He Put His Own Mother in an Asylum — Lincoln's Only Son

In 1875, a respectable Chicago lawyer arranged for his own mother to be declared insane and committed to a sanitarium. His name was Robert Todd Lincoln. His mother was the widow of Abraham Lincoln. History has spent 150 years arguing over whether he was a villain or a son doing the impossible. But the man who locked Mary Lincoln away carried a far heavier secret — he had spent his entire life guarding the legend of a father he had barely known, and he would spend his final decades watching that same name destroy everyone he loved. This is the story of the last Lincoln. A Behind the Throne documentary on the burden of the most famous name in American history — and the son who could never escape it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎬 CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 — The Last Lincoln 00:35 — Introduction 04:13 — Chapter 1: The Boy Who Grew Up Waving Goodbye 09:31 — Chapter 2: The Name He Did Not Choose 16:11 — Chapter 3: Jack 22:13 — Chapter 4: A Certain Fatality 28:31 — Chapter 5: The Marble and the Man 35:44 — Epilogue ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 SOURCES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. Jason Emerson, "Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln," Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 2. Jason Emerson, "The Madness of Mary Lincoln," Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. 3. John S. Goff, "Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in His Own Right," University of Oklahoma Press, 1969. 4. Robert Todd Lincoln Family Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. 5. Robert Todd Lincoln, letter to Richard Watson Gilder, The Century Magazine, 1909 (Edwin Booth account). 6. National Park Service, "Robert Todd Lincoln and Presidential Assassinations," nps.gov. 7. National Archives, "The Curious Case of Robert Lincoln," prologue.blogs.archives.gov. 8. Hildene — The Lincoln Family Home, hildene.org. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT BEHIND THE THRONE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Behind the Throne tells the stories of the people who stood next to power — the wives, the children, the confidants of presidents, kings, and the men history chose to remember. We don't tell the story of the people on the throne. We tell the story of the people who stood beside it, and bled in silence. If your family carried a name that was never quite your own, we'd like to hear about it in the comments. These are the stories we exist to tell. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DISCLAIMER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This video is a historical documentary created for educational and informational purposes. It is based on publicly available historical records, biographies, and primary sources cited above. Where the historical record is incomplete or disputed, we have indicated this with appropriate language. Any interpretations are offered in good faith and do not represent statements of definitive fact. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #BehindTheThrone #RobertToddLincoln #AbrahamLincoln #MaryToddLincoln #PresidentialHistory