In 1875, ten years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln’s only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, orchestrated her involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital. Devastated by the successive deaths of her husband and three of her four sons, Mary exhibited erratic behavior, intense grief, and a fixation on spiritualism, alongside a habit of compulsive shopping. Believing her to be mentally unstable and a danger to her own finances, Robert initiated a public trial. A Chicago jury declared her "insane," and she was swiftly institutionalized at Bellevue Place, a private, upscale asylum in Batavia, Illinois. Mary viewed this as a profound betrayal by her son, who subsequently gained control of her substantial estate. Mary refused to remain passive during her confinement and actively plotted her release. She managed to smuggle letters out of the asylum to her trusted allies, most notably her defense attorney, Myra Bradwell, one of America's first female lawyers and Bradwell's husband, James. Mary also wrote to the editor of the ‘Chicago Times’, threatening a public media scandal if she were not released. Facing the threat of damaging press exposure and mounting legal pressure engineered by Mary's network, the asylum's superintendent surrendered. Just three months after her arrival, Mary was released into the custody of her sister in Springfield, Illinois, and a subsequent court ruling officially declared her sane again. #resilient #thehistoriansden