By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
I enjoy finding those nuggets of our state’s history that add another layer to what I already know about well-known figures from our past. A few days ago, I discovered one about the love that France had for Abraham Lincoln, but also his wife, and how the French demonstrated that to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln (MTL) after her husband’s tragic death.
A glittering goldmine of information is the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, and I came across the spring, 2011, volume of the publication to read “A Medal for Mrs. Lincoln,” written by New York historian Jason Emerson.
On December 1, 1866, the year following Lincoln’s assassination, a group of nineteen French elites presented a letter and small box to the U.S. legation in Paris to be given to MTL. A committee member’s instruction to them was: “Tell Mrs. Lincoln the heart of France is in that little box.”
Her gift? A gold medal with her husband’s likeness on one side and an inscription of dedication on the other. According to the writer, Emerson, the gift was “the only tangible tribute of sympathy Mary Lincoln ever received as a result of her widowhood.”
With MTL, there was definitely a strong connection with French culture. She fluently spoke and read the French language as a child and liked French fashion. She had a French chef in the White House and was able to speak in French with foreign dignitaries.
The death of her husband sent shock waves around the world, and two of the earliest condolence letters came from the Count of Paris and the Empress of France. The people of France exhibited a whole groundswell of sympathy and support toward her. A French newspaper proactively suggested establishing a subscription, or fundraising mechanism, to collect enough money to present MTL a gold medal in honor of her martyred husband and the respect they had for her.
The newspaper’s suggestion of the fundraising for the tribute proved immediately successful with the French citizens, but not for Napolean III’s French government. They began to order the subscription to be stopped.
John Bigelow, America’s Minister to France, pushed back strongly against the French government for their actions, and their policy on the matter changed. Embarrassed and concerned, they sent out a statement saying the subscriptions would “meet no hindrance.” Over 40,000 subscribers in France were collected, and the minting of the tribute medal would proceed.
The medal, with inscriptions on both sides, measured three inches in diameter and a quarter-inch thick. It was engraved by French medalist Franky Magniades, and the article’s writer said: “Of all medals ever created to honor Lincoln, the Magniadas is generally considered the most magnificent.”
However, the final delivery of the special gift to Mrs. Lincoln would ride on a circuitous path. A French government official was scheduled to deliver the gift to her in Chicago in early 1866 but could not follow through for health reasons. Because of that, it was decided to present it to Bigelow in Paris with the understanding that he would forward it to America’s secretary of state to present to MTL.
For reasons unknown, Bigelow did not receive it until eight months later. Though with no hard evidence to support the notion, Mrs. Lincoln believed that some U.S. government officials conspired against her to delay her getting the medal. As history has revealed, Mrs. Lincoln was not universally liked by those in her social orbit.
At the end of 1866, the medal and an accompanying letter of tribute was presented to Bigelow in Paris, and on December 27, MTL personally accepted the gift from a representative of the U.S. State Department. A few days later, she wrote a letter of appreciation to the Committee of the French Democracy (CFD).
Robert Lincoln, the last surviving member of his father’s immediate family, inherited the Magniades Medal from Mrs. Lincoln at her death in 1882. The CFD had also ordered silver and bronze copies made from the same die to give to men of the Lincoln administration, and one was acquired to be displayed at the Chicago Historical Society. At about the year 1909, Robert sent a photo of the medal to Putnam’s Magazine for publication. It was the first time the actual Magniades Medal was publicly seen.
At Robert’s death in 1926, his widow, Mary Harlan Lincoln, continued the practice of donating Lincoln family possessions to the Library of Congress. She donated the famous French medal, along with two family Bibles, to the iconic organization.
Mary Todd Lincoln, rightly or wrongly, engendered much criticism during her life as First Lady and beyond. However, a group of French people, according to the writer of the article, were “politically repressed citizens in a foreign country that recognized and honored Mary Lincoln as a part of her husband’s legacy; the gold medal they presented to her was the only public tribute she received for bearing his love, his children, and his name.”
I plan to spend more time in the future perusing this Kentucky Historical Society periodical.
For more details on this Kentucky treasure, visit history.ky.gov.