Historian Catherine Clinton draws on important new research to illuminate the remarkable life of Mary Lincoln. Her story is inextricably tied with her husband's presidency, yet her life is an extraordinary chronicle on its own. From an aristocratic Kentucky family, she was an educated, well-connected Southern daughter, and when she married a Springfield lawyer she became a Northern wife--an experience mirrored by thousands of her countrywomen. The Lincolns endured many personal setbacks, including the death of a child and defeats in two Senate races. Mrs. Lincoln herself suffered scorching press attacks. The assassination of her husband haunted her for the rest of her life. Her downward spiral resulted in a brief but traumatizing involuntary incarceration in an asylum and exile in Europe during her later years. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America.--From publisher description.