Speaker 1: in the glow of the hearth, smoking cigars and drinking
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Speaker 1: bourbon as they debated the issues of the day. Henry
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Speaker 1: Clay was Mary's first political crush, and she idolized him.
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Speaker 1: It was in large part because of Clay that Lexington
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Speaker 1: bustled with celebrations, festive parades, and constant welcoming parties for
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Speaker 1: visiting dignitaries. When Marquis de Lafayette, the revered French general
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Speaker 1: who fought alongside George Washington at the siege of Georgetown,
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Speaker 1: passed through during the 1825 triumphal tour, Lexington devoted two
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Speaker 1: days to honoring him. Family lore has it that as
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Speaker 1: a child, family, or rather Mary, once rode her new
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Speaker 1: white pony up to Clay's door to show off the pet.
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Speaker 1: Gentleman that he was, Clay promptly invited his young admirer
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Speaker 1: to join the other guests for lunch. Mary proceeded to
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Speaker 1: gush over Clay's presidential prospects in the next election. When
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Speaker 1: she was 14, she reluctantly joined revelers from all over
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Speaker 1: the state gathering in Lexington to welcome Clay's rivals. Andrew Jackson,
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Speaker 1: for a campaign stop. The streets were packed and barbecues
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Speaker 1: were cooking all over town, but Mary was dismissive of
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Speaker 1: the excitement. She says, I wouldn't think of cheering for
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Speaker 1: General Jackson, for he is not our candidate. She did allow, though,
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Speaker 1: that Jackson was, quote, not as ugly as I heard
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Speaker 1: he was, end quote. When Mary was 16, Clay was 57.
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Speaker 1: and in the prime of his national influence and prominence.
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Speaker 1: How could she not come over, or rather under, the
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Speaker 1: spell of his larger-than-life figure, with his silvery hair and
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Speaker 1: gracious southern manner? Mary's family saw her as a, quote,
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Speaker 1: violent little wig, end quote. They recall Mary dreamingly musing
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Speaker 1: that she would marry a man who would become president.
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Speaker 1: goal that she unabashedly repeated as a young woman. Mary's
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Speaker 1: proximity to politics and power imbued her with a fearlessness
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Speaker 1: that would be both an asset and a liability as
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Speaker 1: an adult. She stood in no awe of great men,
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Speaker 1: wrote her niece. Important men were to her, quote, as
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Speaker 1: much a matter of course as the air she breathed,
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Speaker 1: end quote. Entering her 20s, Mary exuded a confidence and
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Speaker 1: determination needed to tackle a world beyond Lexington. In the
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Speaker 1: fall of 1839, just shy of her 21st birthday, Mary
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Speaker 1: left her father's house for good and moved in with
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Speaker 1: her sister, Elizabeth Edwards, in Springfield, Illinois. Mary's home life
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Speaker 1: in Lexington had become untenable. There were still five children
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Speaker 1: under 11 in the overcrowded, noisy household, and Betsy and
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Speaker 1: Robert Todd were far from done. Two more would be
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Speaker 1: born after Mary moved out. Years later, Sister Elizabeth would
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Speaker 1: confirm that one of the strong motivators for Mary to
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Speaker 1: leave Kentucky was that, quote, she had a stepmother with
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Speaker 1: whom she did not agree, end quote. Elizabeth, then only
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Speaker 1: 25 herself, had made it her mission to find husbands
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Speaker 1: for the trio of daughters from her father's first marriage,
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Speaker 1: that of Frances, Mary, and Anne. Elizabeth would eventually bring
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Speaker 1: each of them to Springfield into what one historian dubbed
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Speaker 1: Edward's marital halfway house. Her matchmaking efforts had already yielded
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Speaker 1: one success. In the spring of 1839, Frances Todd married
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Speaker 1: a physician and pharmacist William Wallace, and moved out of
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Speaker 1: the Edwards house, making room for the next sister. For
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Speaker 1: Mary Todd, the long coach ride to Springfield in 1839
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Speaker 1: was not just an escape, it began a journey that
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Speaker 1: would lead from Lexington to the White House. Sources came
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Speaker 1: from a book, Secret Lexington, A Guide to Weird, Wonderful,
26:01
Speaker 1: and Obscure, by Fiona Young Brown, published by Reedy Press, St. Louis, Missouri,
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Speaker 1: in 1825. A book, Mary Todd Lincoln, A Life from
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Speaker 1: Beginning to End, by Hourly History, written in 2020. And
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Speaker 1: An Inconvenient Widow, written by Lois Romano, published by Simon
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Speaker 1: & Schuster, New York, New York, in 2026. Well, thank
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Speaker 1: you so much for listening to the history program this week.
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Speaker 1: I sure hope you enjoyed it. I thank you, and
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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Joseph Bolden. I'll be back with another
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Speaker 1: chapter of Radio Eye History. Until then, happy trails to you.