Depression Might Have Derailed Lincoln’s Recovery, Historian Says
WASHINGTON-If Abraham Lincoln survived his head wound through modern trauma care, he would have retained his mental awareness, but likely been left inarticulate among other disabilities-which might have exacerbated his already existent depression.
“It would be more of a problem because he already suffered from depression,” advised Steven Lee Carson, a Presidential historian from the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., who spoke at the 13th annual Clinicopathological Conference in May about the social and historical implications had Lincoln lived in 1865.”[Dr. Scalea hypothesized that] he would have probably been dyslexic, and although he had reasoning abilities, he would not be able to communicate. He would be inarticulate and possibly blind in one eye or both eyes.”
At the very least, had Lincoln survived, he would have required a long rehabilitation process. “Any patient who would suffer such grievous wounds as Lincoln would have had problems with depression,” Carson advised. “Lincoln already suffered from massive depression long before [he was shot]. It’s very well-known. So, he would have had the double-whammy of depression upon depression, plus his moods.”
Lincoln was well-known for his sense of humor, and once said that the reason he jokes ‘is to keep from dying,” Carson said. But with his injury, he might not have been able to joke like he did because of the possibility of not being able to articulate his thoughts.
Carson gave numerous examples of Lincoln’s humor, which at times was vaudevillian-like and other times witty and satirical to deflate difficult political situations.
Lincoln’s already existing depression had also been affected by the deaths of two young sons. Before he became President, he lost a son who was just a few years old, and then he lost another son, Willie, in 1862 during his Presidential years. Willie was just 10-years-old when he died, and accounts show that Lincoln was deeply affected by it and would continue to talk about him years later. “Lincoln even went to the cemetery where his son was temporarily put after he died in 1862, and we know of at least two times when he opened up the casket,” Carson said. “Willie was the favorite son. He died on a Thursday. After he died, for a month thereafter, every Thursday Lincoln would stop working and seclude himself, so [that] his male secretaries [had to call] a minister to talk Lincoln around.”
But Lincoln had a job to do as President and he managed to occupy himself with that. “He galvanized the English language and it was not equaled until (Winston) Churchill,” Carson said.
Would History Have Changed With A Debilitated Lincoln?
Given the political climate in 1865, several issues would have been raised had Lincoln survived. For one, Carson pointed out that there was no 25th Amendment to the Constitution yet, so there was no provision for someone to take over in the event a President becomes too sick or injured to carry out his duties. Lincoln was shot and took nine hours to die, and for that time period until vice president Andrew Johnson was sworn in nearly four hours after he died, Lincoln’s secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton ran the government, Carson advised. “Edwin Stanton was incorruptible and he had to do so much because it was really an attack on the government,” he said. “At the same time that Lincoln was shot, one of Booth’s accomplices [Lewis Powell] tried to assassinate the secretary of state William H. Seward [Powell attacked Seward in his home and stabbed him and several others, although Seward survived with disfiguring facial wounds. There was also a planned attack against Johnson, though it never came about because Booth’s accomplice for that attack got drunk instead].”
Since the Civil War was just coming to a close when Lincoln was shot, it was a crucial time period.”Lee surrendered April 9. Lincoln was shot April 14. Jefferson Davis was [still] in flight and [not] caught [until] May 10, and the last Confederate Army general and warships surrendered in June,” Carson said. “When Lincoln was shot, although Lee had surrendered, there was the real fear that there were still troops out there ready to start the war all over again, or indeed [who] maybe would not have recognized Lee’s surrender. Jefferson Davis, in fact, was in flight to try and rally the remaining troops and get the war going or have guerrilla warfare.”
As Lincoln lay dying, Stanton took testimony from eyewitnesses, sent guards to the vice president and all of the cabinet members and other government leaders [there was no secret service then], ordered pursuit of the assassins through the telegraph lines and the provost marshals to close the country’s borders, alerted the military to guard forts, cities, ammunition depots, military posts and transportation outlets, ordered the handling of Confederate troops caught in the field, and informed the public of what happened. “During that period before Lincoln died, Stanton is very much in control, but he really was for a period thereafter, also,” said Carson.
Stanton, as war secretary, was possessed with greater power than usual since it was wartime, the secretary of state was out of action, and Congress was not in session at the time. He even preserved civilian control of the military in late April after General Sherman accepted both a military and civilian surrender of the Confederate Army in North Carolina. “Stanton, with Johnson’s agreement and the others’, had that rescinded and Sherman had to go back to the Confederate general and get a surrender on [only] the [military] terms that Grant gave Lee,” Carson advised. “If Lincoln had survived but been so incapacitated, the problem is somebody would have to act in Lincoln’s stead, and we have the evidence right there of Stanton.”
After Lincoln died, Johnson, according to Carson, would go on to become one of the worst Presidents ever, despite being the only Democratic senator to have stayed with the Union when the country divided into the Civil War. Lincoln, a northern Republican, had brought Johnson into the government just a month before the assassination, as a symbol of unity in an effort to unify the country. “But he was so out of control, intemperate, vulgar, and I don’t just mean in private, but in public,” Carson said of Johnson. “He was intransigent, stubborn, [and] a veritable racist.”
Furthermore, Lincoln’s wife, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, was also an out of control person, according to Carson. “Mary Lincoln was mentally ill long before [Lincoln was killed],” he said. “She had no friends at all in Washington, D.C. She had alienated everybody and fought with everyone, and she was carrying on [after he was killed].”
Carson said he has great compassion and sympathy for Mary, who outlived three of her four sons, but she did not handle death well and her illness eventually led her to being committed to an asylum 10 years after Lincoln’s death.
As an example of her erratic and sometimes unreasonable behavior, just weeks before the assassination, Mary jealously blew up at Lincoln and the wives of Grant and another general in front of a review of troops in Virginia, Carson said. This incident led to the Grants turning down an invitation to be with the Lincolns at Ford’s Theater the night the President was killed there. When asked if there would have been more security at the theater had both Lincoln and Grant attended, Carson said there surely would have been.
So if Lincoln had survived in a disabled state, his wife and others likely would have struggled for control. “Mary Todd Lincoln would have fought like a tiger,” Carson sad. “Mary Lincoln did everything of pure and total emotion. And because Mary had made enemies everywhere, she would not have succeeded. Mary would have been a major problem for Stanton and the others, especially given the fact there was not an amendment at that point making it very clear on who should take control because he would still be alive. [Plus] the fact that the war was still going on-Jefferson Davis was still in flight and other Confederate troops were still in the field and of course that there had been other attacks against members of the government. Mary, she would have carried on like a banshee, but nobody would have followed her because she had no friends, no associates, [and] she alienated everybody in the four years of the Lincoln Presidency. So, that would have been more of an emotional annoyance rather than anything else.”
Carson gave examples of two past Presidents, James Garfield [who was shot] and Woodrow Wilson [who suffered a stroke], who were incapacitated for some time but remained in power. In Garfield’s case, the secretaries of war and state unofficially ran the government until he died a couple of months later, while First Lady Edith Wilson quietly held Wilson’s office together until he recovered.
The possibility that Stanton would have assumed power unofficially while Lincoln was recovering can also be attested to the close relationship the two had. “Stanton and Lincoln were very close, so it’s not like they would be at odds with each other. They shared summer vacations together and they worked together, [and sometimes attended church together],” Carson said.
Changing History
Had Lincoln lived, even in a disabled state, he still likely would have made a difference given that he would have retained his cognitive powers. With his death and Johnson assuming the Presidency in 1865, things took a step backward. “That’s the aggravating thing, the terrible thing,” Carson said. “For one thing, Johnson was a dyed-in-the-wool racist. So he didn’t care a damn about the slaves, and so the Union, the Congress, the reconstruction were trying all sorts of things to raise the ex-slaves up such as the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Johnson vetoed it. [Furthermore] southern states passed what are called the Black Codes [so] that blacks could not own land [and] could not leave their present employment, and he let that go by. He didn’t stop that or try to do anything. And he vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and when he vetoed the three reconstruction acts designed to empower blacks with the right to vote, after that veto Congress responded and we got the 14th Amendment [in 1868].”
Johnson had been against the top Confederate leaders over the war and he did not share their Bourbon upper class backgrounds, but he tried to turn over state governments to other Confederate leaders after he became President. He also insisted that most of the alleged accomplices of Booth be hanged, including the controversial first U.S. execution of a woman. He even garnered the nickname “avenger” because of his lingering hatred for southern aristocrats. “The problem with Johnson was he was a totally out of control person, totally intemperate,” Carson said. “He had no sense of diplomacy, whatsoever. He did not know how to get along or compromise, he had none of Lincoln’s attributes. He was rock solid in stubbornness and worst of all he added fuel to that fire by publicly and repeatedly getting into all sorts of vulgar language, and calling various leaders ‘traitors’ and all that.”
But Carson points out that even if Lincoln had lived, with Stanton sort of acting in his stead for a period, there still would have been rough times. “Because what actually did happen during reconstruction, there were great race riots in the south,” he said. “Whites were making war upon blacks with the Black Codes and taking away the Freedmen’s Bureau with Johnson’s veto. So, I think if Lincoln had lived, we would have had a better set of race relations today, and it would have been quicker, much quicker than we had it. But we [still] would have had to go through the fires of hate and bigotry with the race riots that did occur and they still would have happened because basically it was an unrepentant south still acting as if they had won the Civil War. And that was the whole problem…without Lincoln’s firm and careful guiding hand, the always impatient United States wanted to move on and they did, and they left the writing of the history books to the southerners.
“If Lincoln had lived, though incapacitated and he could reason and somehow get his thoughts across, the U.S. certainly would have been a better and more just nation, especially on matters of race and in a far quicker fashion, with his wisdom and gifts of diplomacy, humor and sense of timing and armed with the mantle of being a victorious war President. But the U.S. still would have gone through the fires and Lincoln would have had to toughen his policies. Reconstruction was not radical enough.”
However, despite Lincoln’s untimely death, Carson said that what he accomplished did not die. He not only united the north and south, but the east and west when he authorized the transcontinental railroad. He also authorized the Homestead Act designed to allow people to settle land and own it after five years. He ended slavery, advocated for free public education and thus opened up the U.S. to others in the world.