Mary Todd Lincoln

Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln much against the wishes of her relatives, who considered him socially inferior. But she was perhaps the first to realize Lincoln's potential for national leadership.
This photograph of Mrs. Lincoln, wearing a meticulously fashioned black dress, may have been taken in the autumn of 1863. She would have been still in mourning for her eleven-year-old son, Willie, who had died of typhoid fever in February 1862. His death, followed three years later by the assassination of her husband, precipitated her rapid psychological decline, which continually worsened during her lifetime.