His family history and his youthful experience planted the seed; his mother, said to be intelligent and sad, died when he was 9; he endured other deaths and a distant relationship with his father. Nevertheless, as a youth Lincoln was reported to be not only amiable, bright and funny but also happy. The first serious depressive episode came -- as Shenk says such attacks often do -- in Lincoln's mid-twenties, during the late summer of 1835, when he was 26. Ann Rutledge, a charming young woman often rumored to have been his first love, died, and he seemed particularly distressed when rain fell on her grave; his friends were worried enough about him to set up a suicide watch. The Randalls dismissed Lincoln's love for Ann as a myth, but the next part of the story could not be denied: Something drastic happened in January 1841 that left Lincoln exuding gloom and unable to attend to his duties in the state legislature. The prevailing (Randall) story, which Shenk carefully corrects, had Lincoln splitting up with his fiancé, Mary Todd, on "that fatal first of Jany. '41," falling briefly into depression as a result, getting help from his friend Dr. Aaron Henry, leaving depression behind, reuniting more or less happily with Mary and going on to glory. Except for the glory, Shenk argues, that whole story is mistaken.
We don't know exactly what happened on "that fatal first of Jany.," but Shenk gives it a painstaking examination. The onset of depression involved not only Lincoln's misery about feeling tied to Mary Todd while being much drawn to another young woman, Matilda Edwards, but also professional calamities not usually connected to this episode. Shenk shows that they should be. Lincoln had been a chief proponent in the Illinois assembly of an ambitious scheme to build canals, railroads and roads, which had just then collapsed, destroying the state's economy and, perhaps, his political career. His old friend Speed left town and got married. The weather turned cold. And after Henry's horrific treatment, Lincoln did not just get over his depression. (If Henry followed the aggressive program we know he approved for others, the doctor would have "bled him, purged and puked him, starved him, dosed him with mercury and pepper, rubbed him with mustard, and plunged him in cold water.") He did go on with his life, but with both a new strength of purpose and a new susceptibility to melancholy.
Depression emerging in his mid-twenties, taking a deeper hold in his thirties and staying with him for the rest of his life: That is the story Shenk tells. It is not a story of crisis and recovery but of crisis and coping -- and of that coping leading to stunning creativity. The link between depression and artistic creativity is often affirmed; why not also (asks Shenk) with a creative politician like Lincoln? "In his mid-forties, the dark soil of his melancholy began to bear fruit," Shenk writes. "When Lincoln threw himself into the fight against the extension of slavery, the same qualities that had long brought him so much trouble played a role in his great work."
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