Lincoln's Melancholy Read online

  Lincoln was not depressed in his late teens and early twenties—at least not so far as anyone could see. When he left his family, at age twenty-one, he had no money or connections. His chief asset—perhaps his only real asset—was his golden character. Settling as a stranger in New Salem, a small village on a river bluff in central Illinois, he soon was among the best-liked men around. A gang of rough boys developed a fierce attachment to him after he made a stellar showing in a wrestling match, displaying not only physical strength but a sense of fairness. Others were impressed with Lincoln’s wit and intelligence, noticing, for example, how when he recited the poetry of Robert Burns, he nailed the Scottish accent, the fierce emotion, and the devilish humor. Though Lincoln looked like a yokel—tall and gangly, he had thick, black, unruly hair and he wore pants that ended above his ankles—he had good ideas and a good manner. “He became popular with all classes,” said Jason Duncan, a physician in New Salem.

  After less than a year in New Salem, Lincoln declared himself as a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly. He was twenty-three years old. He lost the race but got nearly every vote in his precinct, which, said another candidate, was “mainly due to his personal popularity.” When he volunteered for a state militia campaign against a band of Native Americans under Chief Black Hawk, a part of the bloody Black Hawk War, his company elected Lincoln captain. Nearly three decades later—as a veteran of Congress and his party’s nominee for president of the United States—Lincoln wrote that this was “a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.”

  In his first four years in New Salem, Lincoln struck his new friends and neighbors as sunny and indefatigable. “I never saw Mr Lincoln angry or desponding,” said a fellow soldier in the Black Hawk War, “but always cheerful.” Indeed, “the whole company, even amid trouble and suffering, received Strength & fortitude, by his bouancy and elasticity.” Once Lincoln stopped at the house of a neighbor, Elizabeth Abell, after working in the fields. He was scratched all over from briar thorns. Abell fussed over him, but Lincoln laughed about it and said it was the poor man’s lot. “Certainly,” she said years later, “he was the best natured man I ever got acquainted with.” Asked by a biographer whether the Lincoln she knew was a “sad man,” Abell answered, “I never considered him so. He was always social and lively and had great aspirations.” Crucially, his liveliness and sociability served him well in politics. Campaigning again for the state legislature in 1834, he went out to a field where a group of about thirty men were working the harvest. A friend of Lincoln’s, J. R. Herndon, introduced him. The men said that they couldn’t vote for a man who didn’t know how to do field work. “Boys,” Lincoln said, “if that is all I am sure of your votes.” He picked up a scythe and went to work. “I dont think he Lost a vote in the Croud,” Herndon wrote.

  Lincoln won the election easily. When a mentor in the legislature recommended that he study law, he took the challenge. It would be a good profession to accompany politics, in particular the politics of the Whig party, which drew its strength from the growing number of urban and industrial professionals. In the early nineteenth century, attorneys commanded a kind of awe, embodying the stately Anglo-Saxon tradition of common law and domestic order. Gaining “the secrets of that science,” explained the poet-author William Allen Butler, would give a person a perpetual glow, for the law, “more than all other human forces, directs the progress of events.”

  It is a mark of Lincoln’s soaring ambition that, four years from the fields, he sought to join such ranks, at a time when all but five percent of the men in his area did manual work for a living. It was a sign of his pluck that he did it virtually all on his own. While other young men learned the law at universities—or, more commonly, under the tutelage of an established attorney—Lincoln, as he noted in his memoir, “studied with nobody.” This was hardly the only mark of his ambition. A lawyer named Lynn McNulty Greene remembered Lincoln telling him that “all his folks seemed to have good sense but none of them had become distinguished, and he believed it was for him to become so.” This language suggests that Lincoln had, more than a personal desire, a sense of calling. “Mr. Lincoln,” explained his friend O. H. Browning, “believed that there was a predestined work for him in the world . . . Even in his early days he had a strong conviction that he was born for better things than then seemed likely or even possible . . . While I think he was a man of very strong ambition, I think it had its origin in this sentiment, that he was destined for something nobler than he was for the time engaged in.” In his first published political speech, Lincoln wrote, “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”

  But there were cracks in Lincoln’s sunny disposition. “If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background,” he said in that same speech, “I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.” At times, his faith in personal progress gave way and his familiarity with disappointments shone through. Back from the militia campaign, Lincoln and a partner opened their own store, buying the stock on credit. When the store failed, Lincoln was in serious financial jeopardy. Seeing him despondent, his new friends got him a crucial political appointment, as New Salem’s postmaster. Later, he was made deputy surveyor, too. These jobs, Lincoln noted, “procured bread, and kept soul and body together.” Nevertheless, his debt soon caught up with him: a creditor seized his surveying equipment—including his horse, his compass, and his chain—and put it up for auction. An older man named James Short saw Lincoln moping about and heard him say he might “let the whole thing go.” Short tried to cheer him up. Then he went and bought the equipment for $120 (about $2,500 in modern dollars) and returned it to Lincoln.

  These streaks of sadness and worry may have been minor depressions. But it wasn’t until 1835 that serious concern emerged about Lincoln’s mental health. That summer, remembered the schoolteacher Mentor Graham, Lincoln “somewhat injured his health and Constitution.” The first sign of trouble came with his intense study of law. He “read hard—day and night—terribly hard,” remembered Isaac Cogdal, a stonemason. At times, Lincoln seemed oblivious to his friends and surroundings. “He became emaciated,” said Henry McHenry, a farmer in the area, “and his best friends were afraid that he would craze himself—make himself derange.”

  Around the same time, an epidemic of what doctors called “bilious fever”—typhoid, probably—spread through the area. Doctors administered heroic doses of mercury, quinine, and jalap, a powerful purgative. According to one recollection, Lincoln helped tend to the sick, build coffins for the dead, and assist in the burials—despite the fact that he was “suffering himself with the chills and fever on alternate days.” He was probably affected mentally, too, by the waves of death washing across his new home—reminiscent, perhaps, of the “milk sick” that had devastated his family in his youth.

  Among the severely afflicted families were Lincoln’s friends the Rutledges. Originally from South Carolina, they had been among the first to settle in New Salem, opening a tavern and boarding house, where Lincoln stayed and took meals when he first arrived. He knew the family well and had become friends with Anna Mayes Rutledge, a bright, pretty young woman with flowing blond hair and large blue eyes. In August 1835, Ann took sick. As she lay in bed in her family’s cabin, Lincoln visited her often. “It was very evident that he was much distressed,” remembered a neighbor named John Jones. She died on August 25. Around the time of her funeral, the weather turned cold and wet. Lincoln said he couldn’t bear the idea of rain falling on Ann’s grave—and this was the first sign people had that he was in the midst of an emotional collapse. “As to the condition of Lincoln’s Mind after the death of Miss R.,” Henry McHenry recalled, “after that Event he seemed quite changed, he seemed Retired, & loved Solitude, he seemed wrapped in profound thought, indifferent, t
o transpiring Events, had but Little to say, but would take his gun and wander off in the woods by him self, away from the association of even those he most esteemed, this gloom seemed to deepen for some time, so as to give anxiety to his friends in regard to his Mind.”

  Indeed, the anxiety was widespread, both for Lincoln’s immediate safety and for his long-term mental health. Lincoln “told Me that he felt like Committing Suicide often,” remembered Mentor Graham, and his neighbors mobilized to keep him safe. One friend recalled, “Mr Lincolns friends . . . were Compelled to keep watch and ward over Mr Lincoln, he being from the sudden shock somewhat temporarily deranged. We watched during storms—fogs—damp gloomy weather . . . for fear of an accident.” Another villager said, “Lincoln was locked up by his friends . . . to prevent derangement or suicide.” People wondered whether Lincoln had fallen off the deep end. “That was the time the community said he was crazy,” remembered Elizabeth Abell.

  The fact that Lincoln broke down after Rutledge’s death, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean that her death produced his breakdown. This is an important point, because from the very earliest writings on Lincoln, his relationship with Ann Rutledge has been controversial. Questions about whether he loved her and whether they were engaged have been debated fiercely, and still are. The myths and countermyths about this young woman played a big role in the early historiography of Lincoln—and, amazingly, played a large role in pushing Lincoln’s melancholy to the margins of history. More on this in the Afterword, but for now the essential point is that leading scholars have long said that what we think about Lincoln’s first breakdown must hinge on what we think about his relationship with Ann Rutledge. If his love for her is a myth, this thinking goes, then the breakdown must be a myth, too.

  In fact, in the eyes of the New Salem villagers, questions of a love affair followed hard and irrefutable knowledge of an emotional collapse. As the original accounts make clear, his breakdown was impossible to miss. Nearly everyone in the community who gave testimony spoke of it, remembering its contours even decades later. Lincoln, after all, had become immensely popular, loved by young ruffians and old families alike. Now, all of a sudden he was openly moping and threatening to kill himself. Why? people asked. What accounted for the great change?

  It was in an attempt to answer this question that people turned to his relationship with Rutledge. He had obviously been upset by her illness. And after her funeral he had fallen off an emotional cliff. “The effect upon Mr Lincoln’s mind was terrible,” said Ann’s brother, Robert Rutledge. “He became plunged in despair, and many of his friends feared that reason would desert her throne. His extraordinary emotions were regarded as strong evidence of the existence of the tenderest relations between himself and the deceased.” Notice the careful progression from fact (Lincoln’s breakdown after Ann’s death) to inference (they must have been tenderly involved). James Short, who was the Rutledges’ neighbor, came to a similar conclusion. “I did not know of any engagement or tender passages between Mr L and Miss R at the time,” Short said. “But after her death . . . he seemed to be so much affected and grieved so hardly that I then supposed there must have been something of the kind.” Because Lincoln “grieved so hardly” and became “plunged in despair,” it seemed reasonable to his friends that there must have been some proximate cause.

  In fact, major depression, in people who are vulnerable to it, can be set off by all manner of circumstances. What would appear to a non-depressed person to be an ordinary or insignificant stimulus can through a depressive’s eyes look rather profound. “It’s not the large things that send a man to the madhouse,” Charles Bukowski has written. “No, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies . . . a shoelace that snaps, with no time left.” In this light, it is worth noting that, according to reminiscences, the pivotal moment for Lincoln wasn’t Rutledge’s death but the dismal weather that followed. After the death, wrote John Hill, the son of Lincoln’s friend Samuel Hill, “Lincoln bore up under it very well until some days afterwards a heavy rain fell, which unnerved him and—(the balance you know).” The intonation here suggests an understanding among Lincoln’s friends that there was something precarious about him, and that—like Bukowski’s shoelace—a factor as ordinary as poor weather could send him reeling. As we will see, cold temperatures would contribute to Lincoln’s second breakdown. Lincoln himself would write that “exposure to bad weather” had proved by his experience “to be verry severe on defective nerves.”

  For whatever reason, or combination of reasons, in the late summer of 1835 Lincoln’s depression was pushed out into the open. After several weeks of worrisome behavior—talking about suicide, wandering alone in the woods with his gun—an older couple in the area took him into their home. Bowling Green, a large, merry man who was the justice of the peace—and who became, other villagers said, a kind of second father to Lincoln—and his wife, Nancy, took care of Lincoln for one or two weeks. When he had improved somewhat, they let him go, but he was, Mrs. Green said, “quite melancholy for months.”

  Lincoln’s behavior matches what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook of mental health professionals, labels a major depressive episode. Such an episode is characterized by depressed mood and/or a marked decrease in pleasure for at least two weeks. Other symptoms may include a change in appetite or weight, excessive or insufficient sleep, agitation or lethargy, fatigue or loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt, indecisiveness or trouble thinking or concentrating, and thoughts of death and/or suicide. To be classified as major depression, at least five of these symptoms must be present, marking a definite change from usual functioning and with significant distress or impaired functioning. If the symptoms follow the death of a loved one by less than two months, it might be considered mourning unless, as in Lincoln’s case, there is “suicidal ideation”—to ideate is to form an idea about something—or other equally severe symptoms. “What helps make the case for the diagnosis of depression,” says Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, “is Lincoln’s suicidal behavior and the fact that it provoked a ‘suicide watch.’ Today people are much more sophisticated about suicide, but it’s pretty unusual to do that. It speaks to the seriousness of what was happening with Lincoln.”

  Lincoln’s breakdown also fits with the typical age for a first episode of major depression. Most serious psychiatric illnesses emerge at a particular time in life. For example, in males, schizophrenia usually surfaces in the late teenage years; manic depression in the late teens to early twenties. Unipolar depression, which Lincoln would struggle with his whole life, typically breaks into the open in the mid- to late twenties. Lincoln was twenty-six.

  Many people wonder if Marfan syndrome contributed to Lincoln’s depression. Marfan is an inherited genetic disorder that diminishes the strength of connective tissue—the material that gives substance and support to bodily structures, from tendons to heart valves. People with the syndrome tend to be tall and thin, with elongated limbs out of proportion to their bodies. In other words, they look like Lincoln, which is one reason some researchers suspect he may have had the disorder. “Most of the Marfanologists think that it’s a fifty-fifty chance that he did have it,” says Victor A. McKusick, a professor of medical genetics at Johns Hopkins. “He might just by chance have been tall and gangly. The physiognomy is a good clue, but you can’t make the diagnosis on that basis alone.” Does Marfan syndrome cause depression? At least one study has suggested a higher presence of depression in people with the syndrome. But McKusick says, “From the massive numbers of patients I have seen, there is no characteristic personality of Marfan patients. I would think that Lincoln’s depression was quite unrelated.”

  Another common question about Lincoln is whether he had manic depression, which is also known as bipolar disorder. This diagnosis is given to people who alternate between episodes of depression and mania—long periods of intensely heightened energy,
often marked by euphoria, racing thoughts, disinhibition, and risk-taking. No evidence exists of mania in Lincoln. He didn’t indicate trouble with swings in mood so much as with the low moods of depression. Nor did his contemporaries describe anything that sounds like mania. It is possible that he had what psychiatrists call hypomania—below full-scale mania, but still characterized by heightened energy. Often people with serious depression alternate between depressed moods and hypomanic ones. But here, too, there is no clear evidence of anything clinically significant.

  On the other hand, it’s plain that Lincoln had major depressive episodes. Even after he had brought himself under control, he still grappled with desperate thoughts. Robert L. Wilson, who joined Lincoln as a candidate for the state legislature in 1836, found him amiable and fun-loving. But one day Lincoln took Wilson aside and told him something surprising. As Wilson recalled, Lincoln told him “that although he appeared to enjoy life rapturously, Still he was the victim of terrible melancholly He Sought company, and indulged in fun and hilarity without restraint, or Stint as to time Still when by himself, he told me that he was so overcome with mental depression, that he never dare carry a knife in his pocket. And as long as I was intimately acquainted with him, previous to his commencement of the practice of the law, he never carried a pocket knife.”

  Of those who’ve had a single episode of major depression, more than half will have a second. Lincoln’s second breakdown, in the winter of 1840–1841, bore a remarkable similarity to the first. It came after a long period of intense work, when Lincoln pushed himself hard in pursuit of an ambitious goal. Then, under profound personal stress—and in a stretch of bleak weather—he collapsed. Once again, he spoke openly about his misery, hopelessness, and thoughts of suicide. He was unable to work. His friends feared that he might kill himself, and that if he lived, he might go insane. Lincoln himself despaired that he would never recover. This will be explored in depth in Chapter 3.