Last night the boys and I watched a documentary about Abraham Lincoln on the History Channel. This three hour long documentary was informative as well as entertaining enough to keep not only I, but also my boys’ attention for the whole show. This documentary looked at Lincoln from a different angle than usual. The show illustrated how Lincoln battled depression and examined how that depression affected his personal and professional life.

The main theme was that due to numerous losses (the death of his mother, siblings, and children), Lincoln became depressed and that the depression (or the desire to escape it) caused him to pursue success in the legal and political world. Anyone who has studied Lincoln at all has read or heard that his wife, Mary Todd, was said to have battled mental illness. That issue was discussed, but Lincoln’s battles with depression have not always been as thoroughly explored. The documentary made a good case for the claim.

Lincoln wrote a series of letters to a friend with whom he apparently shared the symptoms of depression. He also endured numerous hardships as a boy growing up in Kentucky and Indiana. He watched his mother die after intense suffering for a week. He lost siblings to death at an early age. His dad was not very nurturing, so he was not given the emotional support that would have made recovery from depression as a boy more likely.

As a young man, Lincoln battled depression resulting from his encounters with women. He initially broke his engagement to Mary Todd, because he allegedly "fell in love" with another women, though it is unknown whether he even let this other women know that she was the object of his affection. Lincoln was portrayed as shy and awkward around women, but still physically attracted. He was unsure about his love for Mary Todd but eventually they again were engaged and later married. Lincoln apparently had a high degree of "cognitive dissonance" between his feelings and his commitments. His marriage to Mary Todd was fraught with embarrassing episodes resulting from her mental illness. Both the private, and especially the public, demonstrations of her mental illness were a burden that he was forced to face all of his married life.

Lincoln obviously felt that his responsibility as President was to keep the Union together (at any cost) and to end the practice of slavery. Lincoln certainly took a principled stand on these issues. The problem was that this stand resulted in probably the bloodiest war in human history. The first Union officer that perished in the Civil war was a personal friend of Lincoln’s. Lincoln, when confronted by war widows during their time of need, was always very accommodating and became known as a caring and compassionate man as he responded to their individual requests for help. Lincoln was not afraid, and actually looked for opportunities to identify with the suffering of others. There was an account of the time when Lincoln actually visited the front lines during the war. Perhaps his own suffering helped him to identify with and take compassion on others he knew were suffering.

As Lincoln aged, it appears that he learned better how to manage his depression. The documentary makes the case that it was actually Lincoln’s depression that caused him to throw himself into his work; educating himself, becoming a lawyer, state representative, and later President of the United States. The only irritating thing about the documentary is that one of the historians made a claim that Lincoln was a homosexual. The basis for that claim was that he slept in the same bed as a male friend and that he wrote personal letters to this friend. Fortunately, most of the other historians strongly refuted this notion. They stated that it was not uncommon at all for people to share beds in those times simply because they were not as plentiful as today. They also noted that the first thing many in our society think of nowadays is sex, but in the 1800’s it was the one of the last assumptions to be made. Another irritating comment was made by author Gore Vidal. When describing how Lincoln violated the Bill of Rights in order to prosecute the war, he compared it to the War on Terror. Vidal said that the war on terror was about as significant as a "war on dandruff". The documentary on Lincoln would have been better served by leaving Gore’s liberal political commentary out.

Despite those departures, this was an excellent biographical documentary on Lincoln. It showed a side to Lincoln that has not been examined enough.