Lincoln's Family Troubles, Part 1

In February 1862 Willie Lincoln, aged 11, died. His brother Tad would break into intermittent sobbing because Willie “would never speak to me any more.” And Mary was so prostrate with grief that she did not even attend the funeral.

Within a few weeks Mary had suffered a nervous breakdown and shut herself in her room for the next three months. Lincoln, according to one observer, “worried about her, haunted by fears that she might lapse into insanity. One day he led her to a window and pointed to a distant building where mental patients were confined. ’Try to control your grief,’ he said firmly, ‘or it will drive you mad, and we may have to send you there.’”