SALVAGING (AND SATIRIZING) THE FLOTUS PART 2

YESTERDAY WE BEGAN GLEANING TIDBITS from Thomas Mallon’s review in The New Yorker of Lois Romano’s book An Inconvenient Widow: The Torment, Trial, and Triumph of Mary Todd Lincoln. Part 1 ended with Lincoln announcing, “Mary! Mary! We are elected!”

And Then Came War. An oft-forgotten bit of history: “Within six weeks of Lincoln’s Inauguration,” Mallon notes, “the Civil War had broken out.”

Mary Todd Lincoln. Image of an 1861 carte de visite by Mathew Brady from U.S. Library of Congress. 

Mallon continues, “Mary was ‘drowning,’ according to Romano, surrounded by ‘opportunists and rogues’ as numerous as the rats skittering through the Executive Mansion’s walls. The Union’s hastily augmented army couldn’t get to the capital fast enough, and there was no guarantee that Mrs. Jefferson Davis wouldn’t soon be calling the White House home.”

Wikipedia notes that the Confederates came within 4 miles of the White House in their attack of Fort Stevens, July 11–12, 1864.

Union officers and men at Fort Stevens. Image by William Morris Smith from Wikipedia. 

Was Mary a Confederate Spy? Mallon recounts, “… Mary was charged with being a Southern sympathizer or spy. With a host of siblings and in-laws in the Confederate Army, some of them rapidly being promoted, she could not shake these accusations, even after she refused to mourn the death of a half brother, Alexander Todd.”

Despite Mary’s evident Union support and actions, both before and after her husband’s assassination, Mallon observes, “… the rumors of treason ground on. Richard Yates, a Republican from Illinois, raised them on the Senate floor in 1870, when he argued against a widow’s pension for Mary.” 

Perpetually Vanquished. Mallon recounts, “And yet, when it comes to what Romano calls ‘the popular imagination,’ Mary is perpetually vanquished. There, a mad, out-of-control Mary lives on as tenaciously as George Washington’s inability to tell a lie.”

In later life, Mary Todd Lincoln was attracted to Spiritualism. This hoax image is courtesy of Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection/Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites / Allen County Public Library from The New Yorker. 

The Oh, Mary! Satire. Mallon cites, “For the past two years, Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary!, a play as hilarious as it is sick, has been selling out on Broadway….”

A sample: 

Abraham: “No! It’s inappropriate! We’re at war!”
Mary: “With who?”
Abraham: “The South!”
Mary: “The south of what?!?”

For more on this spoof, see Wikipedia: “The show portrays Mary as a temperamental alcoholic, stuck in an unhappy marriage with the deeply closeted President Lincol and desperate to return to her past glory days as a cabaret star. The title is taken from a slang phrase used among gay men going back decades.” And note that its creator Cole Escola is non-binary.

Mallon observes, “Oh, Mary! was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Next February, it will come to Washington, D.C., playing the National Theatre, three blocks from the White House, on Lincoln’s birthday.”

Gee. I wonder what Trump’s view on all this will be. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026