Many of his contemporaries well understood the man's genius. Among his favorite poems was Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." Lincoln loved to study the great orators, and he labored over his writings, whether they were personal letters or speeches like the Gettysburg Address-which was not quickly composed, as legend suggests, on a slip of paper while traveling by train to Gettysburg. The Lincolns' older son Robert was away from Washington for most of the war either as a student at Harvard or, after 1864, as a young staff officer to General Grant.Īlthough Lincoln was almost entirely self-educated, he took great pleasure in the study of Shakespeare, Byron, the Bible, Aesop's Fables, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, or any writings with tragic and melancholy themes. In the evening, she read newspapers in anticipation of talking with Abraham when he came to bed about what was newsworthy and to hear his reports on the state of the war. It was the general rule of the White House that Mary Lincoln could burst in on her husband without notice to discuss family or politics or whatever was urgently on her mind. Until little Willie's death in 1862, the two younger sons demanded a good deal of attention, and both parents gave them ample attention, although Lincoln grew more distant as the war progressed and occupied much of his day. On a superficial level, the day went from breakfast together as a family at 8:00 in the morning, reunion again for dinner at 8:00 in the evening, and then bedtime.
The Lincoln family in the White House established a routine of sorts that reflected the presence of their sons, the demands of war, and the highly complex and many-sided character of Abraham and Mary.
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