Answers (1)
Right after Lincoln was shot, Mary Todd threw herself across the prone body of her husband. Dr. Leale, who was also in the booth, lifted her gently off and helped lower Lincoln to the floor and began treatment. Shortly into the examination, Leale said softly, "His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover." Mary Todd Lincoln, seated on a nearby couch, was seen quietly sobbing.
Lincoln was soon moved out of the theatre into a rented room. Mary Todd Lincoln spent the whole night wandering in and out of the room, checking on him. She was comforted by her son Robert, who had come from the White House after hearing the news.
At 7:22am the next morning, Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, took his last breath. Mary Todd requested that a lock of her husband's hair be cut for her own safe-keeping.
It took over a month for Mary Todd to recover enough from the president's death to leave the White House finally on May 22, 1865. For the next 17 years, she assumed the role of the martyr-widow, consumed by physical and mental illness, bedeviled by personal tragedy and personal torment, and shamed by family and country. She exiled herself to Europe in 1868 after public controversies over her finances and remained there until 1871 when she returned to Chicago. She was committed to an insane asylum by her son Robert in 1875 although she later won her release. On July 16, 1882, Mary Todd Lincoln died at the home of her sister in Springfield.